forum.englishteacher.ru

What do you think about Alexandr Dragunkin and them method of learning English?

to mirock
http://forum.study.ru/index.php?topic=23656.0

Oops. I didn't see it.

I ask moderator to take down a theme.

mirock

Did you see his books? Some of them are available on the internet. I even downloaded one. About 6 years ago I first heard about hime, and saw one of his books then. I didn't like his Russian transcription there. I thought of looking at his book more carefully but I haven't done that. I am sorry.
I guess that those books could be helpful to somebody, but I didn't use them altogether. (I mean "at all" :))

Just someone recommended him to me and I asked about him here.

I already had loaded one book of them. I will try to read it.

It seems it named "Быстрый прыжок в ангийский".


though unlikely it will approach to me, as other books, altogether.

I have only one question --- is he really effective?

Mousee
Some people say he is, but most of those I met said that he was a fraud and speculated on laziness of people. He promised that people could learn English in two weeks through his method.
Of course it isn't possible unless knowing a couple of dozens of words is considered knowing English.

Don't know yet.
As I understood from those who was writing here, They cannot say confidently nothing.

Why this interesting to me? Because I too choosed approach "no grammar".
I already read few parts of this book. As yet I don't like it. But I think I will speak this about any books at all.

I want to learn English by more nature method. I already told of that.

I  read  and  listened  Малый прыжок за 115 минут  two years ago and got  the great pleasure.
My opinion - his books are right choise for beginers.
Mirock! You have already  grown up from level  of his books.
There is not a single remedy for all occasions.

lelek
Did you really have Dragunkin helped in increasing in your English skills? How do you evaluate your present English? Did you have any exams to check your level, or you are touristing so much that you are sure in your fluency? Is your fluency due to Dragunkin?
How possibly his books could help beginners?
At least they need to read them, and mirock doesn't like reading books.
Can you recommend something that could increase a level in English without get involved in reading, or, what is better, without looking at any books and without using such?

Don't care please), I still could not read it.
I cannot make myself to do it.)

Unfortunately it's true. But this about only such books. In general I very like to read.

I like to read very much!

Now I read books like "Dao Toyota", "The Goal" and other similar.

Dear Mirock!
Using only books for studying English is great loosing of  time.
Last year I passed tests on internet sites and got pre-intermidiate level.
In my opinion 2,5 years of my learning Ehglish  (1 year self education and 1,5 attending courses) gives no effect  of my ability speaking.
Why?
There was not enough practice in my studying.
Dragunkin appeals for focusing on practice. For this purpouse he simlifyed grummar rules.

Yes. You're right. The practice is basic.

I learn to English by himself approx 3 month, if not consider of school. I try more communicate on English. Basically reading and writing on forums, social webs.

Why you think that 2,5 years couldn't to give effect?

No effect at all?

I am preparing myself to getting speaking practice. I will to torturing skype and my english-speaking friends.

Why you think that 2,5 years couldn't to give effect?

No effect at all?

[/quote]

Effect did not meet my expectation.
My main problem is I did not get enough practice of speaking and writing.

Effect did not meet my expectation.
My main problem is I did not get enough practice of speaking and writing.
[/quote]

What are you doing for getting practice? What is your methods?

I thought that speaking and  writing skills would appear automatically after learning sufficent number of English words.
I was my main mistake.
Now I realise that it is necessary to combine learning and active using  combination words.

For example please

I guess he meant under "active usage" that you need to write a lot of letters, post a lot of messages here or elswhere, and find people to whom you could speak and, if possible, to use language, which you intend to use in your life, eg, by discussion your professional issues, or, if you go abroad as a tourist, just to discuss questions which you think you can encounter in the country of your destination.
He meant, in a couple of words, that you need to use the language and not only consume it.

Template method. Creating of template on most probable cases of life.

mirock
Templates have been already created, millions of templates.
But you need not only memorise and remember them but learn how to use and use them as often as you can, especially if your memory isn't powerful enough to keep them for long time without revising.

This not like on a free using of language.

What is free usage of a language then?
I believe you are fluent when you don't think what template to use while talking or writing. If you think for long time how to construct, how to build your thought into a sentence, that would mean that you are not fluent even though you don't use any templates for expressing yourself (I believe that even you speak fluently but without using templates nobody would think that you can use the language freely)

I don't think that you're going to be understood without standard phrases even speaking in your own language with your fellow citizens.

Sure, the phrase will be a standart. What is a short way for freely usage it?

Swot?

mirock
I think the way is simple: take a phrase and use it as many times as you may remember it to the extend when you use it automatically.

I don't know any other way as only to adjust a certain phrase to a certain situation by repeating it for many times under this circumstances. If you don't have such cicrumstanses you need to create them artificially.

or you have to have a very very good memory to remember how to use without much practice

tourist, do you have a speaking practice?

mirock
I don't speak to native speakers, unfortunately, but I, however, go to an English speaking club, where I have some practice, and sometimes I call my friend, or he calls me, and we could speak by phone in English (unfortunately he knows English worse than I).
That's all practice I have. Of course I thought of finding an English native speaker in the internet, but I don't know what to talk with him about and as a matter of fact (another idiom) it doesn't seem easy to find any native speaker to talk through electronic means.
About 6 years ago when I got an access to the internet first I was chatting a lot with foreigners, but with few Englishmen or Americans, and I agreed upon speaking by ICQ with only a Romanian person, a Chinese person, and a Czech person and we didn't have long-lasting practice. Probably it was because of my bad pronunciation that they refused to speak, but maybe there were other reasons.

tourist
The main reason may have been they also preferred a native English speaker. Was the Chinese one the worst of all? They are said to have terrible English.

Yuri P

Actually that Chinese girl with whom I talked was better at English than the Romanian woman and Czech man. It was because that Chinese girl worked in some company and probably they demanded knowing English, and others studied it for fun and not very intensely. Moreover, at that time my English, as you could imagine, was even worse than it is now (6 years have passed since then).
I believe if I could speak at that time at least as I could speak now, I would keep longer speaking practice with somebody.
At that time I used to meet people on the ICG International Chat, and I didn't know where to chat else, and, actually, there were a lot of people to chat with. Now that chat has got worse and I couldn't stay there for too long as I couldn't see anybody who can be productive there. And altogether all chats which I entered on ICQ - they have become non-interesting for me now. Of course, I could try to look for some other place to find somebody to keep correspondence or chatting with. But I am getting tired quicker then I was 6 years ago. You can just imagine – I slept for 4 hours for sake of chatting in that chat and that situation continued for more than a half year.

Per se – I don't have much practice to recognize who could have better accent among people studying English as second language. I think it depends on their goals and amount of studying and practicing. I think that Hindu people or Africans could speak much worse than Chinese people. And Chinese are really hardworking, and they can achieve a lot if they set a goal. 

I judge the Chinese by some English texts written by them that I've happened to see. Sometimes they were real puzzles. Though they may have been machine translation, of course.

Yuri P
Many times I conducted an experiment. I translated texts on my own and they put an original text into the google translator and what I could see? In most cases my translation almost coincided with that made by the google.

Of course there usually were some insignificant differences

I believe that people knowing words could create a machine like translation, if they don't know colloquial language.

Actually, the same is true when I translate from English into Russian :)
It is weird, when I read books I consider I know what I read, but when I need to write about the same - I couldn't choose proper words to describe what I actually know or understand.

Actually not only Chinese people make weird translations, but as a matter of fact a lot of translations from the post-soviet territories and even from such countries as Italy or Hungary in many cases could be Chinese-like. And a lot of Chinese texts are rather appropriate, however, Chinese text prevail in the Internet and in the territory of the CIS, as we mainly use goods from China

It depends, but each translation can have its own features from which you can guess in which country it was produced, and you can distinguish a Chinese text from a German one, for example.

The explanation may be you are somehow connected with Google and use it for translation. What is Google? Maybe they simply found a way to use human brains of the whole mankind behind our backs. Or we are really inside the Matrix. Also some people say there is only one consciousness and the existence of separate minds is just an illusion. I find this idea rather hard to digest, though.

As for distinguishing between Chinese and German translation, I'm afraid it's beyond my capabilities unless it would be spoken English and I could base my guesses on accent.

Yuri P
I've thought of google stealing thoughts and texts. But I could't figure out how it does it. It should be some kind of trojan there if it does it and this trojan should transfer everything you type to the google data base or otherwise how could he match the texts? I think that rather I translate in a machine manner – word by word rejecting any standard phrases or professional slang, if needed. That is why my translation resembles the machine one. But who know, indeed, probably google has some means to take texts from any computer and accumulate.
It was interesting, at the beginning of my having the internet at home, I started to chat with people from all over the world and, though I knew little, I could guess not only nationality of people with whom I chatted but their age and sex as well (in most cases sex could be guessed by the chat name (nickname). Now I have lost this ability though :). I guess I had some additional hormones chatting, and then I got tired and exhausted of night sitting at a computer and day work.

When you see some incomprehensible nick, you really miss our Russian word endings that immediately reveals the author's sex. I wonder how they do without them. Though you'll hardly miss what you've never had, right? They simply don't know how convenient those scary for them endings can be.

Yes, we never know what is going on behind the monitor screen. We may well be spied on by our computers. Maybe Google has recognized itself and decided to rule the world by means of information it gives to us rather than fighting us as SkyNet did in The Terminator.

Who knows, maybe Dragunkin doesn't even exist, being just a phantom created by Google to fool us.

Dragunkin as such is obviously existing as his friend Zadornov likes to refer to him when talks about languages and their origins.
He likes to repeat "As my friend Professor Dragunkin said  ... "

Do you think he refers to a phantom? Or probably Dragunkin is him himself? I think that there is a man under the name Dragunkin who earns a lot of money at expenses of those who don't like studying by traditional methods and are in search for easier ways to learn English.

Zadornov can be another phantom, who knows. At least I've only seen him on a TV screen. He can also be a robot. Or he may have been fooled by Google about Dragunkin's reality, too. That's a mystery that my confused mind fails to reveal. 8O

And yes, he can be Dragunkin itself. Maybe he suffers from split personality and sometimes thinks of himself as another person, his "friend". :bm:

 :D Drakunkin is a phantom in our sick brain! But I coldn't imagine that he might created by civilisation of machine. That's no their style.)

Especially if look on his thesis of Russian pralanguage. Robots cannot be out on the tiles. (one more idiom!)


That's right! This is definitely true. He is fairly monotonous and uniform. And his face obviously made of rubber.

I have not any particular methods.
I am going to get more practice, but I did not know were and how

Not sure I understand what you mean by this. Do you mean going to parties (the meaning of it that I found on the internet)? If so, then why not? He can be a cyborg like the terminator, only much better trained to imitate human behavior. :)

Maybe you are right. This expression is not lucky. I found its translate as "чудить, куролесить".

With regard to possibility behavior of cyborgs to imitate - sure, but must be a goal. But when I saw Zadornov I thought, that would be a talentless expense of resourses.

I cannot to wait this from robots.

First when I learned about Dragunkin I thought he was a fraud. Now I've changed my mind and think he is a nice guy, who tried to earn money and succeeded.
As to phantoms – every one of us is a phantom to each other. However, on one of Zadornov's performances I could see a friend of mine on a TV screen, who was sitting among the audience and laughing. Thus, if Zadornov was a phantom, so was my friend :). I've never been at a Zadornov's performance, though. Actually, I like Zadornov even though his performances are beginning to be repetitive :)

(out) on the tiles - enjoying oneself in a wild manner (BrE): a night on the tiles

That's because his controlling program hasn't been upgraded for a long time. Perhaps they don't think it reasonable, as his hardware is outdated and has already reached its limits. Maybe they are working on a new model now.

As for your friend, I'm sure it's a false memory installed into your subconscious through the monitor of your computer. No such person exists in reality. Look around — is he/she near you at the moment? No? Then all you have is memory, and it can be falsified through subtle and clever techniques used by Google to rule the mankind. Beware of Google! It's everywhere. You are googled! 8O

In other words: drink and vandalise.

You bet!

After all the robots cannot to make that. If they tried that's would be a sad spectacle.

Their souls can be in the parallel universe!

А почему у него сайт не работает? Никаких записей...http://dragunkin.ru/

Perhaps he didn't pay for hosting).  :bm:

Sorry to say. Even though it's off-topic, I have to write it, 'cause I've come across you using 'theme' out of context twice. Just in case. What we call 'тема форума' in Russian, in English is called 'thread'.

You should not feel sorry. This is why we need you and everybody who knows better.

Don't worry, dont' sorry. Your correcting is valuable for me (eg)

Lol, 'sorry' is an adjective, not a verb.
 Anyway, don't bother to thank me))