|
 |
Motivational problems | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6859 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 25 of 36 09 July 2006 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
Who says. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eric Senior Member Australia Joined 7230 days ago 102 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 26 of 36 10 July 2006 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I'm not sure if it's natural to feel this way - that when a man gets to a certain age and has nothing to show for his years that he wants to improve himself.
A second language is the first improvement. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tjerk Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Belgium Joined 6759 days ago 54 posts - 59 votes Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Swedish | Message 27 of 36 11 July 2006 at 5:20am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Eric,
It seems to me that you became a victim of your own 'perfectionism' or whatever you would call it. You set for yourself very high goals (complete fluency in two years while not being in the country is a VERY high goal) and the reason for it is 'because I should have by now.. I'm already too old' This very rigid thinking in terms of 'I should', 'I have to..'<kills all the pleasure of the process, to enjoy what you already can. The only thing that is still left is this monumentous goal, that HAS TO be conquered, no reason why, just has to.. In this circumstances it's very natural to run away fromt it, it's too frightening ! You created your own fear and you run away to other things.. vocabulary learning is the true test, so this one you really dislike. I see you are already a long time on this forum, wasn't it also not a lot of times just running away from the studying vocab ? I think your solution is in revising your goals and reasons. With your current motivations you probably never gonna find a way to start learning. First of all there is no one outside who says you have to do this. An external reason works on a short term but will never give you the motivation to keep on the effort for years. Is it really a desire to be able to communicate with other people ? Or do you like it more from a linguistical point ? In this case you probably gonna like more to study first linguistics and history of languages in which you maybe gonna find an inner motivation to learn some language ? If you really wanted to learn another language then Spanish, then learn another one ? (Knowing the basics of ten languages is also a nice achievement, you will have a lot of interlinguistical remarks) If you keep to your original plan, I can definitely advise you to revise your goal. Try for instance : In three months I want to have read a few readers, understand most of Spanish films and use in daily conversation correct the subjuntivo and the past tenses for instance.. this is far more concrete, because the goal gives away the path to it. You can start revising irregular verbs and then start using them, and so on... And just remember : the fun of learning languages is the learning, not the knowing. Think about this : do you really enjoy the fact that you speak english ? When will you enjoy the language for itself ? probably when you read a challenging hard work or poetry in which you also discover new or seldom heard words. Imagine you wake up tomorrow and speak fluently Spanish, what will be the fun ? you are not gonna notice any progress, no intellectual challenge ? You just gonna read also Spanish books next to english books. And you can brag to people you are bilingual, but is this what you want ???? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6945 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 28 of 36 11 July 2006 at 8:40am | IP Logged | |||||
I haven't used that many, but they are certainly not all similar. The readers I personally find most pleasant are those based on literary works. Somehow, even after major simplifications, they still don't sound as dull as the made-up stories. To make a specific recommendation, I really liked First Spanish Reader by Angel Flores. It is published by Dover, so if they sell Dover books in Australia, you may be able to find it in stores. Easy Spanish Reader by Tardy also seems popular. I haven't used it, but I've used the Italian reader from the same series and have just bought the French one. The Italian one struck me as OK, but a tad dull, so for Spanish I would take a crack at Flores first. Edited by frenkeld on 11 July 2006 at 8:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6859 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 29 of 36 11 July 2006 at 11:30am | IP Logged | |||||
What's that saying? Talent is 90% sweat. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eric Senior Member Australia Joined 7230 days ago 102 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 30 of 36 12 July 2006 at 1:46am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Tjerk,
Interesting comments, thankyou. I enjoy the fact that I can speak middle English and not just colloquial English. Employers also may see this is an asset (may) as a person who is a good communicator should get the nod over another who isn't all other things being equal. Australia is a very multicultural place now unfortunately and bilingualism is a must - though I recognize that bilingualism has been "the world's way" for so long, places like Australia and the US I've felt were always protected to some degree, but globalization has made knowledge of a second language essential for employment in so many cases now. I want to know languages to increase my value on the job market, it's power, pure and simple. Speak it, you have knowledge, don't, you're ignorant. I must admit, I like speaking in Spanish, more than I do in English - whether it's a novelty or I find it more attractive than English I can't say. I know with the whole 'power' thing it would have been a better option to choose an arguably 'uglier' language (subjective) such as Arabic or Chinese, and although I'd like to learn Mandarin one day (it was the first language I attempted learn way back when the only dictionary one could buy wasn't by Collins but by Chinese printers on awful thin paper) I felt it would be better to start with a Romance because it's: a) Easier (theoretically) b) More beautiful (again, subjective) Spanish therefore made the most sense considering number of speakers and beauty, I couldn't justify learning Italian given the population size of Italy, at least Spanish gives you Spain + virtually all of the Americas. So they are my reasons, probably wrong, but what can you do. French on the other hand I chose (unfortunately) because I see it as a language of distinction, the tongue of kings, and Latin was my first choice but she is dead, and the only people that speak her is stuffy old academics. I guess a big part of my problem is the connotation Spanish has. It's universally seen as the 'easiest' of languages (I know Esperanto and Indonesian are apparently easier but the rest of the world doesn't know that) and with so many things that claim "/in 60 days/in 3 months!" etc I guess I'm just looking at a year and half and thinking to myself "you know, if you had of studied on your own to complement formal study, you could have been fluent in this language in a year you know?" That's a good point, after all Barry Farber said it's possible, and François (though it must be said his first tongue is French) claims to have learn't Spanish in 3 months. There's got to be a problem there. Native English speaker 18 months into language (6 times more time than François, 6 months longer than Farber's claims) and still has not been introduced formally into the pluperfect and conditional. So I'm not sure if I agree about me being too harsh on myself - in one respect I do because I know you're all right, but in another sense I'm wasting my time by my lack of motivation, and you don't get time back, every second gone brings you closer to death. (ok sorry I don't mean to sound depressing, but it's technically true) I wish I could just study all day at a table I just can't. I've read half of Harry Lorayne's memory book (suggested by Farber) but mostly it's memory tricks and remembering numbers. I proceeded to the chapter on language only to be severely disappointed. 1) It's the shortest chapter in the book. (or feels like it) 2) Lorayne recommends taking every foreign word and making an assosiation in English that is outragous. Eg. The French word for Father is pe're, think of a giant pear. The Spanish word for window is ventana think of a girl named Anna throwing a vent out the window. The Spanish word for brother is hermano, think of your brother as an airman (air-man-o) I'm not sure I can do this for every Spanish and French word frankly, what about the french word mot (word) how do I assosiate that? Or what about other words such as the Spanish - agradecer (to be grateful), the only think I can come up with, and in a castillian tongue (I speak in a Latin American tongue) is 'A gray death eh?' (Canadian English say it fast and you still have to drop the ending of gray to make it sound remotely like how it should be said) Actually I'm quite disillusioned after that chapter, I felt conned by buying the book, I even questioned whether Farber was a sheister (only for a second though) as he supports Lorayne, check out what Farber said in a recent interview: "The trick by Harry Lorayne [KL: a mnemonic device for learning vocabulary] is so precious and so much fun and you can build a prodigious vocabulary." link I don't know, I guess I'm just looking for those shortcuts to make learning fun and easier, perhaps I have a learning disability - I learn but it's not fast of efficient enough especially for Spanish. frenkeld, Thanks I have Flores' book, I think it's ok, some strange vocab though in some places if I recall correctly, but I haven't seen much better than that. I think ideally I'd like a book like Flore's that is more translation centered and interjects to explain why they translated something this way, and the idiom equivalents. Without these I'm left with the "why's?" which turn to proving how far I am away from my goal. But seeing as how this thread is very centered around me, it must be correct to assume that this problem - though partly shared by all language learners - is more pronounced in me, which leads me to think that I am having excessive troubles with language aquistion, be it via self-judgement (justifiable or not) or a disibility, I do not know. Hmm. Thankyou for all your responses up to date. -Eric Edited by Eric on 12 July 2006 at 1:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tjerk Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Belgium Joined 6759 days ago 54 posts - 59 votes Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Swedish | Message 31 of 36 12 July 2006 at 5:38am | IP Logged | |||||
|
This tread is centered around you because you asked for tips, not because we think you're dumb :-)
I think we all have problems to learn languages, I think there are very few people with a perfect path to learn languages (except going for a tenth language perhaps) To give you an idea about my Spanish. I'm studying now for two years on the language, but am also still basic fluency, although I see some improvements. I started it when two years ago I went to teach a year in an american high school in Guatemala. But in the beginning I bothered more about improving my English and give my classes in more or less correct English. All of my colleagues were also american, so 95% of my speech was in english. After a few months I just could order some food. But then I grew familiar with the job, so I could start learning Spanish. It went ok, and when I came back one school year later, I was pretty good (I thought) and could always express what I wanted, but I knew that I had a weak grammar. Last summer back in Belgium, I came up with the idea to enroll myself in a Spanish evening class one night a week (they are free in Belgium) to keep a bit my level. Well first of all they didn't have any idea in which class they had to put me, I spoke like someone in the sixth year, but knew grammar as a second or third year. So they put me in the fourth year, where I had to study the whole year quite regularly to know all the grammar... I never knew the different pasados (i always used the same, : he hecho este and so on) but after a year I can say I use now all the tenses in a correct way and start also to use the subjuntivo correctly... but still no end of the road. I 'm still just basic fluent in it, but I notice improvements. I never used the vocab trick with looking for connections, I don't like it.. I don't know why, I learn everything from context, put every word in a few contexts, so i understand the use and by the end of that process i know the word. sometimes I do drills with the Selingua program (it's free, just type it in google and you'll find it, you can use it to learn Spanish, french, swedish and German) Maybe an idea to keep your motivation high is enroll in a free or cheap evening course at university. I know it's not the main goal of this forum and I know it's not perfect. But you'll meet in real life people who also try to learn the language and who have also problems, and once your motivation is back high you can quit it Job chances is a quite good reason, not the only, but it is a good reason.. it is just a hard one to transform to inner motivation, maybe you should look for another reason next to it .. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6859 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 32 of 36 12 July 2006 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's pretty clever.
I'm sorry, but this is bullocks. What you need is a serious attitude adjustment. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
