Last night I listened to a podcast about the founder of Glossika. His strategy is to teach pronunciation and syntax. It sounded like he makes his students say the same sentences over and over and over and over and over again. The whole idea is to use a lot of repetition.

His idea is that the grammar and vocab will come naturally, but if we want to be fluent, we need hardcore repetition.

According to him, he learned a local dialect of Taiwan in 4 months and was able to score a 92% on a government language proficiency exam. As a result, this has given him some notoriety in the region.

What do you guys think of hardcore military style drill based sentence repetition for learning a language?

Alkanadi:Last night I listened to a podcast about the founder of Glossika. His strategy is to teach pronunciation and syntax. It sounded like he makes his students say the same sentences over and over and over and over and over again. The whole idea is to use a lot of repetition.

His idea is that the grammar and vocab will come naturally, but if we want to be fluent, we need hardcore repetition.

According to him, he learned a local dialect of Taiwan in 4 months and was able to score a 92% on a government language proficiency exam. As a result, this has given him some notoriety in the region.

What do you guys think of hardcore military style drill based sentence repetition for learning a language?

It sounds like exactly the sort of method I would expect to pass a "government language proficiency exam". Unless you are some type of genius I doubt rote reading of sentences is going to make you learn the language any better than rote copying of calculus homework problems will make you understand calculus. Combining this with regular instruction would certainly be a good idea, but by itself I can't see it giving you a meaningful understanding of anything.

Alkanadi:Last night I listened to a podcast about the founder of Glossika. His strategy is to teach pronunciation and syntax. It sounded like he makes his students say the same sentences over and over and over and over and over again. The whole idea is to use a lot of repetition.

His idea is that the grammar and vocab will come naturally, but if we want to be fluent, we need hardcore repetition.

According to him, he learned a local dialect of Taiwan in 4 months and was able to score a 92% on a government language proficiency exam. As a result, this has given him some notoriety in the region.

What do you guys think of hardcore military style drill based sentence repetition for learning a language?

My first reaction - this might help solidify vocabulary encountered in the mass-repeated sentences, and might make you used to the pronunciation (of those words), but probably wouldn't give you any deep understanding of the grammar involved.

I find it helpful to keep re-reading a list of vocabulary in the target language - combined with some kind of mnemonic or comparison to another language (e.g., the Spanish cebolla sounds like the Ukrainian cibulja). Rote repetition (usually) solidifies the knowledge you already have. It doesn't work well for adding new knowledge.

kaŝperanto:...Combining this with regular instruction would certainly be a good idea, but by itself I can't see it giving you a meaningful understanding of anything.

He suggests combining his method with Memrise or sometime of vocab study, as well as a study of grammar.

Rote repetition (usually) solidifies the knowledge you already have. It doesn't work well for adding new knowledge.

I agree, however, I also think it would be useful for identifying patterns. For example, if something is learning English, they might hear:
- I am going to the store
- I am going to the mall
- I am going to my friend's house

This repetition would create a word cluster (as linguists call it). They will now be able to say "I am going...". They will know that these words go together. Without rote memorization, I bet they would say "I going...". More thinking would be required to construct a sentence properly.

Alkanadi:

kaŝperanto:...Combining this with regular instruction would certainly be a good idea, but by itself I can't see it giving you a meaningful understanding of anything.

He suggests combining his method with Memrise or sometime of vocab study, as well as a study of grammar.

Rote repetition (usually) solidifies the knowledge you already have. It doesn't work well for adding new knowledge.

I agree, however, I also think it would be useful for identifying patterns. For example, if something is learning English, they might hear:
- I am going to the store
- I am going to the mall
- I am going to my friend's house

This repetition would create a word cluster (as linguists call it). They will now be able to say "I am going...". They will know that these words go together. Without rote memorization, I bet they would say "I going...". More thinking would be required to construct a sentence properly.

I think we also have to take into consideration that certain learning styles suit different people differently. I would much prefer the grammatical/theoretical understanding to rote memorization - no matter what the subject. There are some subjects where this is not possible to a large extent (vocabulary), but that is when I have no problem with the approach.

It's like the difference between knowing how to write programs in a specific language and knowing how to use that languages library of pre-written code for a very repetitive task. You can't use a library without knowing how to code, but knowing how to code alone will make it difficult to do anything until you memorize your library/framework/etc.

I can't help imagining that rote repetition on that scale would be incredibly dull...

flootzavut:I can't help imagining that rote repetition on that scale would be incredibly dull...

Maybe, it would be dull. I want to try the Arabic version when it comes out. I found a sample of their Chinese lessons online

flootzavut:I can't help imagining that rote repetition on that scale would be incredibly dull...

if you're just repeating the phrases without putting any thought whatever in what they mean or how the grammar is done in them, then yeah, it would be boring.

Just like any tool, you need to use it correctly to get the desired results.

I just think after a few repetitions it would be incredibly hard to stay engaged. I can see the benefit in learning a phrase, not just individual words, but even just imagining having to repeat the same sentence more than a few times at once makes my eyes glaze over.

Mind you, I never could manage the rote learning of times tables ("once five is five, two fives are ten", etc) at primary school and yet I was able from pretty early on to actually do the maths, so maybe it's just that my brain is wired entirely wrong for this method.

I always got my tongue tied in a knot attempting to recite them, and found them incredibly frustrating, but if I was asked to multiply two one digit numbers together I could do that just fine and dandy in my head. I imagine the times table repetition helped some people, but it never helped me.