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Dealing with wanderlust | ||
Tags: Wanderlust | FSI | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7211 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 17 of 31 08 October 2005 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been able to confine my wanderlust pretty well.
Spanish is my target language, but I occasionally watch a French in Action episode or turn on French subtitles for a movie. One tactic that's helping is to guide the wanderlust. For instance, FSI Basic Spanish is the core of my program. I recently let myself wander through Immersion Plus Spanish while on a business trip. I used the program enough to comprehend the dialog and be able to read sentences in the dialog at normal speed. Now I can use I+ as background listening. Similarly, I'm going through Ultimate Spanish (US) at the pace of about an hour or so per lesson (there are 20 lessons). My goal there is to get familiarity with the dialogues, pick up a couple idiomatic nuances, and a bit of culture. Some months down the road, I'll return to US and give it the 5-10 hours per lesson it deserves. In the meantime, I will occasionally listen to it so it stays fresh. So my discipline is to set lower goals for wander material. I've been using this tactic for a while. When I was a beginner, it perhaps wasn't so helpful, but as an intermediate student, it's made things more fun. One additional point, is I'm using US and I+ primarily for listening comprehension. That saves my voice, which becomes stressed from all the FSI drilling. I'm wandering into some reading as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dadafeig Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6992 days ago 82 posts - 83 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Dutch | Message 18 of 31 12 October 2005 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think most people who like languages have trouble only studying one language. I know I do I always tell myself keep studying Spanish, but when I see a course in guiding you to speak German I can't put it down, I even bought one after a while because I was tired of reading it in the library. It's good to learn two or more languages as long as you can handle it because as soon as I'm bored with one I just start practicing the other.
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| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7152 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 19 of 31 12 October 2005 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think dadafeig makes a good point. I easily get bored learning one language. I find that learning and practising other languages at the same time doesn't impede my progress but actually helps to keep me motivated. I like variety in my learning. If I spend 45 minutes each day learning my number one target language, what is the harm in spending another 30 minutes practising my number two or three language? I wonder if the interference is no more than just speaking your mother tongue for the rest of the day. I work at learning my number one language or, maybe better expressed, I concentrate on my number one language and play with my other languages. This helps keep me motivated. What I think it comes down to is, do what seems to work best for you. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dadafeig Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6992 days ago 82 posts - 83 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Dutch | Message 20 of 31 15 October 2005 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Now I just kind of got bored with both Spanish and German, and went to my bookstore and started learning Russian, and now i know it's alphabet and a few words.
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| screamadelics Newbie United States Joined 6993 days ago 34 posts - 35 votes | Message 21 of 31 15 October 2005 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I own a Latin textbook with the idea that I might be able to get into it sometime... but the thing stopping me from wanderlust is Greek. For one thing, there's so much to it that you'll never have finished; for another, I've come to love the language as if it were a woman. I'll add some more to my concubine someday, but for me, studying one language precludes studying another at the same time. I just don't see how you can swim in, bask, and thoroughly enjoy two languages at a time.
It's like stopping in the middle of one Dickens novel to start another and carrying them both on at once. 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 22 of 31 16 October 2005 at 8:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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"It's like stopping in the middle of one Dickens novel to start another and carrying them both on at once."
Well... that's an interesting analogy, but I see it slightly differently. Reading a book is a fairly "finite" experience, if you will. A novel has a beginning and an end, and to read and thoroughly enjoy, say, Oliver Twist, I would need about two weeks, give or take. Considering that, there's no reason I'd want to start a new one until I'd finished the old book. Languages, on the other hand... ah. I don't think it's possible to ever "finish" a language the way one finishes a book. I could spend the rest of my life enjoying, loving, basking in my first two languages, English and Swedish, without ever reaching the point of total and absolute confidence that I will know each and every word I come across, every idiom, every subtlety of grammar. In fact, I'm not tempted to wanderlust because of a lack of love for Spanish, Swedish, and English; I'm tempted because I DO adore them, because I'm absolutely obsessed with them. There are so many languages in the world I know I'd love equally, and sometimes I just can't stand the thought of waiting until I've reached a certain point to explore them all. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 7027 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 23 of 31 16 October 2005 at 10:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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Actually, I think the book analogy and language wunderlust are quite similar for me. Maybe this is why I have such a tough time sticking to just one language. I usually have several books going at once. Usually one will be fiction, another technical non-fiction, and the third (or fourth) will be either philosophy or popular science (Carl Sagan or some such). Eventually one or two of these will become dominant, and I will spend my time reading only it for a few days until it is finished. I have found this a self-limiting, ineffective approach to language learning however. I usually spend most of my time on Russian, but then will occasionally listen to Pimsleur Mandarin or Japanese, and try to learn a few kanji. After a several days of this, its back to Russian. I would not recommend this method for reaching fluency!
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| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7021 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 31 16 October 2005 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree. As Sierra also mentions, you can finish a book but no-one ever finishes a language because they are all constantly evolving and changing. Just think how many new words have entered the English language over the past few years and how many older words have had their meanings changed.
Maybe not, but given enough time, you would probably be quite proficient. When you have achieved an advanced level in a particular language and are going to start a new one, you should ensure that you also practice the previous language you learned. However, if you consider that the first language isn't finished, then essentially you are studying two languages, albeit one more intensively than the other. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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