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Different Kinds of Motivation in Learning

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frenkeld
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6935 days ago
2042 posts - 2719 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: German

 
 Message 17 of 33
29 August 2010 at 6:20am | IP Logged 
LatinoBoy84 wrote:
pobere wrote:
sydneycarton wrote:
I fell in love with a German girl.

Best reason I've ever heard.

Story of many of our lives...but I get to keep the languages :)


I started by getting the girl and after many years of marriage still haven't started learning Hindi in earnest. I could've, I probably should've by now, I still may, but as far as the right sequence goes, sorry, but I am no polyglot: first the girl, then the language, not the other way around. I am also quite certain that the idea of learning Russian wouldn't even cross my wife's mind.

So, I am afraid I can't agree that this is the best reason I've ever heard of - methinks, in fact, it's one of the worst if done in the wrong order.


Edited by frenkeld on 30 August 2010 at 12:37am
2 persons have voted this message useful



leosmith
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6542 days ago
2365 posts - 3804 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 18 of 33
29 August 2010 at 8:45am | IP Logged 
Romanist wrote:
my own personal critique of the different kinds of language-motivation is as follows:

The list of motivations was nice, but could you explain why you felt it necessary to criticize some people's reasons
for learning languages? Is it a warning that they might fail because they have the "wrong" motivation, or something
completely different?
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aarontp
Groupie
United States
Joined 5259 days ago
94 posts - 139 votes 

 
 Message 19 of 33
29 August 2010 at 11:42pm | IP Logged 
Romanist wrote:


5. Short trips overseas

This is quite often cited as a perfectly valid and serious reason for learning a
foreign language, but it seems like a complete no-brainer to me! If a person were
going to spend a week sitting on a beach in (let’s say) Greece, would that person
really be sufficiently motivated to spend hundreds of hours reaching basic competence
in Modern Greek!? For me there would have to be a somewhat more profound motivation
than this!






A "short" trip overseas can easily run thousands of dollars. Depending on what you
intend to do in the country, I think it's worth a year of language preparation if it's
your major vacation of the year or even the decade. Some people make no more than one
such trip in a lifetime. I don't think anyone who travels to a foreign country just to
lie on the beach would even endeavor to study the language anyway. Some people would
never consider studying a foreign language because it's something that they have never
tried; but for those who have, it may be worthwhile to study a language to enrich the
experience of even a short trip abroad. If you're interested enough to travel to a
particular country, why is it unusual that you would be interested enough to study the
language?


Quote:
But in reality any language can be a language of love, philosophy, etc. If you
learn German because it’s the language of philosophy, what happens if you then want to
read Sartre or Derrida? (And in my opinion the notion of any language being inherently
“romantic” , “sexy” , “macho”, etc is simply naïve.)


I don't think it's naive to believe that a particular language is romantic, or wise, or
noble, if the language epitomizes those qualities for you. Also, many people
who study philosophy or history or literature will, by necessity, choose a focus area
or several focus areas out of many possible areas that interest them. If you learn
German for philosophy, you still stand to gain a deeper understanding of a group of
philosophers that you otherwise may not gain. What is the alternative for someone
interested in philosophy, not trying to read any philosophy in it's original language
because of the impossibility of reading all of it that way?

Edited by aarontp on 30 August 2010 at 12:17am
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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6431 days ago
4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 20 of 33
30 August 2010 at 7:09am | IP Logged 
aarontp wrote:
Romanist wrote:


5. Short trips overseas

This is quite often cited as a perfectly valid and serious reason for learning a
foreign language, but it seems like a complete no-brainer to me! If a person were
going to spend a week sitting on a beach in (let’s say) Greece, would that person
really be sufficiently motivated to spend hundreds of hours reaching basic competence
in Modern Greek!? For me there would have to be a somewhat more profound motivation
than this!






A "short" trip overseas can easily run thousands of dollars. Depending on what you
intend to do in the country, I think it's worth a year of language preparation if it's
your major vacation of the year or even the decade. Some people make no more than one
such trip in a lifetime. I don't think anyone who travels to a foreign country just to
lie on the beach would even endeavor to study the language anyway. Some people would
never consider studying a foreign language because it's something that they have never
tried; but for those who have, it may be worthwhile to study a language to enrich the
experience of even a short trip abroad. If you're interested enough to travel to a
particular country, why is it unusual that you would be interested enough to study the
language?


If it's the trip of the lifetime, to one particular language region, and you want to study the language, by all means, do.

In some parts of the world, though, taking short trips to areas speaking other languages is a very common event, and studying all the languages involved is prohibitive. If I had to know Slovak to take a train through the country on my way between two other countries, I'd probably travel a lot less.

Even if you limit it to intercontinental trips, it's not that rare to find people flitting from country to country, spending at most a few days in each, if it's something they only expect to be able to do once.

How motivating, and even how possible, this criteria is, does vary widely.
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aarontp
Groupie
United States
Joined 5259 days ago
94 posts - 139 votes 

 
 Message 21 of 33
30 August 2010 at 9:53am | IP Logged 
Volte wrote:
aarontp wrote:
Romanist wrote:


5. Short trips overseas

This is quite often cited as a perfectly valid and serious reason for learning a
foreign language, but it seems like a complete no-brainer to me! If a person were
going to spend a week sitting on a beach in (let’s say) Greece, would that person
really be sufficiently motivated to spend hundreds of hours reaching basic competence
in Modern Greek!? For me there would have to be a somewhat more profound motivation
than this!






A "short" trip overseas can easily run thousands of dollars. Depending on what you
intend to do in the country, I think it's worth a year of language preparation if it's
your major vacation of the year or even the decade. Some people make no more than one
such trip in a lifetime. I don't think anyone who travels to a foreign country just to
lie on the beach would even endeavor to study the language anyway. Some people would
never consider studying a foreign language because it's something that they have never
tried; but for those who have, it may be worthwhile to study a language to enrich the
experience of even a short trip abroad. If you're interested enough to travel to a
particular country, why is it unusual that you would be interested enough to study the
language?


If it's the trip of the lifetime, to one particular language region, and you want to
study the language, by all means, do.

In some parts of the world, though, taking short trips to areas speaking other
languages is a very common event, and studying all the languages involved is
prohibitive. If I had to know Slovak to take a train through the country on my way
between two other countries, I'd probably travel a lot less.

Even if you limit it to intercontinental trips, it's not that rare to find people
flitting from country to country, spending at most a few days in each, if it's
something they only expect to be able to do once.

How motivating, and even how possible, this criteria is, does vary widely.


My point is, how could one determine that preparing for a trip is necessarily a phony
motivation for studying a language? Presumably one will have neither the time nor the
inclination to learn the language of every region through which one travels--but if one
does have the motivation to learn a particular language for that purpose--what makes
that a phony motivation? If one isn't motivated to learn the language of his travel
destination in the first place, that really has nothing to do with this thread, which
concerns motivations for learning a language.

Edited by aarontp on 30 August 2010 at 9:55am
1 person has voted this message useful



Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6431 days ago
4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 22 of 33
30 August 2010 at 3:59pm | IP Logged 
aarontp wrote:

My point is, how could one determine that preparing for a trip is necessarily a phony
motivation for studying a language? Presumably one will have neither the time nor the
inclination to learn the language of every region through which one travels--but if one
does have the motivation to learn a particular language for that purpose--what makes
that a phony motivation? If one isn't motivated to learn the language of his travel
destination in the first place, that really has nothing to do with this thread, which
concerns motivations for learning a language.


I disagree with classifying it as a 'phony' reason. Nonetheless, it usually does seem to be one which does not pan out.

1 person has voted this message useful



LouisaBalata
Triglot
Newbie
France
Joined 5010 days ago
9 posts - 25 votes
Speaks: French*, English, Arabic (classical)
Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Persian, Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 23 of 33
02 March 2011 at 6:39am | IP Logged 



" 6. Aesthetic attraction to the visual quality of a foreign script

This is a trap that I myself have fallen into in the past. It’s easy to look at an exotic foreign script like Arabic,
Hebrew, Chinese, Russian, etc and feel completely blown away. There is a feeling of: “wow, I’d just love to
be able to read that!” This is however a complete fallacy, because there is no fundamental connection between a
language and the script in which it is written - rather the script is merely a humdrum means of clerical notation.
(In any case, a visual aesthetic attraction of this kind is likely to be superficial and to lose its allure when the
learner has become boringly familiar with the script!) "



[/QUOTE]

Well, it worked for me ... three years later of intense study of arabic I'm still not bored, rather enjoying it ever
more as I go ...

1 person has voted this message useful



swedeenz
Newbie
New ZealandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5006 days ago
17 posts - 23 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Bulgarian

 
 Message 24 of 33
04 March 2011 at 11:59am | IP Logged 
I've wanted to learn German since I was young, I never had the chance at school. My main
reasons are because my grandfather was from Germany, secondly I've made some really good
friends in Germany and I want to be able to converse with them in their native language.
Thirdly I'm really attracted to the language.. the sound, the words. Just love it! I've
decided to live in Germany for a year, while over there I will be doing a intensive
German course and stay at a friends house with her family. It's always something I've
wanted to do and now I have the chance and I'm going to do my best!

Oh and by the way Hi, new to these forums I'm Kent from New Zealand

Edited by swedeenz on 04 March 2011 at 11:59am


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