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Why you shouldn’t use the forum too much | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5757 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 17 of 28 03 March 2014 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Unless you're one of those rare geniuses, learning a language will be more about sustaining your effort for a long period of time than about investing a lot of "smart" effort now and be done with it. And, there's no perfect way to learn a language. While there are some techniques people swear helped them more than anything else, those techniques might not be the ones for you. So, there's little else but to try something - for example, a textbook -, give it a real chance, and then, maybe after a month or three, decide whether you want to change/modify your approach or stay with the current approach for a while (usually until reaching a plateau or having a new opportunity).
With most of the conventional strategies you should be able to see some progress. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 18 of 28 03 March 2014 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Use your hidden moments. (like commuting, queueing or whatever) Your L2 should be something to do when you're bored or procrastinating.
Out of what you listed, exercising and meals are a great time for some language stuff. I also disagree about audio-only resources - there are many that you can use from scratch. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6694 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 19 of 28 03 March 2014 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
First, I hadn't noticed that you thought that I spent too much time on the technical side of language learning, but I understand why you got that impression. The point is that this is a language learning forum, so unless you read my multiconfused log you may not think that I am interested in other things. But I am, and that log thread should hint at the many other things I spend my time on. And when you say that you have limited time for browsing the forum then I would just say that it also can be used as an outlet for writings in Brazilian Portuguese. I use my log thread for that purpose, and you are welcome to write about fashion in your target languages. And finally: you say that you can't plan to become a polyglot then I have to object. I had Danish, English, German and later also French and Latin in school, and I studied Italian and Spanish at home - and I was not in doubt where that would lead me. Nor that it would take time which I then couldn't use on other activities, like sport and parties. I didn't stipulate that I would learn 15 languages to perfection, but if you take things one at a time you could end up there - provided that you don't spend all your time on thinking about how to learn or start all 15 languages simultaneously. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 20 of 28 03 March 2014 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5523 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 28 03 March 2014 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Don't worry—no harm done. :-) I've certainly given plenty of unsolicited advice in my time.
1 to 2 hours per is great. That gives you time to study a course every day, and to still have time left over for a second course, or for native materials. I made it up to about A2 French in 20 to 60 minutes per day. As usual, consistency matters: 45 minutes every day for 6 months will take you much further than 2 hours a day for 2 weeks. :-) We have two articles on the HTLAL wiki that summarize our most common advice, and I recommend them heartily: How to Start Learning a Language: A list of "roadmaps". Choose any of these and you won't go too far wrong. There's an approach for every taste. Frequently Recommended Courses: Courses that are available for many languages, and which generally work quite well. These wiki pages are an effort to summarize all the advice that we love to give people. There's a little bit of everybody's viewpoint there. So I'm going to skim through these and see if I can put together some sort of vague study outline, just to kick around. :-) Now, Brazillian Portuguese is a bit of a special case, because many of HTLAL's favorite resources aren't available. For example, the only Assimil Brazilian Portuguese courses are for French, Spanish and German speakers. However, I did find an excellent list of Brazillian Portuguese resources, and it recommends the Pimsleur course quite highly. As usual, Pimsleur is expensive, but if you talk to your town librarian, they may be able to get it via inter-library loan. As for native materials, you like fashion, so you might try obtaining some Brazilian fashion magazines. You can find a list of Brazilian magazines here, and if you scroll down, there's a list of "Revistas Femininas" that lists a ton of fashion magazines. With any luck, you should be able to read some of these either on line, or on a tablet. Anyway, I don't speak Brazillian Portuguese, so I'm just flailing around blindly here (and pretending that Portuguese is just really badly spelled French, which is not always that successful a strategy!). Iguanamon and our other posters can surely help you find good resources and cool native materials. So looking at the available resources, one possible way to use 1 to 2 hours a day would be to: 1. Study Pimsleur for 45 minutes or an hour. 2. Spend your remaining time either (a) working through a grammar book, or (b) flipping through fashion magazines and sometimes looking up words, or (c) listening to Brazilian music and trying to understand a written copy of the lyrics. Whatever seems most fun on any given day. :-) Of course, this is just one roadmap. There are lots of ways to use 1 to 2 hours per day. Edited by emk on 03 March 2014 at 11:02pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5382 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 22 of 28 03 March 2014 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Just to complicate things a bit further, I want to amend my advice taking into account
your interest in the fashion industry, the fact that you're still a student, and your desire to become a super polyglot. I want to emphasize again that you absolutely should take advantage of opportunities to study abroad while at university and/or spending extended time abroad on youth work visas or as part of an internship (if you can't get into an international company right after you finish your degree). It may be easier to find these kinds of opportunities through French (Paris, Montreal) and Italian (Milan) than Portuguese. Not to mention French and Italian will be incredibly helpful if you want to break into the fashion industry in New York. You *may* want to consider holding off on Portuguese in favor of these two just so you're prepared for these kinds of opportunities when they present themselves. You can try learning two at once but it's typically easier to focus on one, especially if you're still new to language learning and since the similarities might be too confusing when starting both languages at once. You may have your heart set on Portuguese for now, but just something to consider. Ultimately if you're far more motivated to learn one over the other(s) you have to go where your heart leads you. But a lengthy stay abroad is something you don't want to pass up! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4793 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 23 of 28 03 March 2014 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm only 6 months into learning my first foreign language so I have nothing more to add
to the excellent advice above. Indeed, I've found reading this thread and following some of the links in the replies to be really helpful myself. However, if you'd like some advice specific to college and routes into fashion as a career send me a pm. I'm an ex-teacher and amateur careers adviser -you get what you pay for :D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FashionPolyglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3934 days ago 39 posts - 73 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese | Message 24 of 28 04 March 2014 at 2:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've read all the responses and they're interesting in different ways. If I need any help, I will ask questions in my log.
I won't be using my log much because I want my progress to be mostly private. But when I do update my Brazilian Portuguese log, I will accept any form of help. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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