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Do you ever get intimidated? | ||
Tags: Loss of confidence | Motivation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5099 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 9 of 24 05 October 2014 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not intimidated by any other learners. I have so many experiences with people who
"speak" French that I am automatically skeptical of people's supposed accomplishments. Most of the accomplished learners that I'm at all familiar with have the luxury of traveling to or living in or at least living near the countries where their languages are spoken so it like they're living in another world. Also, I don't have time to worry about my own progress AND someone else's. 1 person has 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 10 of 24 05 October 2014 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Intimidated is probably too strong a word for me, but I do feel inadequate sometimes
when it seems like everyone else on the forum is studying multiple languages for the TAC and/or the Super Challenge and I'm struggling along with just one. Some people just seem to know so much stuff and maintain such impressive schedules :) Sometimes I feel inadequate for not speaking French or for not having a clue what Assimil is or for not having some sort of 'method' for learning a language, beyond buying some books and hoping for the best. But I also feel inadequate because my house is not immaculately tidy and I don't know how to drive and I can't sing in tune, so I think this is more a feature of my personality that any effect of the forum :) I do think a bit of competition is motivating, though. Seeing how much other people have achieved makes me want to work harder to see whether I can achieve the same. And I find it quite motivating to be bad at something and to need to improve; if I find something easy straight away then it often doesn't have much interest for me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5344 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 11 of 24 05 October 2014 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I get intimidated by the fact that no one as far as I know has accomplished what I would wish to.
Quite frankly, of the more publicly exposed language learners, other than professor Argüelles, no one seems to me particularly awe inspiring. And even he was forced into the painful position of having to choose among the languages he had studied many to permanently forgo. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 12 of 24 05 October 2014 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@ Serpent: You are not exactly a novice when it comes to speaking English either, your English is excellent!
As for espejismo, he has, as you know, lived in the US for years, and I majored in English at the University, has spoken or read English almost every day since before you were born, plus I am Scandinavian, which means that I get masses of daily input. Considering all those factors my English should actually have been on an even higher level. :-) As for the question in general, no, I rarely get intimidated. Generally there is some aspect of the language that I feel I do just as good or even better than them, or I am creative at finding excellent reasons why they are doing better or creative excuses for why I do not do better:-) I am in awe of people like Iversen, Richard Simcott or Luca, but their circumstances are different than mine, and they can spend much more time on their language studies. Luca and Iversen don't have to do what I have done for the last two hours (help my oldest daughter write job applications) or what I will do for the next hour (prepare their lunch bags and help them with the homework they had forgotten to do over the week end), and Richard has the help of his wife. Would I have had the same results as them if I did not have kids? No idea. But I might :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6060 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 13 of 24 05 October 2014 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@ sushi13 (OP):
When I first arrived at this forum, it was a bit intimidating. There were fewer members, and to participate in some of the discussions you felt you had to have a degree in linguistics, or at least a firm grasp of a lot of technical concepts. At least, that's what I felt. Right now, the mood is a lot more relaxed and friendly. Some members' profiles are even understated. I could be wrong but, by the tone of your post, I'd venture to say you are young (probably a student). If that makes you feel better, quite a few forum members acquired many of their languages (apart from those mandatory at school) later in life. Europeans who like languages also have an unfair advantage: most of us don't really have to travel very far until we reach a place "where people speak something else". If I were you, I wouldn't worry: keep learning. You are among fellow learners (and friends) here. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 14 of 24 05 October 2014 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yep! Although my wife says "Teapot lid", but works out the same. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 15 of 24 06 October 2014 at 12:51am | IP Logged | |||||
Always. It's quite a good way to waste your time and energy, to make life and learning new skills much more difficult than it need be. But, well, everyone needs hobbies, and apparently that is one of mine. (Yay insecurity and social anxiety! Who would I be without them!) Some things that may help * make yourself busy, so busy that you don't have the time for comparisions * deliberately spend time with people who you can't compare yourself to because there aren't enough similarities to your situation * in the case of learning languages, if you can, socialize with native speakers who don't speak your language much better than you theirs * accept that you are not the other person * find people who even when they are very adept at a skill don't face others with attitudes like that anyone must be able to reach a certain level in that skill in a time frame they feel is the correct one, and anyone who doesn't is just lazy or doesn't want it enough. people who, while they may refer to their achievements and experience as something that can show others that these things are possible to do encourage them to develop their own skills the best way they can. As Serpent said, competition is not necessarily bad, but I think it depends on the emotion you associate competition with. If you see somebody doing something and you react with curiosity, asking yourself if you can also do that, if you can learn to do it as well or even better than the other person, if you want to challenge yourself to do it - that can make competition help you improve even more. But if you feel like a failure when you don't meet a required standard, threatened, like you will lose people's respect, be ashamed of yourself - then competition isn't particularly helpful. I think most people experience both forms every now and then, and those who are good at emotional self-regulation can actually turn threatening scenarios into playful challenges for themselves. But not everyone can do that, and if you try to reframe the idea of competition and fail, and then try to tell yourself that comparing yourself to other people is not important to you and fail, then it's a good idea to distract yourself and primarily pay attention to things for which you have no comparision. You'll end up comparing yourself to others again sooner or later anyways, and maybe then you'll be able to change the way you interpret the situation. More likely if you actually managed to get something done despite being somewhat discouraged. Edited by Bao on 06 October 2014 at 4:44am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 16 of 24 06 October 2014 at 1:09am | IP Logged | |||||
No, they are not simply bogus. There have been exaggerated claims that teenagers can speak 20+ languages at a fluent, very high, or native-like level. These claims are false, and there's no need to feel bad about yourself for actually needing time and effort to learn language. Everyone does. However, you may be referring to Tim Doner. When he was a teenager, he posted a video on Youtube of him saying a short monologue in 20 different languages which he studies. He really had studied all those languages by that point, and the video wasn't faked. He was only at an advanced level in some of those languages, though. In many of them, he only said a few simple things and explained in the video that he was only a beginner in some of his languages. I don't know what Tim's done since then, but certainly there are adults who can speak 20+ languages. Not perfectly. I'm sure those people are not trying to beat or intimidate anyone, in fact most of those that have any online or public persona at all do their best to help others!
No one climbed Everest until Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did together. Rather than being intimidated by those who have some degree of success, let's join forces and together we can do greater things. That is the purpose of this forum. Edited by robarb on 06 October 2014 at 1:10am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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