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The Secret of Improvement | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| 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 9 of 27 20 December 2011 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Those who view mistakes in a constructive way or who invite criticism about their mistakes usually succeed in making it past the plateau.
Having a coach is also a great way to improve. Consider this great article from the New Yorker called Personal Best. In terms of language acquisition, this may mean having a tutor, teacher or partner whom you invite criticism from. If you don't like having your mistakes exposed, allowing a single person to comment on your mistakes is a great way to seek advice and find improvement. You can ask them to make suggestions about what they think you should work on first or what you need to improve. Edited by Arekkusu on 20 December 2011 at 7:52pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4758 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 10 of 27 23 December 2011 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For me learning is both exciting and painful. It has to be painful for me to know I'm progressing. I remember,
back in school, when I had to read difficult and theory heavy texts, and I felt completely, but completely stupid : I knew the words, the language, everything, but I generally did not understand! That's painful and frustrating, the realization of one's ignorance and mental incompetence in face of certain goals. But years later I went back to these texts and others like them and understood them without any effort. With learning languages it's pretty much the same thing for me. Of course, sometimes it's good to be able to progress without it being painful and it doesn't always need to be. But after a while, if I don't jump to that certain type of exercise which I tend to approach "à reculons" (backwards...), I know I'm just not progressing as much as I could. The pain is linked to the ego : it's never easy to feel like an idiot, but it holds some promise. My polish teacher makes fun of me when I make mistakes but we laugh together at them. That makes things fun. I guess it can be fun to look like an idiot sometimes, with the right people. Edited by Homogenik on 25 December 2011 at 4:37pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5856 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 11 of 27 25 December 2011 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I feel that I've reached that sort of acceptable plateau with Russian. I understand
little spoken material, and I can sort of brute-force my way through a text. But I don't feel like I'm improving. I learn words, lots of words, but I don't feel like it actually helps me read anything. I'm already getting out of my comfort zone, but I'm not getting any nearer to land; I feel as if my goal is as far away as it was last year. I am frustrated. Clearly one cannot stray too far from ones comfort zone. How far is too far? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4758 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 12 of 27 25 December 2011 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Do you practice speaking out loud often? Maybe you should do it more, with specific themes you can draw "out of a
hat" or something (with a dictionary in hand to grab that word you need to complete a certain sentence, but mostly trying to use vocabulary you can use already). I think that can help solidify the bases (even if you make mistakes). 2 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 13 of 27 25 December 2011 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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lynxrunner, I think that might not actually be a plateau, but a shift happening around low intermediate stage when you suddenly don't notice your progress anymore. This can be an issue for those who choose to work mostly with native material, like I do. Once you're through with the very high frequency stuff, you don't get as much reinforcement for all the new things you learn, and at the same time you learn more and more new words and grammar points. That means you forget more of the new items. My solutions are to work with a textbook, to review and repeat more or to use texts with similar content for a period of time. Either way, the goal is to restrict the amount of new things to learn and to get more reinforcement.
At the same time, reviewing will prove to you that you actually do improve. ETA: Oh, and throw in more repetiton of audio you kind of get the gist of, it helps. To those who replied to my questions; I'm thinking about what you wrote, and about how much of my lack of improvement stems from using the wrong approach and how much from my issues with social phobia. Edited by Bao on 27 December 2011 at 3:04am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4758 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 14 of 27 26 December 2011 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To conquer your social phobia you could go out downtown one day and pretend like you're a tourist speaking
whatever language you're learning and want to practice. 1 person has 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 15 of 27 27 December 2011 at 4:30am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the suggestion, but sadly, social anxiety is a rather complex problem. In my case a large proportion of my anxiety is made up of fears that cover my 'worth' for the other person, a group or society in general. Pretending to be someone I am not and 'using' clueless people as practice partners would make me feel very shameful and guilty. In a way it comes back to the communication factor. Of course, language is a means of communication. But when you follow that train of thought, isn't the next question what you want to communicate to a person; which leads to the question how your relationship is shaped for you to want to communicate those things?
But I don't use English like I use German. It's not my family language nor my community language. If I tried to come up with ways to navigate my daily life in English (and forced them upon my surroundings), I'd still lack one major factor: Immediate feedback from proficent speakers. What I currently do is to communicate about things I experienced/learnt using German in English, but I do so in writing. (Yes, doing the same in speaking might be a good idea.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 16 of 27 27 December 2011 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've actually found the welcome that I get for speaking someone else's language does wonders for my self-esteem. Be humble, but revel in the praise they give you. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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