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Not wired for languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6071 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 41 of 57 25 December 2012 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I suspect I'm not wired for extroversion. I can force myself to go out and talk to people, but I can't force myself to enjoy it. Given my druthers, I'd sit quietly and listen to the talkative people chat away. This is okay for listening, since at the meetup, I can lurk by the more fluent speakers and just let them gab away, listening the whole time, but it's not so good for speaking, really.
Yeah, here in the USA, I've never met someone who could have an actual conversation in a language they learned in high school. I imagine this might theoretically happen, though if it has, I guess those people are here on this BBS. A lot of people take Spanish but then can't speak Spanish. I took three years of German, and I don't even list this as a beginner language. Maybe more years would have been better? I'm not sure. 1 person has 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 42 of 57 25 December 2012 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm the same way; I would much rather sit quietly and listen to the extraverts around me talking. I've found though, that the gap between self-talk and those rare times when I actually have a conversation is quite large. I can barely handle self-talking, but in an actual conversation I function pretty well (at least well enough for my skill level). Maybe speaking isn't as bad as you think. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5046 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 43 of 57 25 December 2012 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for that link, it sounds interesting. Maybe there is hope for me yet! Here in the US, just about everyone you run into has studied a foreign language in HS(usually a Latin language, Latin itself or German) and can't carry on the most basic conversation (Latin doesn't count obviously) in it.
Proof I took five years of Spanish and all I learned was how to hate it passionately. As for your extroversion (or lack thereof) issue: perhaps you should try more one on one interactions instead of group activities. Some people find that to be easier. It might be especially helpful if you have trouble jumping into conversations that have already started or if you don't know how to get everyone change the subject. I'm very introverted, maybe even moreso than yourself. I don't just not want to talk, but I don't really care to listen much of the time either. I'd rather read a book, but I find that anything said in French is automatically interesting and enjoyable. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6385 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 44 of 57 25 December 2012 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can't speak for every part of Switzerland. Some cities and cantons are officially bilingual (a few are trilingual), all students study at least one of the other national languages at school, and in many places several languages are present in the environment, from newspapers and bookstores to food labels. In the Italian region, not understanding German can occasionally be quite annoying: occasionally documents are only available in it, or food is only labeled in it, etc. More often, there's a choice of French or German, but no Italian option. I have met Swiss monoglots, and plenty of people graduate from high school with relatively poor non-native languages, but plenty of people are quite thoroughly bilingual as well. Like everywhere else, teachers vary; I know people who have had teachers who just talked about themselves in their L1 rather than teaching an L2 - but on average, the standard seems a lot higher than in North America or the UK. I couldn't speak a word of German when I moved here, and only a handful of words of French and Italian (enough to say "feather pen" and "chocolate", not enough to have a basic conversation). I haven't really formally studied French here, but there's enough environmental exposure that fairly little active work on it nudges it into A1/A2 conversational levels for me - unlike Romance languages other than Italian and French, which I can also read but really can't produce, even when they have a greater similarity to Italian than French does. It really makes a difference to be able to read instructions for everyday things, package labels, etc in several languages - it almost requires effort not to strengthen your L2s at all, once you've gotten a small base in them.
Of course there's hope for you. If you want to get better at math, it'll take time and patience, but it's possible. The same goes for languages. Languages taught badly can be a real drag. I'm still working on gaining an appreciation for French after a few years of horrible language classes in my childhood left me rather less than keen on the language. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6071 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 45 of 57 25 December 2012 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
So do they hammer language into the brain with fear and discipline? Really, I have no idea what would be wrong with a language class in Switzerland. Out here, I just don't think high school language classes were intended to make students fluent, and that's just because the quantity of vocabulary we went through was relatively small. I don't think it was enough words to fill in the pieces and make out what people were saying once the greetings were over. Edited by cathrynm on 27 December 2012 at 12:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6543 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 46 of 57 26 December 2012 at 12:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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Those horrible classes weren't in Switzerland as far as i understand.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6385 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 47 of 57 26 December 2012 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
My French classes were in my childhood in Canada. Aside from an intensive French course, as an adult, that I had to drop out of after a week or so when I broke a toe and couldn't walk, I haven't taken any formal French courses in Switzerland. My French comes from a mixture of Assimil, L-R, and sheer exposure. As for how language classes go wrong in Switzerland: see the experiences of the forum administrator. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6071 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 48 of 57 26 December 2012 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh I see. I guess then French classes in Canada are the equivalent of Spanish classes here in the USA. Me, I don't think I had such a negative reaction to classes, I went in, memorized my lists of words, did my tests and then got a grade -- I didn't learn the language, but at the time I didn't see this as a problem. I just did what they told me to do.
With math, really, people do hit a wall. There are guys who think they're going to be scientists or engineers their whole childhood, and then they get to college calculus and one of those tricky integration problems, and it's just splat. Wishing and wanting is not enough, and persistence can go very bad --better to give up quickly and change majors before you start piling up the C's and D's. There is a point where it's just not learning ideas, but it requires the ability to solve things in a non-direct manner. You keep up or you get kicked out. With language, it seems like there is always more stuff to learn, and I can always pile more stuff into my brain. And even the difficult things aren't that difficult. Though I think there is a kind of magical leap that some people make and reach a higher level. The thing is, though, that if you don't have the breakthrough moment you can still keep learning more stuff. Whereas in math, if you can't do indefinite integrals, you're just screwed -- get another major. Edited by cathrynm on 26 December 2012 at 8:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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