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Speaking with strangers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4857 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 9 of 32 02 September 2013 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I do... while hitch-hiking :D In different situation it's rather too stressful for me, but it happened several times.
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| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5098 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 10 of 32 03 September 2013 at 2:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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When I started studying French, if I had the slightest notion that someone could speak it I would instantly assail them with every Pimsleur phrase that I knew. I had so few opportunities to practice that I simply could not afford to be shy.
I've since learned that my fellow citizens who claim to speak French usually can't (in my limited experience, of course) so I don't bother to try in those cases, but I still eagerly approach most Africans. Sadly, in my area they are usually from Ghana, but there's only one way to know for sure.
"Where are you from" works well for me, but if you're studying something like Icelandic that might not be the best idea. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6123 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 11 of 32 03 September 2013 at 5:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Here in the USA, sometimes I can spot the Japanese. By body language, and maybe just having been around Japanese Americans gives me an eye for what the from Japan, Japanese people look and act like. The thing is, mistaking a Korean or Chinese guy for Japanese is usually not appreciated, and asking is pretty irritating to Asians here in the USA. Mostly I just only talk to people at the meetup when I manage to make it there, which hasn't been in few months now. Hmm.
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| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4442 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 12 of 32 09 September 2013 at 2:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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Conversation is 1 thing that Moses McCormick the polyglot from the US is famous for. Just focus on
grammar won't get you anywhere. You are actually wasting years doing something another person can achieve in just 6 months. The section below is taken from the web-page should be self-explanatory: http://www.mimicmethod.com/2/post/2013/01/two-polyglots-chal lenge-you-to-self-record-your- language-learning.html The flaw in their thinking lies in their perception of “time”. You may have taken a language class for 2 years, but in a 1 hour class you’ll be lucky to get your lips moving for more than 10 total minutes; the rest of the time is typically spent listening to the teacher, other students, or writing some stupid stuff. So even if you got to class three times a week, you’re only getting 30 minutes tops of speaking practice per week, not to mention that the quality of that practice is low since it’s an artificial classroom context instead of a real world one. The point should be clear to everybody... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4826 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 13 of 32 09 September 2013 at 9:34am | IP Logged | |||||
I mentioned elsewhere how I had hardly any speaking experience in 5 years of school French, but was then expected to take an oral exam... Theoretically, the language-laboratory approach should get over some of the problems mentioned above. Here you can have the illusion of one-to-one teaching, without undue sound interference from other students, and the student could be speaking for, say, up to 50% of the time (as part of a listen-speak cycle). Language labs didn't exist when I was at school. I've been to adult evening classes where the institutes were so equipped, but they didn't seem to be making much use of them. I wonder if they never really discovered the best ways of using them.
Nowadays I tend to agree, although originally, and by inclination, I would have thought the opposite. Learn to speak first, and the grammar will eventually fall into place. If you learn the grammar first, it may not help you to speak, and may actually slow you down, because you will be over-conscious of making grammatical mistakes. Listening is also extremely important; I wouldn't like to say which is more important: listening or speaking. Surely, they go hand in hand? In the past I've been inclined towards the side that says no speaking for (some large amount of time), until you've had massive input. Well, I still think massive input is important, but: 1. If you spend too long absorbing massive input but never attempting to produce anything, you get get into an over-passive mindset. At least I've noticed that with myself. Perhaps not everyone is the same. 2. If you know you are going to have to produce soon, you will actually listen more attentively: i.e. active production tends to improve listening, and actually makes it more of an "active" process. Well, I can't prove that of course, but that's where my thinking is right now. Edited by montmorency on 09 September 2013 at 10:04am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4826 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 14 of 32 09 September 2013 at 10:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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A clickable version of the link mentioned above by shk00design:
LINK By the way, I have no connection with that website and know nothing and care less about the mimic method or flow-whatever, and have no time for monster-ego "linguists". I just hate to see broken links being posted. Edited by montmorency on 10 September 2013 at 9:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 15 of 32 10 September 2013 at 3:10am | IP Logged | |||||
I know the feeling. I've gotten fairly decent at telling many Asian races apart now (mostly from watching so much Korean TV, especially since variety shows often make visits to other Asian countries), but I still hesitate to presume someone's race enough to say something about it, especially since they can take offense if you are wrong (especially between Korean and Japanese, since there is still a lot of bad blood there, especially among the older crowd). Then there are scenarios like the one where I've worked with someone for about 10 yrs now and only a year or so ago discovered he is Korean (sadly it doesn't seem that he speaks Korean). I would have sworn he was Chinese the whole time, but obviously I was mistaken. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4770 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 16 of 32 10 September 2013 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Had a really awkward experience in talking to strangers today. I went to the Japanese consulate to apply for JLPT N1 (the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test). There were some renovation works being done on the exterior of the building and much of the façade was covered in scaffolding. Because of that I didn't notice the test application centre's door and instead rang the door of the visa centre. The Japanese consulate employee who came out tried to tell me that if I wanted to apply for the test I got the wrong door, while I was trying to ask him where exactly the application centre's door was. The problem was that neither of us was sure about which language to use. I was caught off guard so badly I ended up sounding something like the girl in these scenes. Eventually he just started frantically gesturing toward the other part of the building, and I just ran off in the direction he was pointing. I bet if they told him which level I applied for he'd burst out laughing, hehe.
This also reminded me of the time I was doing my semester abroad in Norway two years ago. I went to shop at a Japanese store in Oslo. The Japanese lady at the register addressed me in Norwegian, so I wasn't sure if I should respond in kind, try out some of my Japanese or just stick to English since I wasn't yet confident enough in the other two. I think when I handed her the money I ended up blurting out something in German. After that even though I went to that store every other week I only managed to strike up a conversation with the lady on my last visit there. Since then I think I've only had one successful conversation with strangers in Japanese, earlier this year in a Moscow nightclub. It was somewhat complicated by the fact that my interlocutors were all students of Russian just as eager to get some practice in their TL as I was in mine, but we did end up striking a good balance. Haven't really had many good opportunities since then. I remember ten years ago there were always huge groups of Japanese tourists near all the landmarks in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Now they all seem to have been replaced by Chinese tourists. The last two times I took the train between Moscow and SPb I shared the compartment with travellers from China. I guess it's a sign that I should start learning Chinese a little earlier than I was planning to. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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