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Read but can’t speak | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6448 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes  Studies: German | Message 25 of 33 07 November 2012 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes and it is normal. I would differentiate between
gaining passive knowledge from written and spoken sources and I would certainly differentiate between actually learning something and relying on cognates. Learning how to successfuly rely on cognates is also a skill. I meet daily the exact opposite, people who seem very fluent but who cannot go far in their conversation. Passive knowledge takes a while to develop and activate and in the beginning it is almost a hindrance. You know there are many ways of expressing exactly what you mean and the words are at the tip of your tongue but producing each sentence is like having a baby. However, once you get rolling, the weight of the knowledge is on your side. The passive side is also less sensitive to the ravages of time and neglect. If you take the oral approach you start off as a featherweight and you need to keep beefing up to a desired size. It is easy to move around if you keep to the beaten path. The problem is, the path may not lead where you want to go. You can also easily starve to death. Each can be rewarding depending on personality. You dazzle people with your tongue. Probably one big reason besides the practical considerations why people are more dissatisfied with their lack of spoken ability than pleased with their passive knowledge. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 26 of 33 07 November 2012 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's a frequent situation with English: many people read it but are bad at speaking. I
can read scientific articles in French, but I'm bad at speaking this language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5982 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 27 of 33 18 November 2012 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, that's exactly the experience I had with French back in college, but after that I found that if you add listening fluency, then not being able to talk is just impossible, at least that was my experience with English. What I mean is that gaining high fluency in both listening and reading automatically put you into the "basic fluency" category in talking, even if you haven't talked at all. I remember I was B2 at talking (Cambridge FCE) with just minutes of actual talking practice. That was far behind my passive skills but amazing considering the time devoted to practice (next to nothing). Edited by Javi on 18 November 2012 at 10:29pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 28 of 33 18 November 2012 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's very encouraging to hear. I'm not even B2 yet in Spanish and Italian but I've certainly felt that too.
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 33 18 November 2012 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'd say it depends. I can follow a great deal of spoken Norwegian (such as understanding almost 100% of a radio program or a movie), and written Norwegian doesn't pose much trouble either, but can I speak it? No way. If I hear a sentence I can repeat it (fairly convincingly, I'm told), but it's not the same as actual "talking". 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5982 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 30 of 33 19 November 2012 at 7:19am | IP Logged | |||||
I guess that's because you didn't actually "gained" passive fluency (through study and exposure) but rather rely heavily on cognates. That's not my case with English where despise all the latin cognates, the first time I heard a radio programme I didn't understand a word. All the progress came through conscious study of the language. Edited by Javi on 19 November 2012 at 7:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4522 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 31 of 33 21 November 2012 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think it also depends on how complex the language is in terms of morphology (number of different morphological structures and regularity of those). If all you have to do is putting headwords together in a fixed word order than you probably are able to speak fluidly without too much practice. If you have to think about what case to use (like with verbs that change in meaning depending on the case used with the noun) and what (declination/conjugation) class the word belongs to, you have a higher chance to struggle with talking after achieving high proficiency in the passive areas.
I once tried to read an Icelandic comic after blanking out all the inflectional endings. It wasn't much of a problem to understand the content. When you want to utter a correct sentence, you have to get all endings right though. No context will help you with that task. Edited by daegga on 21 November 2012 at 7:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 32 of 33 21 November 2012 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Morphology isn't necessarily a problem per se but in Icelandic it's very irregular and you'll need to see each form many times before they stick.
One can successfully learn the Romance verbs by input, though. Or the Slavic nouns. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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