translation-grammar technique vs non- translation-non-grammar technique

[acapnotic]

It sets me thinking whether reading is worth our time at all!

Well, they say it is, because it trains our brain. It is especially important for children, whose brain is still growing. If you miss this training at that age, you are going to be less intelligent. Reading is actually a creative activity because you first have to rebuild the scene the author tries to show you from his words. Unlike watching a video, where you simply consume it.

[Michelangelo]

Particularly useful reading during sleep - you can record all the information read into your subconsciousness directly and they use it when under stress :) as without an external exposure to stress factors it is difficult to derive anything from your subconsciousness :)

[acapnotic]

Michelangelo, try to record the whole Harry Potter into your subconscious. I think your belief in this method will help you succeed.

[Michelangelo]

acapnotic, I am sure that my subconsciousness recorded HP once I had read it and listened to the audio. The difficulty is that I don't know how I can transfer the information from my subconsciousness to consciousness. It is the problem. However, from time to time I can hear or read it from my subconsciousness in sleep. It cannot be done whenever I want to. It is just happening spontaneously. If you think of HP for long enough time, it could happen more often, if you don't think of it - it just could be forgotten.
Do you know how to translate information from your subconsciousness to your consciousness? If you know it you must be a happy person and learn anything at once. You just need to have a look at any text to remember it forever (meaning - you remember it but cannot derive it from your subconsciousness and if you can - you are on the ball).

[acapnotic]

I am sure that my subconsciousness recorded HP once I had read it and listened to the audio.

How can you be sure? You don't have conscious access to the whole of your memory, do you? This is just a belief.

However, from time to time I can hear or read it from my subconsciousness in sleep.

So all you know is that some fragments of Harry Potter are there. This is not what we need, is it? We need a whole book imprinted in you. I think you should learn some memorizing technique and read the whole Harry Potter again, using it. Then you will be able to read it again and again at any time and become a great expert on Harry Potter. People will pay money to look at you and listen to how you recite it from any point. This will completely change your life.

[Michelangelo]

acapnotic, your suggestion is confusing and embarrassing me. Just imagine, my memory is poor, and I cannot remember anything for any time, to say nothing of prolonged time. My subconsciousness operates outside my conscious memory. Surely if we had people who could be able to connect their subconscious to their conscious, it would say about reaching the highest level of human development, but this is not so. Therefore, it is hardly likely that I will ever be able to connect those two things to translate information back and forward: my consciousness and my subconsciousness. If yogis could barely do that and their consciousness is limited by a spoon of rice (they don't know anything else, but meditation from dawn till dusks), then how a soviet person burdened with all soviet and current problems could do that.
Can you imagine that I who are a very old person can give up on everything and sit in the lotus pose struggling to connect my memory kept in the subconsciousness to the consciousness while real yogis have been doing that from their childhood and are not able to succeed?
It is just weird. We need to be grateful for what we have and don't try to reach more unless God commands us to do so.

[Olya]

If you want to improve your memory you should train it imho. There are many studies and research works how to do that.

[Michelangelo]

Olya, Right you are. However, I am old, and independently of how much I would train my memory I would hardly be able to reach my subconsciousness consciously. Yogis cannot do it after dozens of years of practising.

Could you possible do that? If yes, can you explain please the process how to achieve that connection of your subconsciousness to your consciousness so that yogis don't spend so much time for meditation?

[acapnotic]

Michelangelo, listen to the wise advice that Olya gives you. There are researches about how you can make your memorizing effective. You should study them all and find your own, unique method that will make your memory as powerful as a nuclear reactor. It is equivalent to making a door to your memory from your consciousness. Yes, you still won't be able to quickly find something you had read before that, but everything that you memorize later will be at your service at any time. After that, read the whole Harry Potter and memorize it using your new super-duper method. This is bound to work! Just believe in it as if your life depended on that belief. As strongly as you believed in Communism (I hope you did).

[Michelangelo]

acapnotic, I just can write to you the same as I wrote to Olya, but you can just read my message to her above :)
One thing is memory which you can use consciously, however we talked about reading during sleep, which is impossible to do by using your conscious memory - you need to record it all into your subconsciousness and then learn how to derive it in order to read the whole book through during your sleep, ie, you have to control your subconsciousness during sleep. Do you think there is such a courses where you can train that?

Of course there are people who can memorise the whole HP, but consciously after very tiresome training during many years. I cannot even imagine it. But anyway they remember it consciously and cannot read in sleep.

[acapnotic]

Michelangelo, I don't think we have two memories, conscious and subconscious. Our memory is most likely one and the same. To remain conscious in your dream, you can try the lucid dreaming technique. Then you will be able to control your dreams. Don't be so pessimistic! There is a solution to your every problem! Believe it!

I see that the thing you need most is motivation and energy. Ask someone to kick you in the ass from time to time. It will energize your sleepy brain!

[Michelangelo]

acapnotic, you are very clever. I am just wondering why you cannot read in sleep once you know how to encourage people to obtain such a skill :)
Cannot you find somebody who can encourage yourself in this way so that you can do whatever you want in the shortest possible terms?

[acapnotic]

Michelangelo, I am not in a hurry. Besides, I don't like Harry Potter as much as you seem to like it. Also I am not the reader I used to be anymore. Maybe I am tired of reading. So I prefer to do something else in my dreams. The problem is I rarely remember what I did. Do you always know what you did in your dreams when you wake up?

[Michelangelo]

acapnotic, of course I don't remember usually what I could do in my dreams.
Even if I remember that I saw a dream I could hardly remember about what that dream was. I could remember that I read a book, but I wouldn't remember the name or the chapter which I read. It is about the same as with you. I could remember what I saw in general but not in detail, or I could remember just that I saw something in my dream but I wouldn't be able to recall even a general idea of that dream at all.

[Olya]

Michelangelo,
There are certain methods and ways how you can improve your memory. The problem is what you would like to memorize. Since they are different for different purposes. Harry Potter cannot be considered as a book. There are words there, grammar structures, collocations, finally letters! Sounds, if you also listen to it. All that requires different approaches, as far as I know.

[acapnotic]

Olya, I can't believe there is no method for memorizing a text as a whole. There must be one! Or else life is worse than I thought it was. Michelangelo will also be bitterly disappointed, I am sure. I think he was already dreaming of memorizing the whole Harry Potter. And then you came and shattered his hopes.

[Michelangelo]

I can't believe there is no method for memorizing a text as a whole.

Depends on the volume of the text and time given for its learning by heart. If you mean that we can remember any text by one reading only, I am tending to believe you, however, it is not going to be easy to recover that text from our subconscious memory, otherwise all the people reading will be great connoisseurs, but it is not so (however, few reading people exist).

I think he was already dreaming of memorizing the whole Harry Potter.

I would be happy to remember at least the first chapter from the first book, but I am scared of even thought of how much time I would need for trying to remember it, and, what is even more scary, I am afraid I won't be able to keep it in my memory for long enough.

[acapnotic]

Depends on the volume of the text and time given for its learning by heart.

The whole Harry Potter, of course, and all the time that is left till the end of your days (do they really use this expression, btw? Ask your subconscious memory, please :) ). Then, lying on your deathbed, you will be able to amuse yourself by re-reading the whole series right in your mind, without even the need to open your eyes and to hold a book in your trembling old hands.

I am afraid

You needn't be afraid. As I have said already, I am sure there is a method. You just have to found it and to boldly use it.

[Michelangelo]

acapnotic, maybe I needn't be afraid, but how can I fight my fear of just thinking of facing such a complex problem like finding a method to remember the whole HP books in order to reread them consciously by memory? Isn't it better just to rely on our subconsciousness and hope that one day we will just read it at ease during our sleep. And if we won't, why not read it from book in our consciousness if we are so old that we won't be able to do anything but reading?

[acapnotic]

Michelangelo, I don't think it takes any more that googling and trying all the methods that you find one by one. Well, if it takes a long time, so what? Everything ends anyway, including our lives. But in return to these efforts maybe you will be able to amuse yourself in heaven by re-reading the whole Harry Potter when you get bored with playing the harp and singing psalms.

[Michelangelo]

acapnotic, I am confused by your persistence indeed.
Anyway, let's just imagine that I have memorised it already. Then we must return to the topic and discuss whether I will need to translate it after I memorise it while reading it from my memory or it is better to use "non-translation" method when reading it from the memory and not from the book.

[acapnotic]

Michelangelo, if you insist on translating it, you can translate. If I remember correctly, you have said multiple times that you can't do otherwise. Am I correct? In that case you actually have no choice. Maybe in the process of memorizing the whole Harry Potter you will suddenly discover in yourself the ability to understand English without translation. Maybe your brain will decide to save the energy spent on translation and use it to speed up the memorizing. This is one more reason to memorize the whole Harry Potter, don't you think? :)

[Michelangelo]

acapnotic, reading without translation or listening without translation is the same as believe without knowing.
You can of course read and don't check what you have read without comparing the two text - in the studying language and in your native one. However, where is a guarantee that you could understand the text correctly? That is why it goes without my conscience effort - when I see English words some kind of Russian words turn up in my mind and only by using them I can build up a logical chain of what I have read, and if it is lack of logic it means that I haven't understand it correctly and I must check the same in a dictionary or ask somebody, who knows the language better, about it. We could see the example with that "creeping thing" that not only did people understand it differently, but they even implied different and contradictory meaning it it, meaning that most of them misunderstood it even with translation to say nothing without. They just missed the meaning as it was too lazy of them to think over it without translation. Only in the process of translation they started thinking whether they understood it correctly.
Like you could see translation maybe essential and without translation you can understand in full only those phrases which you have learned properly, and not new structures. Even written in Russian, you need to spend some time for interpreting some new phrases. How could you understand a new language without any interpretation or translation of new structures/words and then build up logical chains which are understandable for your limited conscious? I don't believe that there many people able to comprehend anything that is new to them without additional efforts of interpretation of the things.

I agree that when people speak by using standard expressions they don't need any interpretation or translation - they are just used to them and to their direct understanding.

[acapnotic]

Michelangelo, you never really know what the other person thinks when he says this or that. Be it in English or in Russian. You can't read people's minds. So I don't see much difference. In the process of learning a language you figure out, more or less, what meaning some word has and you stick this meaning to it. When you see the word, you replace it with this meaning. You may be right or wrong, and you can't guarantee your being right even in your native language. Maybe you have always used this word incorrectly, who knows?

[Michelangelo]

When you see the word, you replace it with this meaning.

Maybe I think of the meaning of the seen heard word or phrase, but I think of it in Russian. It's not exact translation like in the translated literature, it is thought of the meaning in Russian as/if it is easier to comprehend for you or me :)
Of course you can just think of the meaning only to the extend of your knowledge of the language and the person you are talking to. No more, no less. Nonetheless you need to convince yourself that you could understand or forget altogether what you've just heard/read otherwise you will fell uncomfortable if you convince yourself otherwise. Do you always convince yourself in English and not in your native language? I don't know how I can convince myself in English. Sometimes it is difficult to do even in my native language and doubts still remain.