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What are your hairy goals? | ||
Tags: Goals | Advanced Level | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| JClangue Newbie Canada Joined 3758 days ago 15 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Catalan | Message 49 of 111 15 August 2014 at 10:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm just really ambitious in everything I do and thought that I could apply my hunger and desire to learning a lot of languages well. I want to travel a lot while I'm still in my 20s. My idea is that if I really, really concentrate while studying or practicing my target languages, I'll learn faster. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 50 of 111 15 August 2014 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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You can do 5 B2 languages in a few years (I started in 2011 and have 5 B2+ level
languages) that I learned in about 3 years (since 2011). But keep in mind that I started out with two of them at solid B1's already (French and German). I managed to get to B2 in two languages fairly quickly (Swedish and Romanian), and Russian took me forever (but it's there too). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5238 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 51 of 111 15 August 2014 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I can understand your desire to learn a lot and I applaud your desire. But some things you might want to consider. If you spent only 1 hour per day studying each language that is 5 hours every day of full-time study and one hour doing a language exchange on skype would be 10 hours per day. How much spare time do you have available to you at the moment? Do you work? How would you manage your time? How long can you sustain that type of effort before life interupts you? It isn't just about speaking at someone, you have to understand the response as well. You said you were B2 in French? Do you understand all the words in a French movie without sub-titles? Can you read with ease? Benny Lewis learned a significant amount of his languages while living in a country which speaks it. Will you have that advantage? Timothy Doner lives in New York city and has hundred of thousands of native speakers to speak with and actively seeks them out. If you don't have these natural advantages do you have a plan for overcoming the lack of immersion? As tarvos said; 5 B2 isn't impossible, it has been done by a lot of people. I don't doubt your ability or passion to learn, but I think you are seriously underestimating the time commitment required for the languages you are talking about, especially Mandarin. I've recently started learning Mandarin. The pimsleur audio course (45 hours) I think will take me at least 24 weeks to complete because I repeat them frequently, and I only have 1.5-2 hours to dedicate each day to Mandarin. I know it sounds like I'm trying to rain on your parade, but I want you to succeed and I would hate to see you setting yourself up for a failure or burnout. Having said all that I would be interested in seeing your plan for accomplishing your learning. Which courses will you be using? Do you plan on using native materials? Do you have some sharetalk/mixer accounts setup? Will you be using flashcards? Audio or computer courses? Which books? You can get a lot of assistance here on the forums if you are looking for advice on the best courses, links to native materials, links to free resources & courses (Like the FSI courses). You might want to look at the 6weekchallenges or the TAC threads. Also if you've hit B1/B2 in French already you might want to look at the super challenge threads and signup for them. Good luck! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 52 of 111 15 August 2014 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Mandarin's difficulty is overrated, but B2 requires reading skills, and those are hard
to obtain in Mandarin. Furthermore it's your third/fourth language. Keep in mind that people who have five B2+ languages usually started out with a few of them being at least intermediate (I speak a total of 7 B2+, but two of them are practically native languages). And the one I took on first in that sequence (Russian) was the first I did on my own, and I had substantial experience learning foreign languages and failing at them already (French comes to mind). B2 is a very useful level to get, but for five languages I'd take at least a solid 3-4 years, and that's only because you've got one halfway there already. Keep in mind, I took like 3, and I had TWO that were reasonably good already (German didn't need much work), plus I chose languages that were relatively close with the exception of Russian. I however did not use as much immersion as Benny did. I have spent a total of 10 days or so in Sweden. You don't need immersion - you need a plan. Keep in mind I do lots of things every day that require me to use a language besides English to accomplish it. I almost never read novels in English, always in something else. I frequently look things up using the French wikipedia (as opposed to English), I watch foreign series (if at all), read foreign forums, and I have loads of contact with speakers in foreign languages that I cannot speak English to. Today I have used: Chinese, English, Dutch, Portugese and Russian already. I have also read some Swedish and French but not spoken either. That's a pretty serious lifestyle choice. Being a polyglot means making such choices. I don't know about Mr Doner but I know that Benny has a similar strategy to mine. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4490 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 53 of 111 16 August 2014 at 6:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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BHAG: Before I leave China in early 2018 I want to reach near native-fluency in Mandarin and the Chongqing
dialect. During this time, I also want to: -reach a high level of proficiency in the Bisaya dialect and Spanish; -have a good working knowledge of French, Russian, the Minnan dialect, and Hindi; -know basic ASL, Arabic, Japanese and Korean. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4535 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 54 of 111 16 August 2014 at 10:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My goal has always been to able to read a German newspaper equivalent to the New York Times, with ease and enjoyment, and obviously without a dictionary.
More practically I would like to get to C1 in German within the next two-to-three years and then C2ish within about five years after that. I think the C1 is doable, but still requires a lot of work; not sure about the C2 in that time frame - though I have seen others achieve this in English in an immersive environment in that sort of time frame. Edited by patrickwilken on 16 August 2014 at 10:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4535 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 55 of 111 16 August 2014 at 10:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I really like this analogy, but from my own experience I think the distances are a bit exaggerated. My very rough impression is that the distance between each successive is about twice as long as the proceeding one. So for German I found: 0 ->A1: 1 month (1 month from start) A1->A2:2 months (3 months from start) A2->B1:4 months (6 months from start) B1->B2:8 months (14 months from start) B2->C1:16 months ?? seems too short (30 months from start) C1->C2: 32 months ????- seems way too short - so perhaps this analogy breaks down, or at least the time between each successive levels at the latter stages is more than 2x. Edited by patrickwilken on 16 August 2014 at 10:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 56 of 111 16 August 2014 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The answers you've already got are really good (as always's, I am a big fan of Chung's ;-) ) but here are my two cents: Yes, the similarity between French and other romance languages will help a lot but mostly with passive skills. The active ones, while you'll have some kind of bonus as well, will still require lots of work. Learning several european languages to intermediate (B1) level is totally possible if you are comitted to it and have a lot of free time, in my opinion. But B2 isn't exactly intermediate anymore. You're gonna need a lot of time for input and practice. And Mandarin is a totally different league. The rush may be caused by a common infection residing in this community: wanderlust. It is the desire to learn a lot of languages as fast as possible. What helped me was to take a month or two, read all the info about all the languages I was suddenly considering, and use it to create a realistic plan. First of all, make sure you trully want to learn all the languages on your list for themselves, not just because they fit in the list perfectly. I understand you want to travel a lot but you don't need so many languages at so high level. Even A2 level can make your stay much richer in many ways, even though the more you know, the better. And sometimes just one language is more than useful in several countries. I didn't write this to turn you away from your goal, I wish you to succeed and enjoy the journey! It just tends to work better when your goals are challenging but realistic. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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