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Top Ten Language Learning Mistakes | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6854 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes  Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 9 of 51 02 December 2009 at 2:08am | IP Logged | ||
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For me that must be spending half of my daily hour devoted to languages reading this forum instead of actually studying.
But this is going to change! (pre-TAC mood) 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6296 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 10 of 51 02 December 2009 at 3:47am | IP Logged | ||
Oooh. I'm guilty of that one. Fortunately, I think the ideas that I get from reading this forum make it worth that time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maecenas Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5551 days ago 21 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: French, Portuguese, Persian | Message 11 of 51 02 December 2009 at 5:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I've always regretted how I approached learning Italian, the first spoken language that I studied on my own (I previously studied latin). I bought a book and spent the next several months methodically working through the lessons, writing out the exercises, and checking them with the answers in the back. For some reason, it never crossed my mind that I should actually listen to the language! I arrived in Italy very excited about my language skills, but... I didn't understand a single word. And everything I said was pronounced completely incorrectly, so nobody understood me. I had essentially spent about 4 months making up my own version of the language.
After my initial discouragement I got things in order and eventually reached a good level in the language, but I've always felt like that delayed me a bit. Now my main problem is being lazy, expecting to make progress in various languages, without really dedicating enough time to vocab, writing, etc. Oh, one more: attending language classes. I can't help but go every once in a while, but MAN I always regret it. Everything proceeds sooo slowly, and I usually come away much less motivated (not because of grammar emphasis or anything like that, but instead due to the general lack of excitement that you find there). Ultimately the time would be better used doing just about anything else. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5593 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 12 of 51 02 December 2009 at 5:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I think one mistake is being overly enthusiastic when first starting out to learn a language. I do not mean the TAC , but am referring to those beginners who set such unrealistically high goals in terms of what they plan to do (e.g. scheduled amount of hours,lessons per day, etc) that they can not sustain the effort. They burn out and become discouraged. If their schedule was more realistic and their goals more modest, they might have stuck with it and eventually achieved a reasonably good level of proficiency.Kind of like the fable of the tortoise and the hare.
I think another mistake is abandoning a program when it becomes more difficult for you. It is easy to rationalize quiting if you convince yourself that there is a better program,when in reality the only thing better about it was the ad campaign that convinced you to buy it. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5568 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 13 of 51 02 December 2009 at 7:37am | IP Logged | ||
I did the exact same thing with the first month or so of learning Dutch. I couldn't understand why the language had so many strange gramma patterns and why you would say certains things to express something instead of the "logical English" way i had in my head. Which would then lead me to becoming frustrated and angry.. How silly of me! My view of language and languages has definitely changed so much in the last 2 months, and thankfully i no longer superimpose my English speaking background and understandings on to foreign languages and their ways of expression and understanding. Each language is a unique, creative expression that through hundreds and thousands of years has changed, refined, and changed itself again, in to the wonderful, aesthetic and communicative sounds we hear and experience today. And i'm very happy and thankful to be born in a time when i'm able to learn so many amazing languages at my own pace and time, and then be able to understand, talk with and hear stories from all the wonderful people who speak those languages. ...It's just fantastic. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| JS-1 Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5985 days ago 144 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), German, Japanese, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic (Written) | Message 14 of 51 02 December 2009 at 9:08am | IP Logged | ||
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My big mistake was worrying about about making errors. It never occured to me that I
would be hearing important words thousands of times in the future, and that once I understood grammar, it would be reinforced every time I heard the language being used. But I suppose we have to make mistakes in our learning methods if we are to discover the best way to learn, just as we must make mistakes in whatever language we are trying to learn. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| namsskogan Newbie Norway Joined 5597 days ago 18 posts - 53 votes Speaks: Norwegian* Studies: German | Message 15 of 51 02 December 2009 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
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My two big mistakes in language learning were
1) trying to learn vocabulary by thinking out "creative" visual mnemonics, like this one: Imagine a FAIRY who tells you not to forget to feed the GOOSE. This should in theory help me to think of the German word 'vergessen'. It doesn't, and by such methods will I never be ably to gain any form of fluency in a language . I only realized that too late. But better late than never. 2) doing exercises in language books. A totally waste of time. ('Fill in the blank spaces', 'Complete the dialouge', 'What is "das Buch" in plural?'). I haven't learned a thing by such language testing. It has only made me stressed. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6153 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 16 of 51 02 December 2009 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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My top 10 biggest language learning mistakes were (and sometimes are)
10. Wanderlust. (Letting it kick in far too early) 9. Time obsession. (Concerning myself about the duration rather than the quality of study) 8. Spending time on easy exercises. (Some exercises are unrelated to learning a language. E.g. word searches) 7. Spending time on ambiguous exercises. (However, some complex exercises can have multiple answers, and you don't know if you have the right answer) 6. Stalling on difficult areas. (Spending too much time on cracking a concept which can be badly taught by a particular course) 5. Rushing through courses. (Not spending enough time on a particular section. This applies to Assimil mostly.) 4. Fixating on a particular course. (While it's easy to measure progress with a particular course, it's not an efficient way to learn a language) 3. Not listening enough. (This was the single biggest mistake in my early language learning endeavors.) 2. Not practising enough. (This can be done without recourse to any material. Trying to speak the language aloud, or translating in your head.) 1. Not studying enough. (The most obvious mistake of all, and one I'm still guilty of.) Edited by DaraghM on 02 December 2009 at 12:46pm 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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