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Dealing with wanderlust | ||
Tags: Wanderlust | FSI | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Paul Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7127 days ago 114 posts - 124 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German Studies: Italian | Message 9 of 31 28 September 2005 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find it helpful to have two languages on the go at any one time. If i start
getting frustrated with one, or i'm not feeling in the right mood to study it, then i can switch to other and still feel i'm achieving something. Like the administrator wrote in one of those two recent articles, it all comes down to utilising as much curiosity, and as little willpower as possible! By having two language i avoid boredom and fatigue, and become more interested in each individual language. In the end i spend about half my time on each. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| winters Trilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 7050 days ago 199 posts - 218 votes Speaks: Croatian*, Serbian*, Russian*, English, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek, French, Hungarian | Message 10 of 31 01 October 2005 at 6:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I get wanderlust as well.
I wanted to take up one more language this year, but my mother didn't let me do it and explained her disagreement by saying that I already study more than enough languages for high schooler and that last year I took up new languages and that some time should pass before I take any new ones, and for now that I should concentrate on my French and classics for school. What should I say? Sure I desire to know more languages, but then, it IS better to know "only" few languages than to know snippets, but only snippets, of ten various languages, and maybe I really should take advantage of this year to get my French on at least some decent level. However, I satisfy my curiosity. I don't see anything wrong in, while corresponding with my Ukrainian pals in Russian to ask them to teach me some Ukrainian, or in trying to read something in some new language or even taking few hours apart to see how it functionates. But what is important for me is to know when I STUDY some language, and when I only wander from one to another. That way I get to focus on languages I already study, but satisfy my curiosity for other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 7006 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 11 of 31 01 October 2005 at 7:59am | IP Logged | ||
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I would say "do whatever pleases you most.
Once I discovered Pimlseur Brasilian portuguese, I thought it was so easy to learn tha basics of a language and above all, to pronouce it correctly, that I immediately followed with Spanish, then Italian. Then I did the same with assimil. I just could not wait for being able to speak and understand. There are moments of confusion, but once you launch a conversation or reading in one language things settle and ther eis less confusion. Were you to focus, it would take much more time. But I'm talking about learning conversational italian or Spanish or Portuguese, this might not be suited to learning literary Italian or etc.. Just my 2 cents.
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| ElComadreja Senior Member Philippines bibletranslatio Joined 7244 days ago 683 posts - 757 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog | Message 12 of 31 01 October 2005 at 8:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I go and do Pimsluer q&s courses to satisfy my wanderlust. I tend to either get through them quickly or get bored with it, and then I'll go back to my current language (right now French). I have to get away from the languages I am learning allot of times anyway... to let stuff sink in.
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| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 7034 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes 5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 13 of 31 01 October 2005 at 8:51am | IP Logged | ||
Actually, even if most people agree with it, I still think the better notion should be: you should focus on the maximum amount of languages that you can handle, instead of just arbitrarily defining your ability as "only one language". As for me, I am focusing on TWO languages at the time, and will continue to do so; my time allows me to do that, but no further. I know where my limit lies, and it's important that you do so too. In order for you to decide, you must first evaluate the amount of time that you have and the proportion you can devote into language learning. Most likely you will find that you only have time to do one and, in that case, it's what you should follow. But if you have all the time you need and all the motivation you have, don't restrain yourself just because of the dogma "focus on one language at a time". Nevertheless, you should keep in mind that distributing your time with 10 languages or so is definitely NOT a good idea: no one can to do that. Focusing on one language would still be the best suggestion, at any rate. Edited by epingchris on 01 October 2005 at 8:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7130 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 14 of 31 01 October 2005 at 9:09am | IP Logged | ||
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That's an interesting way of looking at it, epingchris.
I'm studying German, Italian, Latin, and Russian, but not seriously and not for fluency. I'm "maintaining" my Swedish; I've got it at not total fluency, but quite a usable level. Mostly I just need to read a bit each day and possibly look up the few words I don't recognize. I don't devote much study time to this. I'm seriously studying Spanish and French. Spanish was definitely my main focus this year, but then I started a French 2 class on a whim (never having studied a word of French in my life... the teacher was quite doubtful about letting me in the class at first, and ended up doing so only because she knew I'm exremely motivated when it comes to languages). Well, I got a 106 on my first test with very little effort and I'm finding the class a breeze. Honestly, I'm blown away (no pun intended) by how easy it's been to pick up beginning French. Of course, this probably has a lot to do with six years of Spanish (and, for that matter, my Swedish: miljö in Swedish is milieu in French; möbler in Swedish is meubles in French, and so on). Still, I'm pretty excited about French, excited enough for me to really try to forge ahead and acheive a much higher level of ability. Wow, how off topic was that post? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| KingM Triglot Senior Member michaelwallaceauthor Joined 7197 days ago 275 posts - 300 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 31 01 October 2005 at 10:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Given your language ability, background, and interest as contrasted with that of a typical high school student, it's no surprise to me that you're blowing past the second year French students. You'd probably blow past the second semester college students too, and that's a much more hurried pace.
As for what you should do, I don't think there is a should. You're having fun and progressing in your study of languages. Sounds good to me. And from a practical standpoint, I can see advantages to either the scattershot or the bulls-eye method. If you are a traveler, having a smattering of numerous languages could be quite handy. On the other hand, if your goal is to be able to have conversations about Proust in a Parisian cafe, you'd be better of with the bulls-eye method. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7021 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 31 05 October 2005 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | ||
I couldn't agree more. I think that I would actually get bored and demotivated if I was only studying one language. In fact, I'm currently learning three languages: Arabic, Italian and Portuguese. Since I am a native Spanish speaker, I reckon that Italian and Portuguese should be fairly easy. If I learn a bit each day then after a year or so I should be passably comfortable in both (at least that's the plan). However, I'm concentrating most of my efforts on Arabic since it has a completely different writing system and vocabulary. Once I reach a certain level of Arabic, I will simply maintain it and move on to another "difficult" language (probably Russian) as my main and choose another one or two "easier" ones (French and Catalan perhaps) to learn alongside. Up to now, I'm having fun so I'll keep on doing it. I think that's the most important thing. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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