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Success with Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5108 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 9 of 22 20 October 2010 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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There seem to be at least two types of thinking about the language learning and the future, the vague "I'll learn Russian by June" and the "Day 1: I will learn about how to introduce myself in Russian and say what nationality I am; Day 2: I will learn how to ask how someone is ..." and so on. Obviously the second is much more likely to be a successful approach, but you have to be very organized and someone who enjoys making do-lists to this well. The first type of thinker can hand over responsibility to a book, a teacher, a language course, etc., but then needs the motivation to carry on. This is the true difficulty, maintaining the effort against the blizzard of things we have to get on with in our lives. I have reached a crossroads in my life in that I need to take control of my language learning, job, health - all aspects of my life and I think I will have to adopt the second way, that of list-makiing and breaking everything down into simple steps. This doesn't come naturally, but I will have to do it.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6517 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 10 of 22 21 October 2010 at 5:50am | IP Logged | ||
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There's a third type, too, who doesn't set goals at all. I just enjoy studying languages and do it for fun. So far it's worked pretty well. It seems to me that you only need to set goals and work towards them if you don't actually want to study languages (but rather want to be able to speak them). Luckily, I find the process of learning a language more rewarding than actually knowing them (Lord knows I have no use for my French at all).
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| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5108 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 11 of 22 21 October 2010 at 9:08am | IP Logged | ||
Sorry, Ari, that's what I meant by the first type as you presumably must have this goal, i.e. to study a language. I am this type too, but I have found it's not made me fluent. When I was younger and for other subjects I found it did work for me, but not now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6207 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 12 of 22 21 October 2010 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is a useful book, though pre-Internet, so none of the people interviewed mention that as a help (or hindrance).
I first read this book in my university library, which had a copy of it. It underlines for me how different language learners are, and how diverse are their methods. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 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 13 of 22 22 October 2010 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I would put myself in both camps (insofar that is possible). When I have decided to learn a language I work hard to get to the point where I can read texts and understand speech (TV, podcast or living persons during my travels), and ideally I want to mark that I have 'arrived' by doing a monolingual travel (though with some languages that may be difficult due to the lack of a suitable community) - but I don't set myself higher goals than that. Maybe I'll get further as a consequence of my activities in a certain language, but I have no plans to become a spy anywhere so I don't have to write or speak like a native (you can judge my level in different languages in my videos at Youtube, but I'm not really interested in hearing the result).
During the 'conquest' I use structured methods, but it is quite erratic which languages I choose to spend my time on a certain day, and for how long. Maybe I find something on the internet or on TV, or I just feel like doing wordlists in Greek or Irish. Basically I'm a control freak in my study methods, but a complete anarchist in my time planning. And I can permit myself this kind of study because it all just is a hobby for me. Edited by Iversen on 22 October 2010 at 12:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5280 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 14 of 22 22 October 2010 at 5:14am | IP Logged | ||
Actually, that would be my dream university. For me, a textbook with exercises WITH ANSWERS is an ideal way to learn anything. As I've said elsewhere, everyone needs to experiment and find the learning method that works best for them. But still, spending too much time pondering how to learn a language rather than actually engaging in language study can be foolish. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6610 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 15 of 22 22 October 2010 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | ||
I read and listen about learning languages in other languages than my native languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6517 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 16 of 22 22 October 2010 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm not sure this is what you're saying, but I've met arguments like this before and there's a fallacy. Because not everyone can learn languages on their own, language classes are necessary. Of course, just because a lot of people fail learning languages on their own doesn't mean they will do better in classes. I don't think I've met anyone who learned a language in class without large amounts of complimentary self-study. I studied French for six years in school, with decent grades, and I still emerged without being even close to being able to hold a conversation (in fact, I was probably a lot like most Chinese people speaking English). I figured that if I didn't learn properly, it'd all been a waste of time, so I took a full-time class for six months. This full-time class consisted of two lessons a week, which were mainly for asking questions and discussing. All the studying was done at home. After this class, I considered myself fluent (as in being able to speak without hesitation and stumbling) in French. Of course, lots of students dropped the class because they couldn't take it. I'm not sure they'd done better in a different kind of class, though. Swedish school children have to study a third language in school in what must be the most extravagant waste of tax money in the country. I have yet to meet anyone who learned to speak French or German (the most common choices available) through these classes. Everyone studied it, nobody can speak it. That's a pretty massive failure rate. Eh. Rant over. Sorry, was this too OT? 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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