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’Jack of All Trades’ or Master of a Few? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| chipile Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6517 days ago 21 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish Studies: French | Message 33 of 40 15 June 2011 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I seem to have a similar mindset as several previous posters, as I am interested in attaining high-fluency in a
couple of languages; and basic fluency in around four others. The languages I KNOW that I definitely want to have in my everyday life and be able to read literature in are Swedish and French. I really love these languages and feel that this is a tangible goal - I am already about halfway there. The other four languages I am interested in achieving basic fluency in are Japanese, Thai, Spanish and (possibly) Gaelic. I am dabbling in Thai at the moment solely because I love the country and have the intention of working in an International School for a few years there. I would focus on only achieving Basic Fluency at the moment, but if I were to secure a job there then my needs/wants would increase. I would then, therefore probably WANT to achieve Advanced Fluency. As it stands just now, I am fairly happy with being conversant as a tourist. Japanese is a different story because I have already spent a year of my life living there. Although I was probably intermediated when I left, my ability has decreased due to lack of use/interest. This would have a knock-on effect with my Thai. Meaning that IF I were to secure a job in Thailand, I would study Japanese to Basic Fluency for business/personal reasons. I have no intention of living in Japan again, but would love to visit. Plus if I moved back to Europe, I doubt I would keep it up. Spanish is not particularly high on my list and I think I would only think about studying it seriously if I were happy in the other four. Purely because I have Spanish friends and would love to travel to several Latin American countries in the future. If I'm honest, I probably won't bother with Gaelic as I have a lot of other interests and do not feel that strongly about it. So, advanced fluency in two (possibly three depending on circumstances), then basic fluency in two (possibly three more). I don't have any real interest in learning any other languages and would be ecstatic with this set-up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6854 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 34 of 40 15 June 2011 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Nice!
Here is the passage: Passage from "To the Lighthouse"
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5902 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 35 of 40 15 June 2011 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Cool, thanks! It's one of my favorites from my English literature studies - I read it a few times many years ago. Maybe there's a genius Z-level polyglot out there somewhere!
I think I'm stuck somewhere around D, myself! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5050 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 36 of 40 15 June 2011 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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"Jack of all trades, master of none, though oftentimes better than master of one." I like it better when you add the last half, bringing it back to its original positive meaning.
That being said, I'm somewhere in between. I want to get a few to fluency, but I have too much curiosity not to dabble in a whole lot of others. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4929 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 37 of 40 15 June 2011 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I would like to become a master of a few.
My whole life, I always either did something right or not at all. Same is happening since I started learning my first foreign language (Dutch being my native and English is just learned throughout the years). This is Spanish, and I want to achieve a high level in it before picking up German (or Swedish) alongside it. So definitely master of few for me! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5161 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 38 of 40 16 June 2011 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Good luck! I aim for roughly 90 -- unfortunately I'm more than one third of the way already :( Lately I've been wishing I hadn't wasted 'so much time' in my life -- I'd have more of it to put whatever I learn to use before the end. That's what the true value of learning is, so now that I have finally learned that, I wish I can stop wasting my time to actually learn more and do more things :)
I'm not saying that nothing can be said about pedagogy in abstract, but teaching being a fundamentally practical activity applied to the broadest possible spectrum of subjects, the general theory about it forcefully has to be very very little. I don't usually pick fights, but these guys go around practically asking for it. I have an aunt who is also a teacher and she had to attend one of these absurd seminars on 'how to teach' (sic: not another word missing at the end), with a guy <delete:babbling on> enlightening the attendants with the very last theories for two hours. When the final round of questions came, my aunt stood and asked 'ok, so now I enter the classroom, put this animal cell diagram on the projector, and what exactly do I tell my students?', to the joy of the audience (mostly irate teachers).
Which ones? Hey, hey, just kidding :P I know I owe you a thread bashing students as well, but I need some time before I can write without too much ranting. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6485 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 39 of 40 16 June 2011 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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It's odd to hear people talking about how long they'll live. I suppose we all think of it, but I wonder if it's more prevalent
with polyglots because we like to consider how many languages we'll be able to learn. Anyway, I'm 50, expect to live till 80 (did an online quiz - physically healthy, but too stressed out), but I probably will quit learning new languages before I hit 60, and just use/improve the ones I have under my belt by then. I want to be able to converse well in all my languages. These are English, Spanish, Thai, Japanese, French, Russian, Mandarin, Swahili, (Korean), (Portuguese), (Arabic), (Hindi), (Italian), (German), (Vietnamese), (Cantonese). About half of them I want to be able to understand movies, TV, books, other people's conversations, menus and signs quite well. I'm already there in English and Spanish. I want to add Thai, Japanese, Mandarin, French & Russian to that short list. I don't plan to master any of them, so I guess I'm just a bald-headed Jack of all trades. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5701 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 40 of 40 16 June 2011 at 4:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Even though I'm often anxious I won't have enough time to learn everything I want to learn, I just realized that the statistics alone give me more than half of a century to go. Certainly enough time to pull an Iversen. Nice thought, if a bit unreal.
translator2, that quote made me think of http://www.textlog.de/tucholsky-neuschnee.html Edited by Bao on 16 June 2011 at 4:37am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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