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Finding the courage to continue | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6602 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 17 of 37 07 March 2013 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4627 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 18 of 37 08 March 2013 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Everyone talks about how hard Chinese languages are and how long it takes to reach even basic proficiency in them? But what about the reverse situation, where a monolingual Chinese person emigrates to Europe. Are the western languages not as alien to them as Mandarin and Cantonese are to us? Edited by beano on 08 March 2013 at 1:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4849 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 19 of 37 08 March 2013 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Sometimes I ask myself if this is moderating or censorship. Why can't people deal with irony and sarcasm? 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5964 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 20 of 37 08 March 2013 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I understood all the comments as being serious. I think that without seeing facial expressions and body language, and without being familiar with the writer, it's difficult to know whether the comment is sarcastic or serious. If there was a sentence saying that the intent was sarcasm or irony, then I would have known. But back to the original subject, 6 months working on Chinese is a very short time. The OP said that he spend about 1 1/2 hours a day so that's aproximately 270 hours of active work which is a small amount, even in an immersion environment. I encourage him to continue on. Edited by Snowflake on 08 March 2013 at 4:58pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4671 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 21 of 37 09 March 2013 at 7:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Getting back to the original question.
I think Asian languages are fundamentally different from European ones here. As a foreigner in Asia, even when you’ve reached basic functionality in the language and for a long time after that, you’ll often encounter situations (watching TV, interacting with people) where you can’t even pick up on the general topic being discussed. As an illustration, I live in Thailand and teach English at a university. As part of my job, I often attend course meetings where the Thai teachers speak in Thai and I listen and contribute to the discussion in English. I usually don’t have any trouble following the thread of discussion in these meetings. Attending them makes me feel fluent! Not all interaction is like this, however. On the university bus that takes me home from work, I often end up chatting a bit with the driver before I get off. The driver is an older man from the North, I think. We might talk about the traffic, the traffic police (he is wary of them), etc. Anyway, more than half the time I really don’t have a clue what he is saying – I just mumble something polite in response, more or less. This is after more than ten years living here. Here’s a suggestion for the OP – you might consider taking a course for two months or so when your contract is up (assuming you have a yearly contract). In Tainan, the program at National Cheng Kung University has a good reputation, although they might not be as flexible time-wise as TLI or other language schools (TLI has intakes for group classes every two months, as far as I know.) Here’s a link: Chinese Language Center 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leroc Senior Member United States Joined 4316 days ago 114 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 22 of 37 09 March 2013 at 8:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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When you reach the point where you feel like you aren't making progress, use your negative emotions to fuel your language learning engine! Eat up Mandarin for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Read and look at every piece of writing and study it, from a lingerie newspaper ad to a Taiwanese Captain Crunch cereal box.
More likely then not your progress so far is fine and on track, fluency is not a three month 40 yard dash. It is a long walk over a mountain pass. PS I am not yet fluent in my L2, but this is based on my observations and experiences from other vocations. Edited by leroc on 09 March 2013 at 8:16am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6384 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 37 09 March 2013 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
There is a long history between leosmith and Benny that I am guessing you don't know about. In any case, let's leave it at that since any further discussion will only take the thread further off topic. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| crno_srce Diglot Newbie Australia yetanotherlanguage.b Joined 4706 days ago 7 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB2 | Message 24 of 37 11 March 2013 at 2:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Fair enough :-) I will just reiterate that the OP's concerns seem totally normal to me and that they can try varying their routine a bit if they feel they need to, or just keep pushing on if they've been making good progress so far (and it sounds to me like it hasn't been too bad at all). I feel like the path to fluency is where the ratio between the number of days where you feel good compared to the number of days you feel like a failure increases (non-linearly, with some backwards steps) over time. As long as that time is is focused on the task, of course. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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