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Not wired for languages? | ||
Tags: Talent | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Jax Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4371 days ago 15 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 33 of 57 17 December 2012 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that most here are probably defining talent as "natural talent." My wife has an incredible ability
to remember song lyrics after just a couple of listens. Road trips are incredible for me as she just sings along to 95% of the songs on the radio. She can do this in Spanish too. I on the other hand can't remember song lyrics at all. As an example she started singing ‘Maria Maria’ by Sentana and I continued with the lyrics “it involves a Spanish heartthrob” instead “growing up in Spanish Harlem.” But I'm fairly good at math(s) (or at least I used to be). She is terrible and is the first to admit that. Numbers over 50 scare her. People often use the term ‘naturally gifted’ to explain our different talents. But, when you look deeper, I remember my dad always talking about numbers when I was as young as 3/4. He had a business and would show me his finances and talk me through them. I had no idea what was going on but was enchanted by the bookkeeping system he had. My wife on the other hand had a family who loved books and whenever she didn't know a word she was told to go look it up. Her grandfather wrote a lot of poetry and she obviously caught the words bug growing up in that environment. I think that it is important for children to fall in love with or at least get something if they want to have this ‘natural’ ability for a certain skill. This is especially true for sports. But with the 10,000 hour theory (and the Dan Plan which emk pointed out) I'm pretty certain that this is down to the love of something and the constant exposure. My wife fell in love with words and was exposed to them throughout her childhood. I fell in love with numbers and was exposed to them throughout my children. Could I become ‘naturally’ gifted when it comes to words in adulthood? I'm pretty certain that I could if I had the motivation and the exposure (and obviously the time). Could someone who has never been good at languages become a polyglot in adulthood? Of course they can as long as they love what they're doing and get the exposure needed. Being talented at something can be learned. Those who had the right circumstances in their early life will have the advantage but it doesn't mean that someone who doesn't seem ‘naturally’ talent can't learn the talent later in life. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5669 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 34 of 57 17 December 2012 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
A few years ago, I would have described myself as exactly like this fellow. I have a PhD in Theoretical Computer Science, was a post-doctoral research fellow addressing lots of mathematics and thorny computer science problems, worked on mission critical systems for the international space station, stealth submarines, and other complex uber-geeky projects, and ran my own software company which I sold about five years ago before retiring in my early 40s. Despite these achievements, I was absolutely useless at learning languages. Pretty much most things I tried worked out well, but languages always defeated me. I felt that my brain just wasn't wired that way. This always bugged me, so after retiring, I turned my mind over to finally getting a grasp of the one thing that had always defeated me. In other words, I tried to figure out if a language dunce such as myself could ever become half decent at learning languages. To be honest, for the first few months I was close to tears at how nothing stuck. I studied incredible hard, but made hardly any progress. Then, very gradually, things did start to change in my brain, and things did slowly start to sink in until I began to become less useless at languages. Nowadays, I would say that I am probably average, whereas before I was hopeless. So, what made the difference? One important thing was a shift in my understanding of what it means to learn something. Mathematics and computer science are based on "aha!" moments - where you are looking at some complicated problems very deeply and have flashes of insight. Your mind is racing very quickly trying to analyse difficult problems and see solutions. Once you have cracked a problem you can see the answer right there in front of you. I would, at first, study languages as if they were problems to be solved. I would look for the logic in a language, often to be frustrated that languages are full of exceptions rather than nice, tidy, rules. I would wait for "aha!" moments, only to find they were rare. I would focus with all my powers of concentration on very intense periods trying to cram the language into my head - only for it to slip away the next day. This was all very confusing, since these very techniques had helped me achieve great results in other fields. Slowly, though, I learned to stop being so analytical in my studies, and stopped hoping for flashes of brilliance. Instead, I learned to accept that languages simply are not learned that way (other than for passing grammar tests). For the most part, I learned that my brain will learn the language on its own - in the background - so long as I concentrate on feeding it regularly and repeatedly with nurturing material. It is an entirely different way of learning than I had been used to, and it was only after many months of failure and frustration that results started to appear almost as if my magic. These results really helped me to relax, and give up to need to be an intense mad-scientist frying my brain on hard study, and instead trust my brain to do the work itself in a more relaxed manner. It is a very hard lesson to learn, and I think it is a lesson you need to learn for yourself to truly accept it. Every now and then I still find myself wondering if I am being "lazy" by not using my concentrated efforts in the same way as with mathematics. I still have to keep reminding me that putting the hours in, even if they seem "easy" and don't seem to be delivering immediate results, is actually the best way to make progress. Overall, though, I have learned that, yes, my brain was not wired for learning languages, but that it could be rewired. Maybe I will never have the admirable achievements of the great polyglots on here and on youtube, but even my own modest language accomplishments are more than I ever imagined I could have achieved, and they are good enough for my own needs and goals. SO, I am happy. Edited by Splog on 17 December 2012 at 5:38pm 13 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 35 of 57 21 December 2012 at 12:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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English is used widely in international IT circles and computer geeks across Europe have to use the language professionally and they seem to cope. Yet the British computer nerd is provided with a ready-made rebuttal...hey, I'm a maths/computing type guy and languages never made any sense to me.
Interestingly, despite the almost non-existence of a language-learning culture in the UK, I hardly ever encounter a negative reaction to my interest in languages. I have heard countless people say they wish they could speak another language or that they should have paid more attention in school. But talk is cheap, and when people get a sniff of the effort required, they back off. Then again, I've been promising myself for 25 years that I'm going to learn how to play guitar.....one day. Edited by beano on 21 December 2012 at 12:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5565 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 36 of 57 21 December 2012 at 7:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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I find it ironic that, as beano puts it 'despite the almost non-existence of a language-
learning culture in the UK', most bookshops sell a fairly good range of language learning material and many of the English base language learning methods (TY, Colloquial, Linguaphone, Michel Thomas, Paul Noble) originate with British publishers. They must be selling those courses to someone - do we actually underestimate the number of people in the UK who do some language learning, or do those books sit gathering dust in peoples' homes? As to the guitar - I have been playing it for 25 years - its worse than learning German, believe me... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4932 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 37 of 57 21 December 2012 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
English-speaking world frames a bountiful market of linting bookshelves. English is also Lingua Franca, the global language of science and knowledge. I was raised speaking Finnish and learned English at school, but lately I have studied other languages using English material. Edited by petteri on 21 December 2012 at 1:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5100 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 38 of 57 25 December 2012 at 5:12am | IP Logged | |||||
Do you really think that's true? That if you sucked at math in school you could still become truly good at it? I've never heard of anyone learning a foreign language after only having studied it in high school and certainly not with RS, but most people seem to graduate with a far better grasp of mathmatics than I ever did. Anyways, to get back to the topic... While not everyone has a natural talent for instantly absorbing different languages just about every person on the planet has mastered at least one language so they really can't argue that they aren't "wired for it" they just don't want to put in the work. That's my two cents. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 39 of 57 25 December 2012 at 6:49am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, people can become good at subjects they did poorly in in school. For a math example, see "Thank you Khan Academy!" - it's by a guy who went back to school and did an engineering degree, after having done horribly in math as a student. In Switzerland, it's extremely common for people to speak foreign languages they studied in high school, and some credit school almost entirely for their results. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6493 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 40 of 57 25 December 2012 at 11:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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Is Switzerland multilingual in every place, or not?
Here, in a monolingual place, learning is quite disconnected from the real use, and it all depends on a teacher, if she can leand and bring interesting material to the students. A teacher who doesn't care just wants the students to do something and formally checks. The process deteriorates to mere memorizing. I remember we learned short stories news reports by heart to retell them. To my luck there were more interesting teachers. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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