|
 |
Stories of unusually rapid progress? | ||
Tags: Success Story | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5535 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 19 24 December 2014 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Normally, I assume that reaching a useful level in a language requires a significant chunk of time. This makes sense: languages are big, and natives get to spend thousands of hours learning them.
But every once in a while, I stumble across a story of unusually rapid progress in one area or another. For example: - Sprachprofi went from zero to 50% comprehension of a single Japanese TV series in 30 hours - aYa claimed she could achieve pretty good listening comprehension by doing L/R 12–15 hours/day for several weeks - Mezzofanti famously learned enough of a language overnight to take the confession of prisoners to be executed - Solfrid Cristin reached a fairly advanced level in Spanish after 6 months of full-time immersion - One of HTLAL's polyglots (I forget who) apparently had a listening breakthrough in Afrikaans after less than 80 hours - Several years ago, a couple of HTLALers tested around A2 after a 40-hour challenge Many of these stories involve focusing on a single skill (often listening), and many of them involve moving between related languages. A few stories, like Mezzofanti's and Sprachprofi's, involve focusing on a single topic. Many of the people involved are very experienced language learners. In other words, rapid progress usually seems to involve both tradeoffs and prior experience. So, some questions for HTLAL: Have you ever experienced surprisingly rapid progress? How did you do it? What were the limitations and tradeoffs? 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5239 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 19 24 December 2014 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | ||
|
No. Now I want to cry.
12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5535 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 19 24 December 2014 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||
Sorry about that. :-/ If it makes you feel better, a lot of these stories come with pretty significant footnotes and limitations, and a lot of them involve forcing one skill to CEFR B1 or so very quickly, sometimes with prior knowledge of a related language. OK, let me chip in my own story. It's a lot less impressive than the ones I listed above, of course. With my little subs2srs experiment, it feels like I'm progressing a lot faster than I ever did with French. Obviously, a big chunk of this is thanks to my double Romance cognate discount (English & French), and because I've been pushing listening hard at the expense of everything else. But even so, it's downright weird to be able to enjoyably follow the plot of the easier episodes of Avatar after 2 months and ~30 hours. Now, let's be clear: my progress comes with tons of footnotes and limitations. In any overall sense, my Spanish is still pretty awful. I can't even conjugate the present tense of ser "to be"! But still, I was almost B2 before I could enjoy TV in French, so I'm pretty happy with my awful Spanish. I'd really love to hear more personal stories like this. Your results don't have to be as amazing as Mezzofanti's! I'm interested in any story where you were surprised by your progress. And I'm also interested in what you couldn't do—rapid progress seems to come with significant tradeoffs. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| plumbem! Groupie United States Joined 3636 days ago 44 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French | Message 4 of 19 24 December 2014 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I think I've had amazing progress with French this year, such that I was surprised, but the more I think about it, I am discounting my childhood education in the language and my pathetic 3 semesters at college so that I coudld graduate (The prof. at the time gave me a mercy D on my second failing of French 202), more for wanting to feel efficacious in my study and proud of the work I've done than having experienced any blazing advances. It's good to encourage oneself and yet sometimes punishing to be realistic about what one has achieved. A language is such an endless and multi-faceted struggle for mastery that one has to insulate oneself a bit from the war and focus on the battle. For me, a year is a pretty short amount of time to have gone from like an A2 in reading/writing to a wonderfully developing B2 in spoken/listening as well. If I could do something similar every year or every other year, I would be more than content. I won't really know until I start out on a language I have no background in but I am at least happy enough to be making progress that is palpable and meaningful.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5384 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 19 24 December 2014 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
I was part of the small group that reached A2 in Finnish in 35 hours (within 30 days). We were evaluated by a university professor of Finnish (through Skype) on all 4 main skills: speaking, writing, reading, writing. The fact that it was Finnish was significant as none of us had studied it or a related language before and it's not an easy language. However, A2 is, well, just A2, after all. Nevertheless, we were all experienced language learners. I'd say that's what made the relatively rapid progression possible. Being able to gauge instinctively what matters and what doesn't, what's a plausible construction or rule, how a sound system works, etc., can indeed save one a significant amount of time and effort. Immediately speaking, there is no downside -- it's really motivating to progress fast. But in the long run, I'd say the faster you learn it, the faster you forget it... I'm not sure up to what point this rule would continue to apply, but certainly up to 3 months in my experience. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Xenops Senior Member United States thexenops.deviantart Joined 3828 days ago 112 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 6 of 19 24 December 2014 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||
|
When I had the discipline (and when it wasn't during the holidays), studying about 30 minutes a day really sped learning and comprehension.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5384 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 19 24 December 2014 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | ||
|
One more thought! It was part of our challenge that we couldn't study more than 35 hours within 30 days. While studying everyday for at least an hour is not always easy, this also meant that you had to study at the best time and in the best conditions -- that hour had to mean something. If you have no specific goal or time constraint, it's easy to be less effective.
5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cpnlsn88 Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5040 days ago 63 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, Latin | Message 8 of 19 24 December 2014 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I have made very fast progress in Spanish in reading. This is in large part due to prior
knowledge of French and some Latin which tends to make the language more transparent to me. The limitation is that I tend to be able to read a particular type of thing - factual, propositional material rather than novels. Nevertheless progress is progress! I hope to do something similar with other Romance languages so as to be able to read at a basic level fairly quickly - there is a trade-off there in not developing other skills at the same rate. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
