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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5562 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 1 of 7 11 September 2014 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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It seems to me that the non-english forums don't get used much. I know people try to get things going from time to time (as I did myself many years ago) and it would be great to see more of the members writing, but to be honest, a forum isn't really the est place for it. We don't want to pick up bad habits, so generally it's probably best to have writing corrected, and then any possible flow of conversation is usually fatally interrupted. And then there are better alternatives, like Lang-8, where you can submit writing for correction, and then have, if you wish, a chat with one another in the comments, which generally people seem to accept does not need correcting.
And what would be helpful instead, would be to hear more about people's specific studying. I know we have the logs and the "Practical questions about your language learning", but what I often find helpful is when people just happen to mention some aspect of the language that I am studying myself, or something of random interest, or things I hadn't even thought of. So, that's my suggestion. make the non English discussion rooms into "Practical Study Rooms", with stickies for specific language resources, and where people just can chat and post random interesting stuff that they have just learned. For example, I'd quite like to start a thread on "Unexpectedly Useful Vocabulary, that Probably Doesn't Appear in Frequency Lists". I know it is impossible in practice to get admin to agree to any changes, but if the mods agree to it, then presumably we can just do it. Of course, any writings in foreign languages will still be encouraged. Edited by schoenewaelder on 11 September 2014 at 4:56pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5061 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 2 of 7 12 September 2014 at 12:48am | IP Logged | ||
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There is already space on the forum for miscellaneous threads about a specific language, no? Unless the idea is to
reorganize "Specific Languages" and "Questions about your target languages" to one subforum with subsubforums for each language. But the non-English discussion rooms seem like a useful feature in that they're a haven for people who want to post in something other than English, which is otherwise banned according to forum rules. Why not use that space to ask practical questions or make interesting comments about your target language, in that language? If they're meaningful questions or comments rather than a "Let's practice Croatian" thread then I imagine those threads will get their fair share of replies regardless of how much that forum section is used in total. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5310 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 3 of 7 12 September 2014 at 9:03am | IP Logged | ||
Maybe you can achieve that simply by starting a thread, "Interesting German Grammar and Vocabulary"? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 4 of 7 12 September 2014 at 9:57am | IP Logged | ||
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When the non-English subfora were established, I had expected that they would thrive and be full of interesting content. But the most common message has been "Hey .. anybody there????" - and everybody apparently have waited for others to write something instead of writing something themselves (me too). So instead I established my own multilingual haven in the log area, and there I didn't feel I had to wait for others to write something or stick to some ongoing discussion topic, and I could write in whatever language I fancied as long as I also had some content in English. OK, this practice wasn't exactly sanctioned in the rules, but it has been tacitly accepted for a long time now, and I'm not the only one to have such multilingual log.
I do not think that the risk of picking up bad habits is an important consideration, but maybe some members don't feel at ease writing in their target languages, or they simply prefer writing something everybody can read. I don't know, but for me writing in my languages is important because it helps me to keep them alive, and even though not all members can read my rants I know that there are more readers here at HTLAL than in my dustbin.
You can already now write about language related questions in the non-English rooms, but generally they should be reserved for writings in the relevant languages. One partial exception is the Esperanto room - the moderators noticed that discussions about this language tended to become quite heated, so to preserve peace we moved everything related to Esperanto to a special room, including writings in English - and then the Esperanto haters could just keep away from that particular corner of the world. But opening the other language restricted subfora up for writings in English would in all likelihood mean that they ONLY contained messages in English, and that people would start complaining if anybody wrote in the relevant target languages. So Schoenewaelder's proposal would not solve the problem. The proposal could also be understood as a loosening up of the demand to write about language related themes, but we already have a fairly lax policy in the log area - as long as people stay away from the kind of religious and political themes which are notorious for causing havoc. Edited by Iversen on 12 September 2014 at 12:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4641 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 5 of 7 12 September 2014 at 11:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I've also been disappointed by the lack of activity in the non-English sections, although I can also blame myself for never starting a new thread there. I have participated a few times in some interesting threads in the German, French and Spanish sections, but the discussioins seem to die out pretty quickly.
Inspired by Iversen I also started a log where I write in different languages. Strictly speaking it is not really a "language learning log", as I do not write much about my learning processes (logging the time I spend etc.), but rather use different languages to write about trips I've made, books I've read and even about political topics (although respecting the house rule not to discuss politics) if I can relate them to languages somehow. So far I've only had positive feedback. It would be good to see more activity in the non-English rooms, but then more members have to take the initiative to start threads in these forums (myself included). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5562 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 6 of 7 15 September 2014 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm a bit confused still? I can start a thread, in English, in a language room, as long as it is about language (for example, my "interesting vocabulary which probably isn't as interesting as everyone thinks it is going to be, now that I've been going on about it so much" thread) ? But it's not encouraged? Can I start a mixed language thread ("the natural Method") so that people who wish can post in German, while replies can be in either English, German, or a mixture thereof (I assume there are quite a few people who enjoy reading their languages, but don't feel ready to write) ? Thanks. Just to try and clarify some of my original points. I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from posting in their languages. It should be the highlight of the forum. But at the moment it isn't really happening, and so those forums are just "wasted space". I don't see why opening up those forums to general learning activities would discourage anyone from posting. In fact it might even encourage people, if more of a spirit of "all in it together" learning was created. It would also be nice to see more people linking to examples of them speaking. At the moment, people only do that to ask for comments on their accents, but I'd just like to hear others actually speak or write in a foreign language. I know places do exist on the forum for all these things, but it seems to me it would be an encouragement to my learning to see them together in on one area. I also find it useful to read other people's queries about their languages, but on the "Ask questions about your target language" forum, there are probably only going to be two or three that relate to the language I am studying (on the first page). and it would be nice just to encourage learners to post random stuff, not necessarily "questions", just stuff like "gee, I learned this today and it's really neat". Edited by schoenewaelder on 15 September 2014 at 3:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 7 of 7 16 September 2014 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||
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There isn't a clear policy on this, but if you started a mixed language thread in a language room it would probably be OK. But if it then turned about to be a slippery slope towards one more English only room then the whole idea behind these 'language rooms' would be in jeopardy.
If you want to try it out then you're welcome to start a mixed thread - and in practice that means that at least some of the first message in the thread should be in the target language (or one of them) of the room. I doubt that answers in a thread dealing with French films will be in Chinese, but it would probably be seen as an excentricity rather than sabotage. As for speech samples there is a little-used mechanism in HTLAL, but it is fairly inflexible and (if my memory serves me right) limited to short sound clips. You can however upload longer rants to Youtube and publish the link here - as long as the content isn't blatantly commercial or breaks other rules of HTLAL. There are many members who have done precisely that, and then you can ask for comments from the members here if you want to. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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