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Has your language number an effect on your methods? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6637 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 1 of 12 07 April 2011 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Bao raised an interesting question in another thread, namely whether the sheer number of languages you already have learnt leads to the use of other learning methods. I first wrote a long rant about it, but that one has been relegated to my log. So now I try to repose the question in a more concise way:
Does the sheer number of languages you already know determine your choice of methods? It is clear that language no. 1 (your native language) represents a set of learning methods and conditions that you never will meet again, and your first foreign language will also be a major event which heralds the use of new learning methods. But when you have reached no. 4, 5... what then? My stance in this question is that new languages after this don't have any fundamental effect on your language learning methods, except that you get a broader base for comparisons (which of course is very important). But as time goes by you may hear or read about new methods (or invent them youself) which make you change your methods, and technological developments such as the internet with its grammars, online dictionaries and translation sites must have some effect on your choice of methods. Finally your choice of languages can have an effect, insofar that methods that worked with related languages may not function with more distant ones or for languages where it is difficult to get your usual materials. You may be in a different situation if such outside changes happen while you are learning your first foreign language, but after that I don't think the effect depends on your number of known languages in itself. External factors may influence your future choice of languages and your chances of learning them properly, though, but this could happen both with your language no. 3 and your language no. 10. The real background for claiming that language numbers has an effect could be that it is easier to spot a change midway through a long language learning career than it is when you just have started. Edited by Iversen on 07 April 2011 at 2:00pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| aru-aru Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6391 days ago 244 posts - 331 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian | Message 2 of 12 11 April 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me, I do see changes in my learning patterns with another longterm language added. Surely I haven't learnt that many, but on some languages I have spent a year+. My real "first" foreign language was Chinese. Russian I learnt as a kid, just picked bits and pieces up, and English was something I did in school. The only thing I learnt from my English learning was, that to get anywhere above intermediate, books and films is a must.
Later on, when I started with languages, the big question arose - how do I learn well, fast and painlessly. Then there came a few more, mostly unrelated languages, so each needed a somewhat different approach, and each had its own specific challenges. From each of those experiences I found out new things that do and do not work for me. One thing that keeps my methods changing is the fact that I do most of my learning in the classroom environment. This way I get lots of firsthand experience of different approaches in teaching. This way I get to try out things I might not have done on my own. At the same time I lurk around this forum and elsewhere, check out what others are doing, and just pile all of that information together. Thus the things I do to learn keep on becoming different (also I get bored doing the same thing for a long time). So, the answer to your question, it probably depends on a person. If someone finds a method that works great for him or her, and does most learning through self study, the method can just as well stay roughly the same throughout languages 1-10. There is no need to go for a different method, just because some people claim it's more "advanced" or "progressive" than yours. But the likelihood is that a person with a few languages under the belt will have a more effective, more all round method. Simply, with a bad method a person is not very likely to have learnt 4-5 languages. But basically, for most people it's more about how many different things have you been exposed to. That is not always linked to the number of languages one knows, but more often it is. On a related note, I have recently concluded that a language TEACHER should have an additional requirement before getting to teach others - the person must have learnt a new language at least to an intermediate level as an adult. Otherwise you see people with degrees in their mother tongue, degrees in "teaching", and no idea about how languages are learnt in the real world. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5315 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 12 11 April 2011 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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The more I study, the more I realize that what is presented to me and how it's presented to me doesn't really matter. What matters most is what I do with it. I suppose I've developped a sense of what matters for basic communication and consequently, I filter various sources of information and I control what I learn.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5945 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 12 11 April 2011 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm quite certain my methods have changed with every language I've studied.
I don't tend to do anywhere near as much vocabulary cramming as I did at high school, because I've come to the realisation that it's easier to learn a little vocabulary that you need now than a lot of vocabulary that you might need later. It takes less effort and it sticks better. This in turn has taught me to trust my own memory. When I was cramming, I would be conscious of knowing the word before I said it, and I wouldn't want to say anything without knowing I knew the word. It took me years of stuttering French before I'd let myself say something without thinking hard about it. I'm now happy to use words I can't even remember learning, in languages I've barely started learning. I also believed in the idea of learning phrases and working both ways, but now I find it far easier learning the bits and sticking them together. Learning phrases is dead easy once you know what it's built up of. This was rammed home when I tried to learn basic Basque from a phrase book: what I remember is what I understand from first principles -- anything I couldn't understand literally never stuck. Of course, there's a problem: It's hard to distinguish "refinement of technique" with "knowing stuff already". Lots of stuff is repeated across languages, so you don't have to relearn the underlying concept, just the superficial form. When I started French, I learnt about verb conjugations, and they've never given me any bother in any Western European language. When I learnt Gaelic, I learnt what a genitive was, and that's easy now in any new languages. I learnt the partitive particle in Italian, and suddenly I got it for free in French and Catalan. So I'm a bit dubious about (for example) something like LinQ. Did Steven Kauffman "refine his technique" over various languages until he realised that all he needed to do was read short passages, or does he just know enough about the components of language that he doesn't really need to follow the same techniques any more.... 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5315 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 12 11 April 2011 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | ||
... or is it the easiest thing to set up and sell? 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5700 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 12 11 April 2011 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's not so much that my methods have changed but that my skills have changed, and with them the efficiency with which I learn in a given situation.
The most striking example is learning in a classroom environment. I used to be bad at learning language in a class, now I'm good at it. Partially that's because I've learnt how and when I need to supplement what I am taught, how (and when) I need to do the exercises that I actually learn from them, but I also gain a lot more from conversation than I used to before I went to Spain for immersion. It's a bit difficult to explain, but it seems to me as if I've become better at judging the importance of corrections/new items and at keeping a small number of those probably important items in mind, repeating them throughout the day and learning them after a while, rather than trying to remember too many different items and learning none - at least not for active usage. (My passive level has always been considerably higher than my active level.) I also noticed that I now don't only find it easier to learn new words but also to keep them confined to the language or register they belong to. I think the reasons for these changes are: -immersion -number of languages, meaning that I had to become more efficient -learning two closely related languages The interesting part is not that I developed skills to deal with each situation, but that I experience a kind of spillover effect of those skills in other, related ares. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chris323 Newbie United States Joined 4736 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, French Studies: Latin | Message 7 of 12 06 January 2012 at 2:38am | IP Logged | ||
This point interests me because I have interest in several languages from completely unrelated or only-very- slightly related language families. I am a native English speaker who is studying French full-time and I would like to pursue German after I have attained a high level of proficiency and familiarity with French. Being "finished" with German is still plenty of years away for me, but after that point I am not sure what to do; there are 2 apparent approaches to me: 1) Learn many major languages from each family and then proceed on to more exotic/non-related languages and 2) Learn the one or two most important languages from several families and then proceed from there. The first approach seems somewhat more traditional to me and might be exemplified by one learning a bunch of Romance and Germanic languages before learning others. The second approach seems a bit more intimidating but more exciting for phonetic, linguistic, and cultural reasons, not to mention more demanding of (and hopefully ameliorative to) one's learning capacities. This might include learning Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Russian, and/or Modern Standard Arabic at the expense of being unable to learn as many Romance/Germanic languages. Is that deduction sound (that learning many unrelated languages will improve some aspect of your learning capacities)? Is there a glaring error of which I am unaware in finding the second path more attractive? Which path would you guys choose for your language endeavors? Fewer families and more "relatives" or more families and fewer in each? Thanks for your expert input! Regards, Chris 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5781 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 12 08 January 2012 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
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DOES THE NUMBER OF LEARNED LANGUAGES HAVE AN INFUECE ON THE LEARNING PROCESS?
Generally, I would say "yes". First you have to distinguish between the very first language/s who learn as a child = your native language/s and the foreign languages you learn. Normally, the most difficult foreign language you learn is your first foreign language because you have to build up structures and grammar knowledge. Ideally, this learning process should happen already in your childhood at school. If you learn more than one foreign language at school (like I did) you can adapt your new (by the teachers instructed) learning techniques to other languages at school. As an adult learning more and more languages I have the confidence that I am capable of learning languages - when you learn your first foreign language you cannot rely on such an experience. And for example I know that doing language classes works well for me, so I continue with this for further languages. I would say that you habe more routine and more background grammar and vocabulary knowledge when your learn your 5 th, 6 th, 7 th, 8 th .... foreign language. But the work is still hard and time consuming, so for me learning languages will never be a "piece of cake", but always hard dedicated work and language practice. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 08 January 2012 at 10:01am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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