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Benefits of failing to learn a language | ||
Tags: dropping a Language | Brain | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4444 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 25 of 38 25 July 2014 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Whether you attend immersion class or not, you need the practical / conversation part of learning that a regular class is not giving. If you are not in an immersion class, you have to be with people who are speakers in a language to improve your fluency. In an immersion class, you are with people who have to use the target language everyday. There is the motivation for you to learn more and more words & phrases. A number of years ago I was in Taiwan for a summer exchange. Our group was there to attend Mandarin classes for 3 weeks and travel around the island for the rest of the summer. The classes were divided into 3 levels: Beginners, Intermediate & Advanced. What I found was the people in the Advanced level were learning much faster and were using the language outside class. The ones in the Beginner level were always relying on others who are more fluent when they went shopping or read the menu in restaurants. When beginners get together with each other, they would speak English instead of even trying to say a few words in Mandarin. In the beginning we all learn to "Hello, how are you"? "I'm fine, thank you" or "Bonjour, comment ça va?" "Ça va bien, merci" in a target language. These are simple phrases we can use when meeting someone but doesn't get us very far if we want to engage in even a basic conversation. Part of the problem of teaching a language is that we assume people are "stupid" and needs to take the time to do repetitive drills & exercises on subject-verb conjugations "Je suis, tu es, il /elle/ on est, etc". How many people do you think who attended a regular class would be comfortable asking someone "Excuse me, where is the Canoe Restaurant"? "Excusez-moi monsieur, où est le Café de Paris"? "请问你，松学楼饭店在哪儿“？as compared to someone who attended an immersion class? The incentive is for you to pass all the tests but no incentive for you to speak even at a basic level. Edited by shk00design on 25 July 2014 at 8:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 26 of 38 25 July 2014 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I'm not saying that. :-) I'm thinking more about people like the author of the article, who have spent 700+ hours studying French, but who still struggle to keep up with toddlers:
700 hours of French, used well, ought to be enough to talk to a 3-year-old[1]. Simply spending that many hours immersed, with lots of comprehensible input and opportunities to speak, should be enough to get most people to a conversational level or better. Also, I do suspect that most people who spend a significant chunk of their time using a language (by listening, reading or conversing) usually reach a decent level in a reasonable amount of time. And people who have no choice but to use a language exclusively for several years almost always seem to get pretty good at it—certainly good enough to converse with three-year-olds. [1] Assuming the student already knows English or a Romance language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 27 of 38 26 July 2014 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If 700 hours of French ought to do the trick, then why did it not work for Mr Alexander? He did what a lot of
people do to learn French. Are the self-learning products a waste of time? Most people around here go ballistic when Rosetta Stone is mentioned, but I know people who actually like it. And I've heard good things about Fluenz. They seem to be OK for starters. Nothing wrong with taking classes. Sure, language meetups have their limitations but at least it's an opportunity to open your mouth. Neither is there anything wrong with watching lots of TV and DVDs. To top it all off, how about two weeks of immersion in France? It seems to me that it can't get better than that. There are other things that Mr Alexander didn't mention, such as working with a tutor, either face to face or over Skype. But, all in all, he did what a lot of people do or can do. Maybe the problem is age, after all. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 38 27 July 2014 at 3:31am | IP Logged | |||||
I was referring to this. I don't think the availability of immersion classes matters that much. Rosetta Stone or Fluenz might be a nice introduction, but they seem slow (at least RS). Same applies to Pimsleur. I'm not saying these are bad, but they slowly take you to a pretty low level. You'll probably know well the little that you do know, though. But when there's a deadline, there are better options. I'm sure this has nothing to do with age. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5981 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 29 of 38 27 July 2014 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that when you learn your first foreign language is just too easy to have great expectations. One year seems like forever and the final outcome may be disappointing, especially if you measure it in terms of speaking abilities. We all here know that active skills are just the tip of iceberg of your overall language background, but that's not common knowledge. The author didn't even mention it. He attributed the raise of his cognitive performance to a process of trying and failing, when it would be a heck of a lot easier to put it the other way round: take the cognitive improvement as proof that learning actually took place, and realise that his only failure was in giving up. Children can't quit their first language immersion environment (unless they commit suicide of talk their parents into emigrating), but an old fellow can just mope around miserably complaining that "I'm too old", or "only geniuses learn foreign languages", and just move on to the next thing: tenpin bowling?
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 30 of 38 27 July 2014 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think the main problem is lack of persistence. I am also in my 50ies, and I know better than anyone how
frustrating it us to see that it takes longer to learn a language when you get older, but the trick is to not give up. I admit that I almost gave up on Russian twice, but the third time I started (about the time I started at HTLAL) I swore to myself that I was going to learn that language if it was the last thing I did. It takes time, it takes persistence, but it is not impossible. I am not there yet, but now I know that I will be. Sometime. :-) 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 31 of 38 28 July 2014 at 6:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well said, Solfrid. This question of age and language learning comes up often here at HTLAL, and my position is that
it is a rather useless debate for two reasons: 1. Nobody really argues that it's better to learn a language as an adult than as a child. Every parent on this planet interested in having their children learn a language believes this. At the most, some people will argue that adults under the right circumstances can learn as well as children. But those same people will just as likely send their children to a bilingual school or an immersion program if it is an option. 2. We can't change our age. And since all of us here at HTLAL are probably beyond the so-called critical period, we just have to do the best we can. There is no point arguing about this. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4665 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 32 of 38 28 July 2014 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, instead of further pursuing the age discussion, I suppose we could bring up that other perennially thorny topic of...talent! Maybe he just didn't have what it takes, or his innate ability was low enough that his rate of learning was too slow for his level of patience. Okay, sorry to be a downer. :-) Edited by tastyonions on 28 July 2014 at 8:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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