Six Odd Things #3: Eins, zwei, drei...

[muckefuck]

#3: I count in foreign languages on the stairs

Back when I was studying German, I realised that I would never be close to achieving fluency if I couldn't get to the point where I didn't have to think about my responses. The only way to do this was through lots of drilling. Of course, I didn't have any German-speakers to practice with during my summers at home, so I had to find opportunities where I could.

One of these was in a pizza place. We had to put exactly 50 slices of pepperoni on each full-sized thin-crust pizza. I decided to begin counting them in German. Soon I was doing all my counting--coins, reps, steps, etc.--in the language.

It worked so well, that I've been doing the same thing ever since with other languages. I try to take stairs whenever possible and now I can count them off up to my apartment in German, Spanish, French, Catalan, Welsh, Korean, Chinese, and Turkish. (Though the other night I realised I'd forgotten the Turkish word for "thirty".) When I have to take an elevator more than a few floors, I'll count off the numbers as they flash buy, trying to establish a visual-verbal link between, say, 9 and dokuz.

I've stopped trying to count reps in anything but English or German, however. Whether because the exertion was more distracting or due to some other factor, I found I was making too many mistakes. Also, it's extremely frustrating to be in the middle of a set and be left hanging trying to remember the word for "19" or "forty".

Comments

[bengt.livejournal.com]

I used to do my high school locker combinations in German to practice..it's kind of the same thing, it helps get the language more automatic

[tanagers.livejournal.com]

I do this as well. I also count in different languages for my students all the time. Sure, we only count to 10 at the most, but it's amazing how they remember it. When they go and get water and I tell them, "only five!" they count in a different language too! :)