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Motivating yourself more effectively | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6155 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes  Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 1 of 53 22 August 2008 at 7:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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I genuinely hope the information in this rather lengthy post, which is my first on this website, is as helpful to you as it has been for me and may it spark interesting debate.
For a while now I've been scouring this website for anything and everything that can help me in the quest of becoming a polyglot. I must say that the nuggets of wisdom imparted by the likes of ProfArguelles, Iversen, Fanatic, and Volte have drastically changed the way I approach the study of languages. We really are standing on the shoulders of giants and I am eternally grateful for the development of this website and to those who contribute to it. What I find slightly saddening is the high number of personal learning logs that have started out so full of energy and enthusiasm only to fizzle away a couple of weeks or months later with nothing more said on the subject. Granted it can be difficult for a person to create time for studies when work and family commitments take precedence, however, if the motivation to learning a language shone so brightly at the beginning of the log then surely one must have envisioned at some point being able to create the necessary time to undertake such a noble task. I myself have been guilty a number of times of starting a new activity (playing the guitar) with the best of intentions only to see my motivation die away. Fortunately, through my studies of psychology, criminology, and Neuro-linguistic programming I have learnt a great deal on motivation. I went from failing twice in my attempts to study Spanish, and once in Mandarin, to successfully putting in 350 hours of study in 8 months in Spanish while working full time and doing a masters and now I devote 3 hours a day to French, Spanish, and Mandarin, on-top-of running, going to the gym, working full time, and playing football; and I guarantee that this level of intensity will continue. How can I guarantee that? The answer is I have truly learned how to frighten the life out of myself and how to get my self excited (not that sort of excitement!). For a while now psychologists, mainly in the realm of sport and business, have mapped out some important steps for goal setting (but not all). These are: 1) Be clear about what you want. In other words what level of proficiency you want to achieve in a language. How can one be motivated about a task which is unclear to them? 2)Set realistic goals. Read the fsi rating scale for time frames for learning specific languages. Take your learning resources into account when doing this. Just as importantly, take time constraints into account. If you set unrealistic goals you will become disheartened when progress is slower than expected. This a guaranteed way to kill motivation. 3)Find out the exact steps necessary to achieve your goal. I cant stress how important this is. If I had have read this website before I started my Spanish studies I would have saved countless hours using the 'wrong' material. 4)Map these steps in a diary so you don’t forget them. 5)Create a study chart. I strongly recommend ProfArgualles's spreadsheet on his website. I would make a number of additions to it however. I would add 2 more columns to his spreadsheet. The first one could be labelled 'target hours this month'. In which you would write the amount of hours you need to study each month. The next column would be 'hours studied so far', which of course would be all the hours studied so far this month. This is a superb way of keeping you on your toes. 6)Reward yourself for reaching certain landmarks. Now that you have these points steadily in place its time for the good stuff. In my opinion the most important step of all is to find out exactly why you want to achieve this goal and what you will lose by not achieving it. This is where juice of motivation lies. Its the difference between success and failure. If your reasons are so incredibly compelling then you will be able to achieve it at all cost. Just look how determined drug addicts are to get their drugs and how successful they inevitably are most of the time. They are so single minded that many of them become freelance chemists and learn to create their own drugs, even at the cost of their own lives at times. Let me be more clear on this: 1) Write down and strongly visualize on a daily basis all the great things you are going to experience once you achieve this goal. 2) Stop thinking of yourself as a part-time language learner and start thinking of yourself as a language expert. I do not mean for you to be bragging about your abilities, I mean for you to start integrating language learning into your persona. No longer be someone who is learning languages on the side but someone who sees languages as integral to who they are. For example, David Beckham is not simply someone who plays football but is a footballer through to his very soul (if we are to believe his words) and I get the same impression from ProfArgualles regarding languages. 3)Write down all the negative things that would become of you or that you would miss out on should you fail with your goal. My personal motivator is the fear of failure in the eyes of the people I care about. The beauty of finding both positive and negative motivators is that a propulsion system of sorts is created whereby you are simultaneously pushed and pulled in the same direction. Here is how I have utilised this: 1)I’m going travelling around the world for 5 years next year, therefore, I envision being able to speak the lingo as allowing me to receive many more benefits than not being able to. I imagine this vividly. 2)I truly admire those who can speak another language and so I imagine others admiring me (arrogant I know but it works). 3)I dream of all the new countries and cultures that will be more open to me. 4)I also look forward to the new found job opportunities open to me in these countries. 5)Since I detest failing in front of people and I want to internalise languages as an essential part of my persona I make public statements to friends and family about what I am going to achieve. I strongly recommend not being arrogant or overly proud in your comments. This has been an invaluable addition to my goal setting strategy and is always in the back of mind of my mind when those damned mandarin tones are causing me trouble. 6)Read success stories as often as possible. I apologise for the lengthy first post but I have taken so much from this website and feel like I need to offer what I can. I realize that some people may not approve of such rigidity in their planning and I remind those people that this but a simple framework from which you may take some good ideas. I looked forward to other tactics that people have found useful and I certainly do not shy away from criticism or healthy debate. Cheers, Jimmy Edited by Jimmymac on 22 August 2008 at 10:04am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6779 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 53 23 August 2008 at 9:57am | IP Logged | |||||
Great first post, Jimmy!
I think we all want to BE FLUENT. Would "fluent" not be very clear? Should we say, "I want to reach FSI 3" or what? Of course, it's hard to even decide when one of those levels has been reached since you can't just go out and get tested. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| NJMaverick Newbie United States Joined 6157 days ago 34 posts - 36 votes Studies: English*, Portuguese | Message 3 of 53 23 August 2008 at 10:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Great post, Jimmy!
Can someone help me with locating the ProfArguelles spreadsheet mentioned here? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6552 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 4 of 53 23 August 2008 at 10:23am | IP Logged | |||||
I can't speak for others, but in my case it's because I decided to allocate more time to learning. It takes a great deal of effort to maintain a learning log. Also, when I reach intermediate level, I stop feeling I need to share everything I do with the world. There isn't nearly as much mystery, and my path is much clearer. My guess is the people who get the most out of reading the journals are beginners, and they mostly need to hear about getting started. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6155 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 5 of 53 23 August 2008 at 11:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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Leosmith,
I wasn't speaking of anyone in particular so I apologise if you think I was referring to you. I have no doubt that some people may have gained an advanced level and forget about the log. However, from personal experience, and correct me if i'm wrong, many more people given up on their language learning goals than remain committed to them. To be honest, as a respected contributer to this website I would be interested in some of the motivational aspects that have kept you on track. Keith, I think you have hit the nail on the head. It certainly isn't a simple task to pin down something as seemingly abstract as 'fluency'. I would, however, have to contest your statement that 'we all want to BE FLUENT'. I know of a good number of people, on this website and personally, who learn languages out of pleasure. They don't think twice about dropping a language in order to learn another just for fun, never reaching fluency but generally happy with survival-intermidiate skills. Onto your question regarding the definition of fluency and testing. There are tests out there designed to test levels of fluency; the DELF french profficiency tests start from beginner to advanced. There are GCSE/A levels (UK qualifications) that can test you at various levels, not to mention self testing (i.e finding a native speaker and conscoiusly testing yourself). Furthermore, one can read different levels of literature to test reading proffieciency and watch/listen to movies/radio to test listening profficiency. Some might argue that only a subjective definition of fluency can exist. Meaning, 'fleuncy' is that which allows the speaker to feel an acceptable level of comfort in any relevant setting. This defenition hasn't really taken us closer to the elusive reification of fluency. However, accepting its fundamental principal of 'relevance' one would have to design a learning program around their own needs and standards. One which would deconstruct the language into logical chunks. For example, reading profficiency could be broken down in the following way: Choose a number of major texts for each of the main areas that are relevant to you in the target language(e.g. mechanics, literature, psychology, contemporary novels, ect). These will represent your overall progress. Once you can read these you may be at a level you can consider fluent. Before getting to this level one must then map out the necessary steps. So for example, if one was inclined towards literature, one would start with childrens literature slowly working your way up to the level of the target text. If one was interested more in everyday conversation the choosing choosing novels with a great deal of dialogue would probably be ideal. I believe these steps could be taken with 3 of the major aspects of language learning, listening, speaking, and reading. Ideally, one would find a number of good courses (FSI, Assimil) for learning the generalities of the language, and using the aforementioned steps to tweak your learning to suit your needs. NJMaverick - you can find it on this link http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/polyglottery.html Edited by Jimmymac on 23 August 2008 at 11:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dbstraight Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5998 days ago 30 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 53 23 August 2008 at 11:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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Good post. The one thing I would question is trying to motivate yourself with fear. One should never feal failure. Failure is often a necessary step to success. The only way to truly "fail" learning a language is to give up, but that is something entirely within your own control.
Besides, motivating yourself with fear seems likely to make language learning a chore. The things I do because I love them I call hobbies. The things I do because I fear the consequences I call duties. I love learning languages. I fear the consequences if I don't pay my taxes. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6155 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 7 of 53 23 August 2008 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Excellent point dbstraight. I would point out however that I use both positive and negative motivators. I constantly enjoy the thought of being able to speak the languages I study. Having negative motivators only serves to bolster my level of motivation when times are tough. In an ideal world every aspect of learning a language would be exhilarating. Unfortunately this of course isn't the case. So I would encourage you to put as many of these motivators as possible in place to maintain you on your current path.
But as dbstraight has pointed out. Too much focusing on the negative motivators may cause you to view language learning as an activity forced upon you. Lastly, yes failure is a necessary step to success. I may not have made my point clear enough on this aspect. This fear of failure which I have is a failure to continue with my language studies and thus never the language. Therefore, it is a very good fear to have in terms of language acquisition. Other types of 'failures' may lead to success as we learn from our mistakes. I certainly do not encourage people to hide away from making mistakes as they are inevitable and helpful. But I do encourage people to intelligently find out what negative consequences they will experience if they do not learn the language. It really will be a big help. An example of how powerfully motivated we are by negative experiences is the common use of negative consequences in health adverts and drink driving adverts. We never see a person driving home smiling and laughing, eventually reaching their destination and going to bed happy, as a warning to maintain speed limits. On the contrary, we see someone driving down the road and vividly see the car seriously injuring or killing some poor child. Good enough motivator for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6552 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 8 of 53 23 August 2008 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
I didn't think that at all. I was merely offering my opinion of why people quit their language logs, using myself as an example.
It's possible, but I think the average person on this forum changes rather than gives up on their goals. Many of us bite off more than we can chew, finally realize it, and make the necessary adjustments. Your post really reminds me of the post Can I learn a language in 6 months? by extremelingo. You're trying to systemize or automate something that, imo, doesn't take well to systemizing or automating. Creating artificial motivation just wouldn't work for me, and going through all your steps would definitely hurt my motivation. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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