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How to Become a Polyglot by D. Spivak | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6971 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 49 of 73 27 February 2007 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Are there any known systematic gender differences in preferred language learning styles?
Spivak himself has this to say: "And what about a woman's chance of becoming a polyglot? In daily life one often hears that women pick up languages more easily than men. Yet, in the pages of our book we have talked more about the strong sex... Linguists have thought about this question for a long time now, and two of their main conclusions can be considered beyond doubt. First, when all is said and done, women are about as capable at languages as men. And if History does not talk as much about them, it has to do solely with the condescending attitude towards the weak sex, typical, unfortunately, of many societies in the past. Secondly, women master and use any language in a cardinally distinct way than men. The phrase "female logic" should be used without quotes here. It means that we if write down a sufficiently long speech extract, and then hand it to a specialist and ask to determine who did the speaking - a man or a woman - he will be able to answer that question (naturally, all obvious clues will be removed from the text). What happens is that, starting at about 5 years of age, the very grammar used by women is different. You'd like some examples? Well, some peculiarities of women's speech are obvious without any explanations. Predominant in it are nouns with concrete, emotional meaning; the colors are well-discriminated. The spectrum of addresses is richer, especially the tender ones. Participating in a dialog, women ask a lot more questions (including those not calling for an answer) than men, but overall they react more to the words of their interlocutor. Other peculiarities cannot presently be clearly explained. For example, women seem to be particularly fond of the future tense, subjunctive mood and generally of the complex verb forms. But there is no real mystery here: all the peculiarities of a woman's speech is tied to her main mission, child-rearing. She is prepared for that role from a young age both by her family and by society. Whether these peculiarities will turn into strengths or weaknesses depends on how they are used during language study. Such skill is generally useful in life, so allow me to give you the main recommendations in the spirit of Robinson Crusoe's diary (remember how he ended up on an uninhabited island and started recording the bad stuff on the left and the good, on the right side, and would then deduce from that what to do?). And so, my respected male reader, I need to have a private chat with the ladies. Since you will find nothing of interest to you on the next page, I will kindly ask you to skip it. As for me, I will address myself directly to you, my dear woman reader. Let's start from the fact that a male is trained psychologically for mastering new things, his whole upbringing is about possession. So, in the early stages of language learning, he will mostly likely be ahead of you... ...However, if you do not despair and, so to speak, suffer through the initial encounter with an unfamiliar language, you will very soon come out ahead and will be easily overcoming those barriers that he will have to sweat at. When it comes to translating individual sentences, a man will most likely be quicker at grasping their general meaning and will be more confident at building them on his own... ...However, you have major aces up your sleeve - being accustomed to patient, monotonous work and natural inclination towards complex constructions. So, I advise you to spend more time on mechanical memorization of word lists and grammatical rules. Believe me, very soon, when it comes to vocabulary, precision of translation, and the ability to disentangle complex verb forms, no man will able to compete with you. Finally, during the main stage of language learning, especially in live conversations, a man will formulate more concisely and precisely the main point. But it will be long before he establishes good rapport in a conversation. For example, he is easily confused by a fast tempo of the interlocutor's speech. This happens quite often, in fact - fast speech is typical of such languages as English (in its British version the tempo is 3-4 syllables per second), German (4-5), Japanese (5). And faster than anyone else in the world speak, perhaps, the Frenchwomen - up to 6 syllables per second... ...However, a woman does not seem to be stumped at all by all these particulars of her interlocutor's way of speaking. On the contrary, contact is established almost immediately due to an intuitive understanding of the language of gestures, mimicry, plasticity, which are missed entirely by men. But these very gestures carry up to 55 percent of information in a conversation. They play a major role especially in languages which are spoken fast. While a Finn makes one gesture, a Frenchman will make more than a hundred! And as far as mastering fast speech any woman is aided by a natural sense of rhythm. All in all, in this respect, it's nothing but advantages." I dunno about all the stuff Spivak says, but it does appear true that young girls are more verbal than boys, and that in lower social strata adult women are more verbal than adult men. So, who knows, maybe there is something to all this that affects learning styles as well. Edited by frenkeld on 28 February 2007 at 1:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6625 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 50 of 73 28 February 2007 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | ||
Dunno, I mostly agree with Spivak, at least about women being more patient for the traditional study methods... The beginning of my first Finnish textbook is extremely boring, but I still found it exciting because I was so eager to learn the language that anything in Finnish seemed amazing. I wish the last part were true about me :/ Or perhaps I do have this ability, just don't notice it because it's not needed for Finnish :o) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6971 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 51 of 73 28 February 2007 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Generalizations about genders have to be taken with a big grain of salt because of the ever-present danger of stereotyping.
The point that seems incontrovertible is that a statistically average woman is a lot better at face-to-face communication than an average male. As far as the rest of the claims Spivak makes, it would be nice to compare them with what's currently known on the subject, including among researchers in the countries that are not, shall we say, as sexist as Russia was at the time Spivak wrote his book. I have to say I personally found Kato Lomb's approach, and her personal story, among the most fascinating of all. I took a stab at paring her book down to a few excerpts that could be translated, posted, and discussed here, and it hasn't worked well at all so far - too much interesting stuff in there. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6300 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 52 of 73 14 July 2008 at 8:53am | IP Logged | ||
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I have been adapting Spivak's methods to my study of Turkish, particularly the creation of a language notebook, and after only three days I am making noticeable headway. Thanks for translating excerpts from the book, frenkeld. I had heard of Spivak but found tracking the book down difficult.
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| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6971 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 53 of 73 14 July 2008 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Copy the following line into your Google search, спивак "как стать полиглотом" djvu and it will point you to several places where you can get the book in djvu format. Browser plugins for reading .djvu files are available here: http://www.celartem.com/en/download/djvu.asp. Edited by frenkeld on 14 July 2008 at 12:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6400 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 54 of 73 14 July 2008 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Dude, seriously, it was a great translation I think!!! Excellent English!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6300 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 55 of 73 17 July 2008 at 8:47am | IP Logged | ||
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It is a good translation. I have looked at the Russian.
The notebook aspect has really helped my Turkish. People are commented on my improved ability to speak the language, and I only started using Spivak's recommendations about a week ago. I seem to have overcome the plateau effect that held my Turkish in check for a long time. Edited by William Camden on 17 July 2008 at 8:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ronp Heptaglot Newbie Australia ronpeek.blogspo Joined 6122 days ago 33 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, German, Flemish, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Norwegian, Mandarin, Esperanto, Finnish, Macedonian, Hindi, Greek, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Basque, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic (Written), Sign Language Studies: Turkish, Swahili | Message 56 of 73 04 August 2008 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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For an English translation (now available online) of Kató Lomb's book:
http://tesl-ej.org/ej45/tesl-ej.ej45.fr1.pdf (downloadable PDF file) Kind regards, Ron 1 person has voted this message useful |
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