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Not wired for languages? | ||
Tags: Talent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4819 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 17 of 57 14 December 2012 at 11:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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Judging by how awful my English is, I don't think I'm wired for languages at all - but
that won't stop me from trying! :D (It's C1 - not C2; this site kind of judge IELTS results wrong) Edited by stifa on 14 December 2012 at 11:13am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4878 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 18 of 57 14 December 2012 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You do not have to be Einstein to learn a foreign language, but being smart certainly helps. On the other hand, if you have serious trouble in reading native texts or understanding basic concepts taught at primary school, learning foreign language without immersion can be impossible.
General intelligence, which can be measured as IQ, is the most important talent factor. It is heavily genetic as well, even though environment has some minor effect on it. If we constrast fields of science, some people certainly have greater lingual talent relative to their IQ and others excel math. Besides that it is really unlikely anyone having high ability in some intellectual field being a complete idiot in some other scope if they carry out enough hard work. In conclusion, learning foreign languages requires enough intelligence and perseverance and some people have more natural aptitude to ingest words, sounds and phrases. However most people can learn foreign languages if they put enough effort on it. The intelligence and inclination they carry just makes the task more manageable. By the way, when I think of Finland, some years ago quite a lot of math talented introvert nerds had trouble to learn languages at school and extroverted girls got best learning results. The internet age has brought some changes, now many nerds play multiplayer games at Internet and obtain good English skills pretty early due to immersion effect. I seriously think that many girls could do pretty well in math if they felt an urgent need to learn and practice it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6649 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 19 of 57 14 December 2012 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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All humans must be wired for learning at least one language if they start early enough, becase the evidence shows that almost everybody can do that. Only defects in the brain or sensory apparatus or total lack off communication can disturb that process.
In former times those that couldn't talk would probably die, whereas in our slightly more humane sociaties we stack them away in an asylum or leave them at home with their poor families if they can't speak. In other words, there has been so strong a evolutionary pressure that this skill has become universal, and something has to go seriously wrong if it doesn't manifest itself during your childhood. So for children the case is pretty clear. For adults and those kids who already know one language there can be two reasons why they don't add more. The first and in my opinion most important is laziness - both the programmer and the ice consuming kid in earlier messages presumably fall under this category. The proof is that people can learn more than one language in countries where it is necessary or at least very beneficial for them - like India or tribal communities in Africa or Denmark (with English as our almost unavoidable second language). If the lazy computer nerd only got half the salary of his bilingual collegues then he would probably find a way to rewire his brain in a way that permitted it to use more than one language - instead of just whining. If the spoilt lazy kid in Spain didn't get any food and no ice cream until he/she had learnt to ask for it in Spanish then the little brat would soon learn to learn Spanish. But people who can survive with just their first language have little incentive to add one more unless they miraculously become interested in the process by themselves. So basically people who whine and howl and pretend utter inborn incapability when somebody suggests that they should learn another language are just lazy bums, and there is no reason to believe them. But but but ... even though the examples from India and Africa and Denmark show that everybody can become at least bilingual there may still be an age factor and varying degrees of talent, and there can be learning situations which don't appeal to everybody. So in practice there will be differences in the speed with which people learn new languages, and because people without a genuine interest in language accumulation need a good reason and favorable circumstances to pick up words and constructions there could conceivably be people who had to live on hamburgers and pizzas until they had learnt to ask for more varied food in their second language. By the way: thirty years ago I was quite good at mathematics, but now I have mostly forgotten how to solve differential equations. And twenty years ago I had forgotten how to by train tickets in Romanian. But with sufficient time and pressure (!!) I might relearn some of my lost mathematical skills, and I have already proven that I could relearn my Romanian. If I was transferred to a village in China I might even have to reconsider my distaste for ideogrammatical writing systems. But here in Denmark I don't need to do that, and likewise a lazy Anglophone programmer can get away with pretending that he couldn't possibly learn Afrikaans, and a spoiled brat in Spain can apparently survive for a long time on Pepsi Cola and icecream plus things that can be bought in supermarkets. But if you drag a sufficiently thirsty horse to the water trough it will drink. Edited by Iversen on 14 December 2012 at 12:28pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4568 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 20 of 57 14 December 2012 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In order for someone to reach their true level in any discipline, talent needs to be backed up with hard work and hard work can make up (to some extent) for a lack of talent.
I've dabbled in playing golf and found it an incredibly frustrating experience. Yet mathematics just made sense to me and I never had a problem with maths and science at school. I guess I had some sort of talent in mathematics, I also happened to enjoy it. I didn't really like English lessons at school but recognised the importance of the qualification with regard to university entrance, hence I was able to grind out a pass. I'm sure there are a lot of golfers out there who had all the natural talent in the world but never lived up to expectations because they lacked the mental strength to practise constantly. Conversely, some players reach the top ranks mainly through dogged determination. Edited by beano on 14 December 2012 at 3:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5478 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 57 14 December 2012 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There's another problem with talent, and I don't think anybody's mentioned it yet: Talent will betray you viciously.
I was lucky in school up through age 18. Literally every subject except music came easily to me. I could often be be the best student in the class without studying. (I went to a small rural school.) Now, this is an old story, and I'm sure a teacher like Solfrid knows that it takes a tragic turn in Act II: I went to a good university. I thought talent would be enough. University was a brutal learning experience for me. At a good university, if you rely on being "good at languages" or "good at math", then you're going to fail the class, or maybe scrape out a below-average grade when you had the potential to be good. If you don't hit the books, do the problem sets, and spend those hours in the language lab, you're going to crash and burn. Fortunately, Act III has a happy ending: I learned to study and to actually do the work. After very nearly flunking 3rd-term Italian (my most embarrassing moment), I ultimately did very well in Latin. But that's because I paid close attention in every lecture, I did every problem set and every translation as soon as it was assigned, and I reviewed everything before each exam and quiz. I think a lot of people who believe in talent wind up destroying their lives. The people without talent use it as an excuse for not trying. The people with talent use it as an excuse to coast along for far longer than they should, and they get a nasty shock when they've already missed a dozen chances to be great. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4611 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 22 of 57 14 December 2012 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I used to be obsessed with the issue of whether I had enough "talent" to get really good at the things I wanted to do, and whenever I suffered a setback or failed to learn something quickly enough for my liking, I would despair and attribute it to my "lack of talent."
These days I just try to remember that I obviously have the ability to improve at things (since I did so in the past), so in order to get excellent at something all I need to do is keep working and improving. I guess there might be a line of diminishing returns after which even huge efforts will cause little gain in skill, but I certainly haven't hit it yet. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5478 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 57 14 December 2012 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
There's actually somebody who's trying to do exactly that: Dan McLaughlin was about 30 years old and he had never played a full 18 holes of golf in his life. In 2010, he quit his job, and decided he wanted to devote 10,000 hours to golf and try to qualify for the PGA tour. To date, he's spent 3,600 hours practicing golf, and his handicap is 6.1. That apparently puts him in the top 10% of amateur golfers who are serious enough to have a registered handicap. He's got 6,400 hours to go. Will he make it to the PGA Tour? The odds are against him, because there are only 125 slots, and everybody aiming for the tour works incredibly hard. But McLaughlin is determined:
There's a really great video from the Golf Channel which talks about how insulted his coach was the first time Dan proposed the idea to him. The coach quickly realized that Dan was amazingly persistent, and decided to see just how far a stubborn 30-year-old could get. You can find a lot more about this story on Dan's web site. Even if Dan never makes the PGA Tour, I'd be really surprised if he doesn't become a competitive golfer. That would apparently require getting his handicap down to somewhere between 0 and 2 by 2016. Just think how well many ordinary adults who "can't do languages" would do if they started working the way Dan does for even 1,000 hours. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4315 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 24 of 57 14 December 2012 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are some things that definitely come harder or easier to some. For example, I am terrible at math. Seriously, my standardized test scores were never terrible, but my incredibly low math score brought them down significantly (for those who understand the US "SAT" scale: 700 verbal 460 math, after three tries). Yes, I really am that bad! Now, if I needed to do complicated math, I'm sure if I put several hours a day into it, I would be able to do it with a certain degree of confidence. But I don't know that I would ever be "good" at it. Really, the frustration from all those hours would be enough to keep me from doing it in most circumstances.
That's probably what ultimately makes people stop. No advanced skill ever comes without years of work into perfecting it, and usually people just decide it's too frustrating to continue trying, so they give it up. So sure, there are probably some people who would naturally have a harder time of learning languages, or it would take them longer to figure out the best way for them to learn. But I'm sure that if it were truly necessary, they would be able to learn how to survive in a language. As an aside, it's very interesting to hear people say that they always thought they weren't talented at languages because they were more math and science-minded. But I've actually heard (from somewhere, and at the moment I can't remember where) that those who do well at math and science tend to be quite good at learning languages. So perhaps for that group it's not even so much an issue of talent, but maybe an issue of not learning with the right method for them. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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