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How to activate a language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Demeter Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Portugal Joined 6667 days ago 10 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 9 of 18 05 September 2006 at 9:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Peronally, I wouldn't put too much stress on talking/thinking to yourself.
After all, you'll only be reinforcing your own mistakes and shortcomings, as the only two conversationalists you are familiar with - you and yourself :p - are both flawed. The more you hear yourself say something which is incorrect (because there's nobody there to correct you), the more it will feel/sound right to you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6714 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 18 05 September 2006 at 10:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Demeter and I have very different strategies. For me the central thing is fluency and I do not see absolute correctness as necessary on the lower levels, - it is better to say or think a lot of errors (to be corrected later) than to be so afraid of errors that you don't dare say or think anything. Indeed the correction of errors through listening or reading or direct intervention from a teacher is much more likely to be effective and automatic, if you are in the habit of using the language freely and at a fairly brisk pace. In that situation you even have the the choice of slowing down to tackle the more difficult problems. If you laboriously construct your sentences to make them perfect from the start, I doubt that you have the opposite choice of suddenly speeding up.
Edited by Iversen on 05 September 2006 at 10:40am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lengua Senior Member United States polyglottery.wordpre Joined 6695 days ago 549 posts - 595 votes Studies: French, Italian, Spanish, German | Message 11 of 18 05 September 2006 at 10:53am | IP Logged | ||
What Iversen said. :^) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Demeter Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Portugal Joined 6667 days ago 10 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 12 of 18 06 September 2006 at 8:57am | IP Logged | ||
I certainly agree with this - what I was refering to are the occasions where there are no options of being corrected later. Let's say you're studying Ancient Greek: The odds of you ever actually talking to someone in Ancient Greek are very slim. So you talk to yourself, and never have anyone to correct you. In the end, you're propagating your own kind of Ancient Greek patois: that's the version you're ingraining in your brain through repetition and the sound of your own self speaking it. If, on the other hand, you're learning a language that you have the chance of being corrected in (ie, one that someone you know speaks fluently) your time will be better spent conversing with them than conversing in your own mind. When you talk to yourself, you can only use words and structures you already know: you're not learning anything new. If you talk to someone else, the odds are you'll be exposed to a new word, or a new verb tense, or a new expression every once in a while. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7026 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 18 06 September 2006 at 11:06am | IP Logged | ||
Following this logic through, if you do eventually meet someone to talk to in Ancient Greek, you might not even understand each other due to the differences in patois! Edited by patuco on 06 September 2006 at 11:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6714 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 18 06 September 2006 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is no doubt that the correction phases are necessary; the question is how much you can harm yourself in the intervals between corrections.
When I'm talking or thinking in a foreign language I mostly know when I'm on thin ice, and having been in that situation is the best possible incentive to take notice if I later have the chance to learn the correct version. And afterwards I have much better chances of remembering it if I produce a lot of utterances, even if there is no teacher or friendly native around to supervise my efforts. As for Ancient Greek I never studied it. I did take courses in Latin for several years, but today remember very little in spite of good marks. I blame this on the fact that there was no one that told me to start speaking and thinking in Latin, - we were only only supposed to read and translate. I would conceivably never have attained the formidable eloquence of a Cicero or Ovid, but I would have been content with less. Edited by Iversen on 06 September 2006 at 12:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Demeter Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Portugal Joined 6667 days ago 10 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 15 of 18 06 September 2006 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I always recall an anecdote an acquaintance likes to tell. Prior to his retirement, in his youth, he was a Historian and worked in a British University; his department frequently corresponded with a Chinese academic who was supposedly brilliant.
That Professor had also singlehandedly taught himself English and wrote it eloquently and poetically in his letters. This was well before China had more or less opened up to the West, so they had to bend over backwards to get him to travel to the UK. Finally, they did manage to have him over as guest lecturer during a Meeting. It was then that they found that nobody could understand a word the Professor said. His pronounciation of words was... creative, to say the least. He had never actually *spoken* to an Englishman or heard one speak. So he decided what each word sounded like, on his own. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6631 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 16 of 18 27 October 2006 at 5:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I always think to myself in the language I am learning and find that this is very useful. I am quite shy and don't usually talk to a real person until I am fairly fluent. I do talk a lot inside my head though. I do this right from the beginning even if I am fairly limited in what I can talk about. I just make up "imaginary friends" to talk to.
As for repeating one's own mistakes, I don't think this is a problem. Studies show that language acquisition (whether first language or foreign language) occurs in a spesific order (the order depends on the language). Correcting someone doesn't help much -- they will continue to make that mistake until they naturally acquire the structure in question. The structures are "absorbed" naturally from the environment. So as long as you hear or read the language in its correct form, you will pick it up. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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