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Can adult learners achieve native levels? | ||
Tags: Native Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 233 of 303 22 October 2012 at 3:30am | IP Logged | |||||
That's pretty ironic coming from another learner who's also logged on. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Carisma Diglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 5623 days ago 104 posts - 161 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC1 Studies: Italian, Mandarin | Message 234 of 303 22 October 2012 at 4:10am | IP Logged | |||||
No one said I was trying to achieve a native level :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| okjhum Pentaglot Groupie Sweden olle-kjellin.com Joined 5205 days ago 40 posts - 190 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Japanese, English, German, Russian Studies: Spanish, Polish, Greek | Message 235 of 303 22 October 2012 at 7:16am | IP Logged | |||||
No need to be pessimistic! I have personally met several people who learnt Swedish as adults and by the time I met them spoke without any trace of foreign accent in their Swedish pronunciation (even to my ears as a trained phonetician). Examples of their nationalities are: Bangladeshi, British, Dutch, Belgian, Japanese, Russian. Yes, even Japanese! Apart from the Bangladeshi guy, who was an asylant who learnt Swedish by himself without attending "SFI" (Swedish For Immigrants) classes, all the others were university-level students or lecturers in their countries with variable but often limited history of spending time in Sweden. One of them could even choose to speak Norwegian without a foreign accent, and another one Danish, in addition to Swedish. In contrast to that and to my utter dismay and disappointment, I repeatedly find that most if not all of the adult immigrants, whom I meet here in Sweden and who studied in "SFI", speak Swedish with very strongly "broken" accents -- despite being immersed in the Swedish-speaking environment, and regardless of their academic background. It is true for medical doctors as well as truck drivers. I can't help attributing this difference in ultimate attainment to differences mainly in teacher competence: To be a Swedish lecturer at universities abroad requires solid academic merits. To teach Swedish at SFI in Sweden requires nothing more than your personal wish to do it... :( Also, of course there may be differences in motivation and ambition. But maybe not: Almost all foreigners I meet here tell me of initially very high motivation followed by disappointment and self-loathing when facing the grim truth that they failed... This often turns into frustration and real anger after taking my "renovation" class, where they indeed become able to pronounce very much like myself, at least during the exercises (but unfortunately it takes very much continuing effort to automatize their new pronunciation and avoid falling back). --"Wow! Who could have expected it to be this easy!" they say, "Why didn't anyone tell us this before!? Then we wouldn't have lost so many years in Sweden!" So, there we are back again: Nothing surpasses a good, live teacher who can point out the salient details! :) 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 236 of 303 22 October 2012 at 11:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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And if you can't get one then you have to study the sounds instead of letting yourself off the hook when you understand what people try to communicate.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 237 of 303 22 October 2012 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think that the only difference between you two is that you find learning pronunciation very difficult for some reason, while Arekkusu doesn't. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 238 of 303 22 October 2012 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good try, but I think this is totally wrong. In fact, I am pretty good at mimicking sounds. The fundamental difference is really one of priority that we attach to native-like pronunciation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 239 of 303 22 October 2012 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
I note here that these individuals with native-like phonology (there is no mention of their other linguistic skills) were university-level students or lecturers in their countries and with limited history of spending time in Sweden. This is intriguing and certainly encouraging to all of us here. How did these individuals acquire that native-level Swedish phonology? For example, the Japanese individual learned Swedish in Japan to native-level phonetic proficiency. Again, there is no mention of the other skills. But it would be interesting to see exactly how he went about mastering Swedish phonology. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 240 of 303 22 October 2012 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
bumping my post that got lost...
And what I absolutely don't understand is why s_allard says it's almost impossible to reach a native-like proficiency because it's difficult to swear, tell jokes etc. Just wtf??? Of course it can be difficult (or easy), but just because it's easier for teenagers to repeat the swear words they've heard or translate a joke from their native language without worrying whether it's appropriate... this doesn't put adults at a disadvantage!!! Pronunciation can certainly be easier to learn for children, and maybe grammar too (though adults should be better at learning the grammar formally), but jokes? Was this a joke? And of course I have to add that telling jokes is easier than understanding them XD you can create one even with a small vocabulary, and it might be a bit lame (but possibly more enjoyable for a native than if another native told him this), but this absolutely won't guarantee that you can understand any joke you hear or even 10% of them. ....I still think that if anything can be called "nearly impossible" for adults, it's the pronunciation. And maybe some HIGHLY irregular grammar, but not in the European languages in which plenty of people reach fluency/proficiency as adults. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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