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Where are the advanced speakers? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 1 of 37 18 December 2012 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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As everybody here knows, there is a ton of books, methods, websites, videos, etc. for beginners in many languages. But very little for intermediate and nearly nothing for advanced learners. I get the impression that there is no market for these materials because there is not really much interest.
I conclude that very few language hobbyists go beyond dabbling. Those who become very proficient do so because of family history or professional needs. Even here at HTLAL, if I judge only by the French and Spanish subforums, there is very little discussion beyond the beginner level. Maybe once people reach a certain level, they go off to the sites in the target language? Where are the advanced speakers. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 5098 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 2 of 37 18 December 2012 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In regards to Spanish (including French and German) and education here in the United
Kingdom, when you do GCSE (the standard high school exam) you are talking about beginner 'dabbling' subjects but when you go to A-Level (pre-University exams) all the topics change suddenly into things like anorexia, deforestation, the laws of Europe, the film industry of Spain, fires, culture of Spain (including things like la tomatina) and subjects that are at an intermediate level, preparing for advanced study at university. All advanced topics would mostly be found on websites or books that are on the reading lists of universities, plus when I did the "language module" option at my university (where despite whatever course you studied you got to study a language module for free) - I had to all of a sudden delve into translation in which you're told to read national newspapers and find "real life" topics to bring to class to then discuss within groups. So I do see where you're coming from, it's a lot less in the public eye (the advanced side) but it is there - it's just very well hidden perhaps? Edited by languagenerd09 on 18 December 2012 at 2:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5128 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 3 of 37 18 December 2012 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't know that there isn't any interest. I suspect most advanced learners of a language are off being users of a language, using native materials and interacting with natives. I also think it's probably pretty uninteresting for advanced users of a language to just talk about whatever new thing they learned today in the forum. All the hard stuff is behind them. R. == 11 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4655 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 37 18 December 2012 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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There are advanced speakers here who give a very valuable tips to learners, usually learners of their first foreign language.
But in my experience, the road to advanced speaker is usually a very lonely one. After you have either got all the information and tips you could or know what works from experience, only time and dedication, and a lot of input in target language helps. It took me years going from intermediate to advanced, because I didn't know better. I was depending on courses and language books and they are simply not very useful at this stage. I wish somebody told me then to stop learning from language books and grab encyclopedias, how-to books, magazines etc., to stop going to language lessons and to look for popular science TV-programs or similar, to grab a good grammar book, or even old books with exercises and from time to time go through it, but not to dedicate all my time to it. And, another important point would be to pick and choose - start with advanced vocabulary I need all the time and let the rest come up when needed. Going to very advanced or near native level in target language is quite simple in theory when you know how to go about it, but needs hours and hours in practice. A forum won't help you much :) 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Kyle Corrie Senior Member United States Joined 4827 days ago 175 posts - 464 votes | Message 5 of 37 18 December 2012 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Exactly what hrhenry said.
What do you expect to find? A book that teaches you how to watch movies in your target language? An instructional pamphlet on how to read a book? If you're "advanced" then your primary focus should be native material. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 37 18 December 2012 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
This reminds of my favorite conversation with bookstore clerks:
Most people who self-teach a language give up after about two weeks. This isn't a question of "advanced"—most of the people who buy Teach Yourself or Rosetta Stone will never even qualify as a "beginner". I'd guess that maybe 10% reach A1. I'll believe that they reach A2 or B1 the day that bookstores start selling graded readers or Le Petit Prince.
Well, yeah. The last thing I want to discuss in French is how to learn more French. I do that with my wife, and I used to do it all the time with my tutor. If I want to write essays on other subjects, I do it on lang-8, so I can get corrections. If I want to hang around on forums, well, the web is full of native speakers who are interested in 1000 different things. I generally don't bother with the French subforum here unless somebody starts an interesting debate. (If you do want to debate something interesting in French, go right ahead.)
Mostly living in the Francophonie, or working as French teachers, or letting their French quietly rust away. But they do exist—there's a local Meetup group where most of the speakers are C1, C2, or native. And many of them teach French. Edited by emk on 18 December 2012 at 2:56pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5379 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 37 18 December 2012 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The only kind of advanced speaker you'd find in a forum like this is one who is also interested in studying other languages. That narrows down the pool quite a bit.
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5428 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 37 18 December 2012 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I guess we can conclude that the many proficient speakers are using native language materials and have no need for materials that purport to teach at an advanced level.
That said, I personally think that between the beginner stuff and the native materials there is room for materials that approach L2 at a high level from the perspective of L1. Isn't this what we do in a way with bilingual texts? For example, native grammar books are excellent but they are obviously not at all designed with the foreign language learner in mind and do not target specific problems. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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