Have your goals changed? (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Have your goals changed?
Tags: Language Level Satisfaction \| Goals
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

27 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4

MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5256 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin	Message 25 of 27 12 August 2012 at 4:59am \| IP Logged
	My goals have changed a lot. When I first joined, I really wanted to speak tons of languages at a high level. Now that I have a more realistic understanding of the amount of effort to reach C2, my goals are more realistic. I still want to be C2 in Spanish and Mandarin, but if I learn any other languages, it will probably just be to read. I would love to have some passive abilities in Russian or Polish, and maybe dabble in German, for the great philosophy. However, I think that overall, studying languages has made me want to experience other things in life. I would love to learn an instrument, and get better at tennis, for instance. Language studying is very enjoyable, but I want it to be a supplement to my life, not a way of life. 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4949 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 26 of 27 12 August 2012 at 5:21am \| IP Logged
	I hate to unsettle the harmony suffusing the thread, but no, in the last two years since I declared my "war on bilingualism" (two years in october), my goals have stayed the same: Namely, C1 in French, German, Portuguese, and Mandarin. That was my original mission from the day one. I understood then that I am not a person that could learn a language to B1 and feel accomplished with anything but confident command of said language. I've always had a higher than average verbal ability in my two native languages (much larger vocabulary than the median). In addition noetic colloquy with others is important to me; I would not enjoy being restricted to platitudinous small talk. Finally, I find great pleasure in reading articles about science (zoology and cosmology in particular), politics, and history. All these interests require a C1 level in any language, at the very least. Thus C1 is the only level I could experience a sense of success. After that, a B1-B2 mininum in anything else would suffice (in Italian and Swedish for sure), with of course the option of furthering those goals by devoting extra time to whatever language I so chose. Or, I could let my wanderlust free... at that point anything extra would be bliss for me. That is why I'm busting Arsch to get French/German/Portuguese to C1, then I can throw the kitchen sink at Mandarin, maintain and slowly improve the others, and probably tackle Italian and Swedish, slow but steady. The only thing that I would testify has fluxed is my feelings on Russian. Until two months ago nothing indicated to me I would develop any interest in the language. But now I am trully considering it. I've been looking into materials, and read overview articles on the language and the Slavic branch in general. That is the first time a language has debouched out of nowwhere, so to speak, and upon me. So that iwithin itself is quite unusual and in fact unprecedented in my personal language journey. 1 person has voted this message useful
cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6125 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish	Message 27 of 27 12 August 2012 at 9:02am \| IP Logged
	I think I've scaled back a little. When I first started, I had ideas of some day resurrecting my high school German and trying to get back to speed on that and I've let that go. Also, I think I'm not quite where I'd hoped I would be with Japanese by now, err, I thought I'd just be using the language, but really I'm still studying, so that's kind of slowing me down with Finnish. 1 person has voted this message useful

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