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Is this normal? (Weird experience) | ||
Tags: Epiphany | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3912 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: French | Message 1 of 14 12 March 2015 at 3:21am | IP Logged | ||
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I had a very weird experience with my French listening time last night, I was on the point of falling asleep and
there was a news story about Alexandre Dumas, and the mansion that inspired the Count of Monte Cristo, and I could understand every word, it was like I was listening to English not simply doing what I usually do when listening which is listening for words I know and picking out meanings. It lasted for about the length of the story until I stopped paying attention as closely. Is this a sign of progress in my listening skill or is it more the fact that I was relaxed and not focusing on the usual things? I had no idea you could understand a spoken language in this manner that was not your own. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 14 12 March 2015 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||
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I have had that experience too. It is real and it's a sign of progress.
When I am very tired, my mind seems to slow down. This makes it easy to focus peacefully listen. My mind doesn't do it's more typical jumping around. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4948 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 3 of 14 12 March 2015 at 4:59am | IP Logged | ||
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I think you answered your own question. You stopped focusing on all the words, and thus getting left behind in the narration. This exercise is fine to reinforce new vocabulary you learned (especially if you are at the stage where you are learning topic-specific vocab and then go find some audio about it), but sometimes just stepping back and simply trying to understand the whole story can do wonders.
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 4 of 14 12 March 2015 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Obviously progress. I suppose you've been challenging yourself and leaving your comfort
zone for some time and therefore something that happened to be in your comfort zone feels like a breeze. I suppose you can expect such a pleasure more and more often with wider and wider range of material :-) P.S. congratulations! Edited by Cavesa on 12 March 2015 at 12:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 5 of 14 13 March 2015 at 7:03am | IP Logged | ||
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The human mind works in mysterious ways we have yet to understand. A few years ago came across the
story of Ben McMahon in Melbourne, Australia. He was studying Mandarin in school but made no progress. Then 1 day he was involved in a car accident and suffered a concussion. For several days he was in a coma. After he woke up the first words he spoke was to a Chinese nurse in Mandarin. The rest of the family was afraid that he had lost his ability to speak English and had to learn to speak Mandarin to communicate with him. Then his English started to come back gradually. After the experience, he participated in a Mandarin-speaking contest representing Australia. He also appeared on TV in Taiwan. Afterwards, he hosted a local TV show 澳麥GA (Ao Mai Ga) for the Chinese community. Story link: There is still a lot we don't know about the brain. Some people believe they had past lives. They may even remember being in a different time and place speaking a totally different language. An English neurosurgeon Oliver Sacks who works in New York had studied the case of Tony Cicoria who was struct by lightening. After the experience, he started to develop an interest in music. In the past Tony would listen to music on the radio while driving but could not play an instrument. Not only did he learn to play the piano but started performing his own compositions as well. Edited by shk00design on 13 March 2015 at 7:23am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 6 of 14 13 March 2015 at 10:49am | IP Logged | ||
Let's not get carried away here. While it's surprising that the young man, Ben McMahon, came out of the coma speaking Mandarin before regaining his English skills, it's not as if he did not know any Mandarin before. If you listen to the video in the article above, you learn that young Ben had actually spent some months in China before all this, studying Chinese I suppose or at least absorbing it. And he had studied the language in school. The brain trauma did not give Ben a new-found knowledge of Mandarin; it triggered or activated something he already had learned. And we are not told how good his Mandarin was as he came out of the coma. But following the whole thing, he pursued his studies in Mandarin and relocated to Shanghai. So, it's not as if he came out of the coma and was promptly able to host a television show in Mandarin. The Ben we see in the video chatting away in Mandarin in Shanghai is not the Ben just out of the hospital. I don't want to be a party pooper here and take away from the young man's merit or the newsworthiness of this story, but I think that we have to recognize that this is not a miracle. If I get hit on the head and a week later start speaking excellent Polish, that would be a miracle indeed. Similarly, if, following a car accident, I can suddenly start playing the piano despite having never touched a piano in my life, that would be very surprising, What is interesting in this story and of some relevance to us here is how can we activate those language skills that are dormant within us. There must be a better way than taking a hammer to one's head. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 7 of 14 13 March 2015 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | ||
Based on what I gathered from the video Ben's coma from the car accident was the trigger for his increased fluency in Mandarin. It is true that he did spend some months in China before the accident but the language did not click until after the coma. His first words after the coma to an Asian nurse was something like: "嘿你好, 嘿护士, 我这边好痛" (Hey how are you? Hey nurse, I feel a lot of pain on this side of the body). He was saying the Mandarin phrases naturally without much thought. Personally, I went on an exchange program in Taiwan for 3 months. at the time I had enough fluency in Mandarin to go shopping and order at local restaurants but a lot of people in the program did not. If I travel to Paris, the only thing I can say is probably "Bonjour, comment ça va"? Even these simple words would require some thinking and hesitation. In Ben's case, he also wrote notes in Chinese on paper shortly after the coma. For someone to be writing in French wouldn't require as much effort because the language uses the same alphabet as in English but Chinese characters are totally alien to English-speakers. Neurosurgeon Dr. Pankaj Sah suggested certain parts of the brain responsible for Ben's English language got damaged and other parts for his Mandarin got connected. Ben went on to further his Chinese studies in Australia and then Shanghai after the accident. The point is that the accident triggered something in the brain that gave Ben the confidence to speak Mandarin that he didn't have before. There are people who studied French for a few years wouldn't have the same confidence to even say simple words & phrases. A French native speaker comes up to them and ask "Parlez-vous français"? I am sure there would be some hesitation before saying just the word "Oui" and saying "Oui, je parle français aussi" would require a lot of confidence. The video also mentioned other documented cases of people speaking foreign languages after an accident including a Croatian teen who woke up from a coma in 2010 speaking fluent German and an American vet work up speaking only Swedish. While Ben had some knowledge of Chinese before the accident, in the 2 other cases mentioned, the individuals had no fluency in the languages they started speaking. Before the coma, Ben's Chinese fluency may only be basic and definitely not conversational. In the case of Tony Cicoria, he started playing the piano it happened after his accident. Everybody including myself listened to piano music. Being exposed to the sound of a piano doesn't mean we can play piano. I went to a Christmas dinner last year. In the room were 4 people who "supposedly" passed their Gr.6 piano exam but not a single person felt confident enough to even play an easy song. I was playing "Christmas Time is Here" from the Charlie Brown song book from memory not because I passed Gr.6 piano but I had an interest in music. Edited by shk00design on 13 March 2015 at 3:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4098 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 8 of 14 13 March 2015 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||
The American vet in question isn't the same famous American who "woke up speaking only Swedish", on top of having amnesia, and decided to move to Sweden as a result? Because I remember that case. I remember seeing a report where he was met at the airport by his Swedish former girlfriend, which made me dig around more and it turned out he'd lived in Sweden on and off for 30 years, a fact that was left out of the majority of the "American man magically speaks Swedish" reports. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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