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Language learning dropouts | ||
Tags: Burn-out | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4621 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 1 of 29 26 September 2014 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Each year around December or January, there is a chaotic rush of enthusiasm to join language-learning teams
here. Typically 20-25 or more people sign up for each team and for a few months, there is a lot of activity. At some point (April-May?) the number of active members drops off drastically until there are only a handful of hardcore enthusiasts left who stumble through to the bitter end, then the cycle starts all over. Attrition in language learning is well known and there is a high dropout rate (see table and/or website below for data about foreign language learners in the US). My question is: Is this just to be expected and there's nothing to be done, just like the case of those who make New Year Resolutions to quit smoking or get more exercise? Is there something we can do to address the flagging enthusiasm? Or would this be attempting to herd cats and we should just accept that persistence depends primarily on an individual motivation? Is it that people naively think they really can become "fluent in x days" and then the time and work that's needed to achieve mastery of a language drives away the motivation? Would a warning help or would no one listen? Are there successful teams here who have maintained a large active membership, and if so, how have you done it? Would a different timing structure be more useful? Teams that form by quarter, a specific goal or aligned with a 6-week or similar challenge or some other alternative...? What are your thoughts? Table: Foreign Language Enrollments by Level in High School in 1925 (1 State) and 2000 (50 states) 1925 (1 State) Level and % of Year 1 Enrollment I=100% II=79% III=10% IV=4.5% 2000 (50 States) Level and % of Year 1 Enrollment I =100% II =70% III =31% IV+=18% (includes AP, level V) Backseat Linguist 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 4006 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 2 of 29 26 September 2014 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my case, I always seem to have a hard time logging into social media everyday. That's why I can't do Facebook, lol. During my time away from here I did do studying (even picked up an interest in three new languages) but I was just not on here during this time period.
But to answer your questions, I believe that it will always happen and then either life, laziness, or lack of commitment happens and people fall by the wayside. Persistence is personal thing driven by personal interest. My boyfriend has traced his maternal roots all the way back to Germany and Finland. He has no interest whatsoever in the languages or the cultures. He tried Rosetta Stone for a week in German and stopped. He just doesn't have the drive, despite me trying to foster an interest. Do I think that people really believe that they can learn a language in X amount of days? Considering the popularity of the programs that promise that, yes. People on here all seem to know that that just isn't true. I would imagine that people would have better sense than to think that they can learn a language to fluency in 30 days, but obviously not. People want things to happen quick, fast, and in a hurry. I can understand that sentiment, because I'm not the most patient woman on Earth myself, but you have to look at it as there are some things that aren't going to happen overnight. Rome wasn't build in a day and achieving fluency takes a long time. The US has to my knowledge always been behind on learning languages. We just don't prioritize it. We have Canada (an majority English speaking nation) above us and Mexico below us. The only language that almost all Americans get exposed to regularly is Spanish (minus whatever is spoken in the home) and perhaps French for those that live up North. Most Americans don't see the need to learn because a lot of us don't travel. In Europe they're all on top of each other so it's easy and cheap to visit other countries who speak other languages. We don't have that here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4348 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 29 26 September 2014 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Do people believe one can be fluent in x days? I certainly do. I remember being fairly fluent in
English - at most - after 3-4.5 years since starting to study it. So, 1000-1500 days was (probably more than) enough. I'm certainly not even close to a native speaker's level, I'd estimate my level to be around C1. But, I generally don't like when people say "language learning is a life-long endeavor," etc. I mean, of course, there's almost always room for improvement, and as long as you have frequent contact with the language, at or slightly above your level, you will keep improving. But - at least for now - I think I can say I'm done studying English. TL;DR I don't think it is foolish or naive to expect fluency after a certain amount of days. As long as the number is realistic in the particular case. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 29 26 September 2014 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
I think you've mostly answered your own questions. I expect the same thing you referred to about the rush of excitement followed by a fall off of participation to happen again, because of the reasons you indicated. Good intentions are just not enough. There has to be follow through. This year I joined team Exploradores for my first experience participating (since joining the forum four years ago) in a TAC group. I don't think I'll be doing it again. Interest never really quite got going in the first place with the new learners. It just never seemed to gain any traction with them. At Exploradores we had several newbies sign up and then, nada. When it's just mainly experienced people "talking shop" that can be fun- but that can be had in the general forum. It could also serve to discourage beginners from participating because they may feel that they can't contribute. Having a good mix of people helps a lot. We experienced learners didn't need all that much help or inspiration. I think these kind of groups work best with one or two experienced learners and the rest of the team being at or about the same level. In this way there is more of a common goal to work towards. Case in point, Luso's team "Rare". Team Rare has done very well because of the nature of the languages themselves being uncommon, the dedication of its experienced members, its leader's interesting challenges and the team members' participation in them working towards a common goal. Also, this group's members all seem to be at roughly the same level and take inspiration from one another. Good, motivated learners = good team. I already do a lot of the TAC goals without needing to be in a group. I follow several logs here and am glad to help if I'm able. In that way I feel like we're on an unofficial "team". I don't think I will be joining TAC or need to be totally annihilating anything next year, but I will be around to help if I can. Edited by iguanamon on 27 September 2014 at 2:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4888 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 5 of 29 26 September 2014 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've come to hate TAC season on HTLAL. It seems that all this energy gets spent
setting up teams, and voting on teams, and arguing about details, etc. that any other conversation gets buried. And it wouldn't be so bad except for all that energy seems to disappear into the ether after a few months. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5390 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 6 of 29 26 September 2014 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
I find it kind of amusing that languages get split into multiple teams to avoid having too many members when that ceases to be a problem after about a month or two. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4520 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 7 of 29 26 September 2014 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me it's just routine setting in. When I do more or less the same stuff everyday and am
happy about it, then there is no point in logging the same stuff over and over or looking for inspiration/motivation in other members' log. The time is better spent learning. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4582 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 8 of 29 26 September 2014 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is the first year I've participated the TAC so I'm not sure what normally
happens. I did find it a bit confusing when I was trying to sign up last year because the thread had so many posts in it, but overall I'm glad I did. I am definitely one of the people BAnna refers to who made a New Year's Resolution to get more exercise and it lasted until about the second week of March :) One of my other resolutions was to do something in Croatian every day and I think the only reason why I have (so far!) kept that resolution while failing in all my others is that at the start of the year I told myself I had to write something in my HTLAL log every day. That meant I had to *do* something every day to put in my log, and for the first couple of months of the year (which are my busiest work-wise) I think that was the only thing that kept me going with Croatian. Of course different things work for different people and you could definitely say that if I spent all the time I spend rambling in my log actually learning Croatian, I would speak much better Croatian right now. But actually if I wasn't spending the time writing in the log, I probably wouldn't be spending any time on Croatian at all, because it would have become yet another thing that I "don't have time for". I am technically in a team, but I'm not sure it's made much difference to me. Having just spent 10 minutes trying to locate the team thread in the forum, I've realised I actually had no idea that half the people who are in my team were in my team (hi team!) so I don't think I have been a very good team member. I have greatly benefited from advice and support from a couple of people in my team, for which I'm grateful, but I've also had some really good advice from people learning completely unrelated languages but doing the Super Challenge, so I'm not sure how much difference being in a team has made. I do like reading the logs of some of the teams that seem to have a really good team spirit, with challenges and things. I like reading the log of Team Катюша in particular; they seem to be really organised and motivated so perhaps they have some tips they could share! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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