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Getting the gist is good enough | ||
Tags: Epiphany | Comprehension/understanding | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 25 of 32 13 March 2013 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I aim for that, but I'd not be discouraged. I'd be much more discouraged if I could ask a question perfectly but understand nothing of the answer.
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| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 26 of 32 13 March 2013 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||
Not even in our native languages do we have 100% comprehension, so there's no point in aiming for it in other languages. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5101 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 27 of 32 13 March 2013 at 11:51am | IP Logged | ||
That was me in my first months of studying French. I literally couldn't understand words that I had just said if they came from someone else's mouth. Edited by Darklight1216 on 13 March 2013 at 11:54am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4359 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 28 of 32 13 March 2013 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think confidence is very important. Or the lack of fear for making mistakes. For me it does click in the following sense: I have studied as much as possible, and now it's time to use it all. At first it's clumsy, but then it gets better. If I make mistakes fine. I won't make them next time, and if I do so what? It's not an exam, it's communication. Knowledge is added as I go along, etc, etc. That's it. I know that if I persist I will get better in time and the mistakes will go away. Hard work is very important when studying. However, when it comes to actual interaction with other human beings, stress and fear of loosing face cancels the hard work. I am very focused when I study and very relaxed when I talk to people. For me that works very well.
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| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5101 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 29 of 32 13 March 2013 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | ||
I would say that my answer is "definetely maybe" to both questions. I'm a bit more patient with my speech and especially with my writing, but I would like to comprehend everything I hear outside of idioms (of course, I want to learn some, but I think it's unrealistic to expect to memorize all of the commonly used ones). For the second question, I'd probably be devasted... unless the actors used a vastly different dialect and/or accent/colloquialisms than I had been exposed to. 1 person has 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 30 of 32 13 March 2013 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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My stance - which I have described elsewhere in greater detail - is that you should do both intensive and extensive studies. When I study a text intensively I do want to know about the details, even if I'm still a newbee. I use bilingual texts, dictionaries and grammars to 'crack the code' of each text, and because that takes a lot of time I only work intensively with very short texts. I also use my dictionaries and grammars without immediate reference to specific texts, but always with the aim that it should help me to become better at 'cracking codes' - and in my experience it functions.
In contrast extensive activities are supposed to train you in obtaining passive and active 'fluency' - i.e. the ability to do something at a steady pace without stopping all the time, also known as the bulldozer skill. Secondarily I do them to train myself in the noble art of avoiding all the nasty pitfalls of my target language - i.e. I then train proficiency. And both these target types can be defined for all language related activities. However if I don't want to stop to look XXX up then I may never know what George and his friend ate at Justonelanguage's restaurant.. and do I really care? Eh, no. If it is necessary to know exactly what XXX is to understand the actual point of the message then I might have to use a dictionary or ask for clarification, but that's really against the idea of an extensive activity. And that´s why getting the gist can be enough for extensive activities, but mostly not for intensive activities where the whole point is learning as many details as possible as precisely as possible. And that's why I say that I don't learn much vocabulary or grammar from extensive activities. The purposes of such activities is to train the activation of things I already know ... and I have to train this kind of fluency to get something to eat and find the comics I want. Edited by Iversen on 13 March 2013 at 1:22pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 31 of 32 13 March 2013 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||
I wouldn't because that would have meant I'd been using the language. That's encouraging to me. Edited by tarvos on 13 March 2013 at 12:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tedmac278 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4301 days ago 23 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Estonian | Message 32 of 32 14 March 2013 at 7:22am | IP Logged | ||
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I like this topic as it's fairly relevant to my level of German right now.
As far as "click" moments go, I absolutely had one in Spanish and it was basically just, getting the gist. I had studied Spanish for years in school, spent weeks and weeks immersed in a Spanish speaking environment, but I couldn't for the life of me understand people when the spoke to me beyond "Quieres una manzana?". The problem was that as they spoke, I recognized TONS of words they said, but my brain couldn't put them together and form an idea. Thus, very low comprehension. The breakthrough, my "click" came when I stopped focusing on every word and realized that "the gist" was the whole point! I was so focused on trying to understand every single word that I missed then entire thing, and thus communication never took place. From that moment until now, language learning has been incredibly fun for me. I can say with 100% certainty that "the gist" is what got me to where I am today. Now, after understanding how language is suppose to work, learning German has been more of a heavy fog that is slowly lifting. I'm hoping the skies will clear for me with German later this year. :-) Oh and I don't understand words to a lot of English songs either. Sometimes I actually like it better that way! 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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