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Is speed important to you? | ||
Tags: Poll | Time to learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4703 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes  Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 17 of 35 19 June 2012 at 7:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Those are great recommendations, thank you. :) I should've clarified that I do read and watch a lot of adult material right now - I'm just very aware of how much I have to learn before I understand everything near-perfectly and at a glance. But that's okay. It kind of goes along with what you said in another thread: "It's fun to learn to read and listen by simply reading and listening." I'm very much with that. Edited by Hekje on 19 June 2012 at 7:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 35 19 June 2012 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Also, devoting a significant amount of your time doesn't necessarily imply learning as quickly as possible. I prefer to learn as thoroughly as possible, with a huge focus on the connection between the languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 19 of 35 19 June 2012 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Ultimately, life is a matter of balancing opportunity costs.
Time invested into one activity is inherently time *not* invested into (by definition) everything else. For this reason, I try not to stress myself out over the metrics of my achievement with regard to any one particular aspiration. I agree that if you have *one* specific goal that you absolutely prioritize above everything else, then the allocation of time and effort into that one goal is a no-brainer. But most people pursue multiple forms of success—good health, acquisition of wealth, spending time with family, maintaining friendships, and then the more individualistic hobbies—keeping up to date with current events, playing musical instruments, reading good books (in native languages), watching good films (again, in native languages), studying history, discussing politics, learning how to cook better, discussing religion, playing sports, learning how to dance, watching sports, donating time to charitable activities, pursuing a spiritual life, and, of course, spending time on HTLAL. :) For all the reasons above, I try to simply appreciate the existing dividends of my life (and all the deficits their cumulative accumulation has necessitated), rather than stress over the particular deficits of my life, knowing that such deficits are merely the opportunity costs of my life's blessings. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4671 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 20 of 35 20 June 2012 at 8:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I thought you were against any attempt at learning quickly, because someone who learns quickly doesn't learn as well. If a person takes 10 years to reach C1, is he better at the language than if he takes 3 years? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 21 of 35 20 June 2012 at 9:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
In the interest of being rhetorically fair (to the both of us), I decided to dig up precisely what I had said:
To drive the point home, I had said:
To summarize the basic point that was probably getting lost in the walls of text, I had then said:
Because it was apparently necessary in that thread, I finally was compelled to state the obvious:
So to apply all this to your hypothetical scenario, I'd say that the fellow who reaches C1 after 10 years is of course equally proficient to the fellow who reaches it in 3 years. The important point is that, assuming an identical rate of productivity (which has always been the base underlying assumption), the 10-year fellow may very well have spent the rest of his time during those 10 years learning other languages (or achieving other such things), and the 3-year fellow may as well spend the following 7 years doing likewise. The difference is that if that 10-year fellow studied Russian consistently and regularly throughout those 10 years, and that 3-year fellow studied Russian vigorously for three years but hadn't studied it all during the next 7 years, then I'd say that by the end of the 10 years, the latter fellow would be much more proficient than the former, who had achieved C1 proficiency 7 years prior but failed to maintain his studies after that. Now, if your assumption is that this 3-year fellow never stops learning Russian at all, and indeed spends as much time learning Russian as the 10-year fellow, then clearly you're not talking about a reduction in time at all, now are you? This is a linear equation with two variables—time and efficiency. I may be mistaken, but you seem to be muddling an argument about the latter with terminology regarding the former. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6151 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 22 of 35 20 June 2012 at 10:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I used to think speed was important, but now I think it's thoroughness. In the past, I'd race through the grammar before loading myself full of vocabulary. This really helped when it came to understanding native materials, but it completely hindered me in producing the correct language. I wasn't aware of the numerous small errors I was making unless a native speaker corrected me.
5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4638 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 23 of 35 21 June 2012 at 12:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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To me, speed is a pretty small part of my goal.
On one hand, I'd certainly hope to get very comfortable in my target language in less than 10 years, but I'm definitely not racing to be "fluent" in 3-6 years. This was the case when learning Arabic and Persian, especially. I generally like to take my time to make sure I understand the material, and sometimes, even if I already felt comfortable, I'd keep covering different examples, exercises, constructing my own examples, etc. I think I put much higher importance on making sure I study consistently and as DaraghM stated, the thoroughness, rather than how fast I get to a certain level. In the end, I think making the journey more interesting and worthy is more important than finishing the journey, if that makes any sense. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4671 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 24 of 35 21 June 2012 at 7:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Are you talking about this question?
This is in no way muddled, unless you mean it takes some consideration to answer it. Let me summarize. Before, your answer was "yes". Now your answer is "it depends". Looks like you've made some progress. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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