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Have you achieved fluency since joining? | ||
Tags: Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7091 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 9 of 39 12 July 2007 at 10:57am | IP Logged | ||
I guess I could call myself something close “passively fluent” in French because I can listen to the French news (radio and TV) and often understand 95% of the content, if not word for word. I can read the news and popular novels with a similar understanding. More complicated works of literature and slang are still a bit over head. I have not really practiced conversation so I could not even claim proficiency. I do know enough to “get by” and express ideas. It is hard to say what really worked because I experimented with every single method. I think it all comes down to a massive practice with phrases: how to master the sound, the text, how to understand them, and how to remember them. Any differences stem from individual habits, abilities and inclinations. Just my two cents worth. For me, pronunciation give me fit so I have to obtain so very slow spoken phrases and practice listen and repeat over and over until I can match them with ease. Thanks to old habits my approach to grammar is still “grammar-translation” based – a little bit goes a long way. After that I read and listen to what ever interests me: books, DVD subtitles, phrase books, dictionaries, and language courses (Assimil and French in Action) you name it. If I had to give a name to it, I’d calling “visualizing” opposed to shadowing, drilling, or note carding. John 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| winters Trilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 7043 days ago 199 posts - 218 votes Speaks: Croatian*, Serbian*, Russian*, English, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek, French, Hungarian | Message 10 of 39 12 July 2007 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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My Italian improved an awful lot, and in fact, I have never witnessed such a sudden change as with Italian.
When I joined this site, my Italian was an insecure and rusty Italian of an equally insecure child, who felt very bad about her mistakes and avoided using the language past the things she was sure of rather than taking the risk of being wrong or venturing into something deeper with the language :) My approach to language studies changed a lot, and meanwhile my Italian became an easy-going, fluent (though still imperfect, but from this point of view, nicely imperfect (not "shamefully" as I used to view it earlier)) language of a rather confident child, who suddenly became aware of how much she actually knew, and decided to focus on that rather than on how much she does not know. It is incredible how much I advanced in these nearly two years (of course, having spent a time in the country also played a great role), and how incredibly I have grown to love Italian (more than love, I have grown to blindly adore it), and how I have discovered so much Italian literature and culture I enjoyed, and how I somehow... accepted it all in myself, not being held back by feelings of my knowledge being shamefully inadeguate (as I used to feel before). Unfortunately, I must also note that my French was in the period of stagnation during all that time and that I have not learnt much more (relying solely on school, I did not quite pursue it studying it on my own, which I plan to make up for... sometime) than what I already knew. I also made a considerable progress in classics, but nothing was as drastic as hopelessly falling in love with the Italian language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 39 12 July 2007 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've improved my languages, but not to a fluent level (yet). One reason may be that I tend to add a new language now and then (meaning less focus on each) and another reason may be that I keep my eyes open for new methods and learning strategies.
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| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6617 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 12 of 39 13 July 2007 at 1:19am | IP Logged | ||
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This site has definately helped me improve my Korean, although I'm not fluent yet. By going to this board, I usually write down my goals and get feedback from other people on ways to accomplish my goals.
The experienced people on this board can usually help other language students come up with good plans and approaches for getting up to fluency. Nonetheless, getting up to fluency in a foreign language is always going to be hard work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6690 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 13 of 39 13 July 2007 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
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No, but I progressed to a high intermediate level.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Eve Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6674 days ago 67 posts - 67 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, Spanish | Message 14 of 39 13 July 2007 at 11:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I was a real beginner ( from 0) in Spanish when I joined but now i can watch TV in Spanish almost without dictionary ( but preferable with CC on) and probably communicate - it is hard to justify because don't have much practice.
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| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6867 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 15 of 39 13 July 2007 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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After a bit of lurking I joined I guess about a year and a half ago (I think) when the Ziad Fazah thread was still a very hot topic in the Polyglots section.
Since then I've achieved basic fluency in German, and a lot of the methods I use in my language learning now I get from people I have either met through this thread or have just read about here. I'm still working on what method is best for me, and I suspect it will vary from language to language, but basically I try to get the grammar down pretty good first, and then pick up words categorically or through using them in reading (that's the idea at least, I'm still not very consistant). Since joining I have, however, learned that I am actually very good at imitating accents and pronunciations, something I wasn't aware of. I've gotten compliments from speakers of German, Spanish, Chinese, Danish, Finnish, and Azeri (Russian, however, remains elusive to me, as does, ironically, other accents of English). Some of those were very small example sentences I was given, but I've gotten better at it, and it ties into communicating with people from this site. I have also gotten actively back into learning Esperanto, and members from this site, specifically Sprachprofi, have been one of the main reasons for that. The big method, however, for my German, is the fact that I've been living here since the end of September, so of course that helps very strongly, but I believe I can become fluent in other languages without living in the home country a year. :-) Due to my trip here, my Spanish has unfortunately deteriorated some, but when I get home in a couple of weeks, I'll get back to practicing it with some novels I have. Edited by Journeyer on 13 July 2007 at 12:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cadomniel Groupie Canada senseandsanity.com Joined 7194 days ago 88 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Esperanto, French, Italian | Message 16 of 39 13 July 2007 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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No, I haven't become fluent since I joined two years ago.
However, this forum is what initially gave me the inspiration to become a polyglot and I have achieve an intermediate level in German, French and Spanish since I joined this forum. I learned a lot about learning languages and why the classroom way is almost useless... So now the next task is to get those three languages up to Basic fluency level!! I've already experienced first hand the many benefits of knowing a foreign language and met many nice friends with language exchanges. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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