Bow wave (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Bow wave
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25 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4 Next >>

leosmith
Senior Member
United States
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Studies: Tagalog

Message 1 of 25

27 April 2014 at 8:18am | IP Logged

I was asked this question back in September:

luke wrote:

leosmith wrote:

Speaking of overboard, this discussion is related to my "language bow wave theory", which I'm still working on, but
won't bore you with the details if there is no interest.

When I saw a leosmith post, I was excited that you would reveal more of your experience with what you call the "language bow wave theory". I
myself am thinking this cycling periods of intensity on various languages may be helpful. I'm not sure yet. I just listened to Professor Arguelles
experience with learning Russian for 15 minutes a day for several years, then doing an intensive 3 months in country to activate it. This is both sides
of the coin. A little each day, and a period of high intensity activation.

Do tell us more!

and I've answered it here.
The Bow Wave
Enjoy!
13 persons have voted this message useful

luke
Diglot
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Message 2 of 25

27 April 2014 at 10:29am | IP Logged

Awesome post as usual. You always make me think of modifying my approach du jour. :)
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Bao
Diglot
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Message 3 of 25

27 April 2014 at 6:50pm | IP Logged

Quote:

You can do this by reducing your affective filter. And a lot of time and energy these days goes into people trying to reduce their affective filters. I have seen so many articles telling me if I don’t have fun I’m doomed, and if I can’t relax and believe in myself I will fail.

Actually, this has been a real issue for me. Somehow, I bought into this idea that you have to reach the ideal mindset before being able to achieve anything at all.

I personally, as a person with high anxiety levels (slowly learning to do most things regardless of how anxious I might feel) and, well, a bit of a perfectionistic streak think that what I experience of that effect might be caused by my own expectations. When I know I've been a good girl and studied almost everyday for the last months I pay a lot of attention to the mistakes I make, the words and structures I don't know yet. When I know I haven't been studying at all, I am amazed and excited everytime I understand something. So the same text/movie, with the same level of comprehension might make me feel inadequate after studying regularly, and feel like a genius after a prolonged break. I tend to speak better when I've had time to stop thinking 'oh no I am speaking this language I am so bad at it' and just focus on the conversation, and writing is in-between those two.

That's not to say that this bow wave is simply an attribution error, but that a part of it probably is. Though, thinking that way doesn't change my own biased expectations, and even if taking breaks wasn't helpful for my linguistic skills it does help with my motivational issues. (I do assume that taking breaks after intensive study might be helpful from what I was told about our brains protecting memories with a certain protein that slows down deterioration, when we use the memories infrequently, but intensively when we do.)
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newyorkeric
Diglot
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Message 4 of 25

28 April 2014 at 3:42am | IP Logged

I tried to sign up but never got a confirmation email.
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leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6549 days ago
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog

Message 5 of 25

28 April 2014 at 5:37pm | IP Logged

It's working now. Thanks for the heads up!
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napoleon
Tetraglot
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India
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Message 6 of 25

28 April 2014 at 6:28pm | IP Logged

So, would you say that you need to break with the language completely for this to work?
I mean, can I keep watching TV in my TL?
Or, do I need to go cold turkey?
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emk
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Message 7 of 25

28 April 2014 at 6:48pm | IP Logged

Bao wrote:

Quote:

Actually, this has been a real issue for me. Somehow, I bought into this idea that you have to reach the ideal mindset before being able to achieve anything at all.

One thing I've learned is that it's very hard to give good advice. Things that work well for one person don't necessarily work well for another. Things which make perfect sense in my head don't necessarily make sense in writing, and who knows what they'll mean to somebody else. For example:

I think: "Reading 20 to 40 books seems like a relatively painless way to reach C1 reading comprehension in a 'easy' language. But sheesh, that's a lot of hours. Might at well enjoy the process, and get some interesting books to read. I totally would have given up long ago if I weren't enjoying myself." (Also see Krashen's paper on compelling input, which is basically a combination of his ideas about comprehensible input and the affective filter.)

I write, on behalf of a B1 student learning their first language: "If possible, look for some really interesting books."

Somebody else reads: "If I don't find any interesting books, I'm doing it all wrong and I'll never learn the language."

…which is not an idea that I'd support for even a second. The whole point of telling people to go look for some interesting books was just to give them an easy motivation boost and to reduce needless suffering, not to fill them with even more anxiety about language learning.

Now, there are some language learning strategies that would probably never work (leaving on Mandarin news radio in the background and expecting to learn it by osmosis without knowing any Mandarin is probably a bad idea). I think the important thing to take away from HTLAL is the idea that people learn languages in all kinds of strange ways.

leosmith wrote:

One fine day, I can’t remember the exact date, but I think it was after I started studying Mandarin, I was clicking through the TV cannels and stopped on some Mexican movie. I watched it for a minute, wasn’t really interested, and kept going. Then it occurred to me that I understood it well enough to know what was going on. I thought “that’s funny”, and I guess it was my new desire to become a polyglot that made me go back to check my level. So I went back, and was amazed to understand everything that was being said. Certainly, I missed words here and there, but my comprehension had gone from about 50% to over 90% with what I would call an insignificant amount of study or maintenance.

Great story, thank you.

Even without taking breaks, however, I've noticed that a lot of learning has a "delayed effect." This is most noticeable with tools like Anki, where I revisit material on a schedule: Cards that were really painful to answer at 15 days are frequently effortless at 40 days, despite never having looked at them in between. Or I got beat up a bit by the last two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion a month ago, because they were incredibly talky and abstract, and it took my full concentration to follow what was going on. But now, a month later, I'm rewatching the same episodes and they're pretty easy.

I've always assumed that this kind of delayed learning effect was caused by memory consolidation:

Quote:

Memory consolidation was first referred to in the writings of the renowned Roman teacher of rhetoric Quintillian. He noted the “curious fact… that the interval of a single night will greatly increase the strength of the memory,” and presented the possibility that “… the power of recollection .. undergoes a process of ripening and maturing during the time which intervenes.”

So to borrow your metaphor, is this really a "bow wave," where the time away is essential to the process? Or is this more like the way that you push the tiller a bit, and nothing happens for a while, and gradually the boat begins to turn? In other words, if you keep studying, will you still see the delayed improvement anyway?
12 persons have voted this message useful

leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6549 days ago
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog

Message 8 of 25

30 April 2014 at 6:17am | IP Logged

emk wrote:

I write, on behalf of a B1 student learning their first language: "If possible, look for some really interesting books."

You give good advice, and I don’t think many people are misinterpreting it the way you fear, because it’s so clear. The advice I was referring isn’t
written like that. Usually, it’s something like “read books that are interesting to you” or “only read books that are interesting to you”, with no
advice about what to do if there are no such books available, if the interesting books are too advanced, if the student is indifferent about what he
reads, etc. And sometimes, it’s as harsh as I mentioned, using the very words I mentioned. So keep on doing what you’re doing man, this
community needs more people like you.

emk - I posted the rest of my response
here.
Feel free to quote as much of it as you want; I don't mind. I'm just being paranoid someone will eventually tell me I can't quote my own post if I
post it directly here. Thanks very much for your though provoking questions.

(spoiler: Serpent, don't click this link)
Ride the wave!

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