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The most difficult part of learning? | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5213 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 17 of 19 27 January 2015 at 10:32am | IP Logged |
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Speaking. Producing language requires much more skill and knowledge than understanding the same language: pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary are all easier to recognise than to use. Plus there are the non-linguistic factors: finding people to speak with in the first place; psychological aspects like confidence and fear of making mistakes; limited time to get your message across unlike with writing where you can usually take your time to refine it; trying to avoid a switch to English; and the old classic of consistency - we all have "bad days" and speaking ability seems to vary from day to day much more than listening or reading ability.
You can acquire a very good level in listening, reading, and to some extent writing on your own from the comfort of your own home, but mastering speaking requires you to repeatedly put yourself out there. Of course, this is just my situation. Someone living in the country and socialising with native speakers might well not have most of the problems I've mentioned, and very extroverted people might prefer to go out and speak and find it boring to stay at home listening and reading. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| BobbyE Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5253 days ago 226 posts - 331 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 18 of 19 27 January 2015 at 11:01pm | IP Logged |
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I find speaking to actually be the easiest part, even though I practice it the least.
The reason is that it is the one thing I can really control. I can work my way around unknown words and simplify things. Rarely a thing goes unexpressed, even if expressed poorly. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5184 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 19 of 19 29 January 2015 at 10:48pm | IP Logged |
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Phonology.
I really hate it in textbooks. Especially when they don't use IPA, and even when they use it I still hate it. From Wikipedia on Polish: Between two soft consonants or between a soft consonant and /j/, the quality of vowels changes: /a/ is front [a] rather than central [ä], /ɛ/ is often close-mid ([e]),[3] /ɔ/ is somewhat higher and more front [ɔ̝̈], /i/ is very tense, approaching cardinal , and /u/ is somewhat fronted [u̟]. All these changes strongly resemble Russian. ugh... What? It's about my native language I had no idea about it. I don't want to say they are wrong or something, I just don't get it - for me 'a' is 'a', 'e' is 'e' and that's it. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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