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Learning > 1 Language at the Same Time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| starst Triglot Senior Member China Joined 5515 days ago 113 posts - 133 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, Japanese, EnglishC2 Studies: FrenchC1, German, Norwegian | Message 17 of 27 08 July 2010 at 4:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Better to construct a learning chain: first learn one language to an advanced level, and then use it to learn a new language. I tried to learn French and German at the same time, but it didn't work out well. Now I plan to create the English->French->German->Dutch chain, say learning German with materials in French after reaching C1 in French.
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| JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5398 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech | Message 18 of 27 08 July 2010 at 5:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Personally, I like the confusion, I have developed more skills in all of my languages since focusing on a broader spectrum. That said, I focus on one language per month intensely and rotate them, but I still speak in all of my languages as much as possible (possible becaues I work in the hotel industry). Every person is different, but I like to bombard myself with information and let my brain sort it all out. It may not be as quick, or efficient as focusing solely on one language until reaching fluency, but I get bored easily and need the challenge/change.
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| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5987 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 19 of 27 08 July 2010 at 7:31am | IP Logged | ||
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The chaining idea is especially helpful when learning materials are not available in your native language. For example, there are many Assimil courses in German and French that are not available in English (such as Swedish). When I looked on amazon.de I found a lot of informative Swedish books that are not available in English.
I've also found that learning L3 in L2 also helps your knowledge of L2. When I did an Esperanto course in German, I also improved my German a lot. My "Assimil: Schwedisch ohne Mühe" book helped my German a lot too, while I was learning basic Swedish. No need to wait until you're perfect in one in order to learn the next. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 20 of 27 08 July 2010 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm exactly the same. When chaining languages, one should not make the mistake to overestimate one's proficiency in the first L2. Especially your comprehension of that language needs to be effortless, otherwise you'll waste your energy on making sense of the L2, hinder your progress in L3 - and there's always the risk of making a mess out of L3 or maybe even L2. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vb Octoglot Senior Member Afghanistan Joined 6423 days ago 112 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English, Romanian, French, Polish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 21 of 27 08 July 2010 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, I've started doing this. This morning, I read Slovak in parallel text with Polish (which I'm now pretty solid at), Serbian/Croation/Bosnian in parallel, 20 pages of a novel in parallel Norwegian/Danish (my Swedish is strong) and a few articles in Dutch (thereby reminding myself of some German). Having said that, my goals mainly concern receptive use; for productive skills (Polish is the only language for which I have worked hard at speaking), it might get a little confusing. So I'm basically getting languages to advanced passive and then using them as nodal points from which to attack as much as possible from the same family. Edited by vb on 08 July 2010 at 7:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iamrobertyee Bilingual Triglot Groupie Philippines Joined 5295 days ago 48 posts - 54 votes Speaks: Tagalog*, Cebuano*, EnglishC2 Studies: Mandarin | Message 22 of 27 09 July 2010 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||
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It's okay to learn two languages at the same time. Quite challenging when you are bombarded with information. But I guess it's not recommended for first timer. There's just a lot of confusion.
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| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 23 of 27 10 July 2010 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
You can respect someone without having to agree with absolutely everything they say :). The only way for you to find out if you could or could not learn >1 language at the time is to try it yourself. In my opinion (based on my experience) it comes down to how much time you have at your disposal to put into language learning. From December till May I was learning three languages at the time. I was able to spend quite few hours per day on languages, every day. Then came the thesis writing time and I was able to put only about 3h into languages per day, and sometime not even that. I decided to the rotation thing - to concentrate myself on one language only for month, or month and a half, during these few months. The result after the first month and a half is that my Spanish improved beyond all my expectations and my levels in Russian in Mandarin (if I even have a level in Mandarin :) ) didn't drop at all. So, here is what I would do in the future, based on this experience: if I have a need to learn a language in a certain 'shortish' time frame, I would do only one language; on the other hand, if I don't have a reason to hurry, I wouldn't hesitate to study more than one language, and then at some point would do this 'monolingual' periods, just for a change. If I would have two months totally free, I would definitely do >1. The problem in your case might be the fact that you have chosen languages that are very similar. I don't have any experience studying related languages, so I've no idea how that would work for me. I know that there are people out there who do not study languages, but language families, so apparently it works for some people. Whatever you chose to do, good luck. I envy you for your two free months :). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 24 of 27 10 July 2010 at 2:06am | IP Logged | ||
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For me personally, it depends on my level in the languages I’m studying. If I were to study two or more languages in which I’m at a beginner or intermediate level, I would get confused not to mention bored with all the hard work. I prefer to work on languages in which I’m at different levels so I can switch between learning methods to make it more interesting.
I have four target languages in theory but in practice the only ones I really study at the moment are French and English. I’ve put German and Papiamentu on hold for when I’ve reached basic fluency in French so that leaves one intermediate-language and one advanced fluency-language. I study English at university and besides that I just try to read as much as I can and look up words I don’t know. Meanwhile my French is still bad enough for me to need actual studying and vocabulary learning to improve. This allows me to go from struggling to read a text and looking up every other word to reading a novel and coming across maybe two new words per chapter. Lately I’ve started combining my two main target languages while translating everything into my native language as well because I’ve noticed that I sometimes know the word for something in both Dutch and English without realising that they mean the same thing. I guess that’s the downside of learning through immersion. I’m trying to fix this in English and avoid it in French by making vocabulary lists in all three languages which can lead to some interesting discoveries. Apparently the pancreas is the same thing as the alvleesklier. ;-) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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