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Does language learning make you.. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 33 of 37 13 February 2012 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm forgiving of people who keep trying no matter how much they struggle. However, I'm not very forgiving of people who don't try or who keep talking about learning languages but never do.
I also have issues with people who move to a country to learn a language, spend 99% of their time with other foreigners, only to complain about how hard learning the language is. If you live in the country but choose to spend your time with non-natives, you lose the right to complain. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 34 of 37 13 February 2012 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have noticed that immigrants who regularly talk to native speakers generally make better headway with the language, as opposed to those who stay in a kind of language ghetto. But even people who have a good grasp of the spoken language may still need help with understanding documents.
I am inclined to give points to people who are obviously trying, after all, if there is one thing I have learned, it is that no L2 is easy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 35 of 37 13 February 2012 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
I myself need often help with things like application forms because the entire process makes me so nervous and anxious that I don't trust my comprehension of my native language anymore. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mr_intl_dj Newbie United States Joined 6684 days ago 23 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English | Message 36 of 37 14 February 2012 at 2:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think it all comes down to maturity and awareness depending on the situation.
Growing up, I really struggled speaking my own language. And as a freshman in college, my writing was so subpar that I nearly flunked my English 150 class. When I really decided to put in the effort, my language skills improved tremendously in a short amount of time.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| wyctory Triglot Newbie Slovakia Joined 4529 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Czech, Slovak*, English Studies: German | Message 37 of 37 16 July 2012 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As someone who speaks pretty OK English and actually landed a job as an English-Slovak
translator, I'm actually a little bit glad so many people just struggle with English at school and then give it up. At least until I learn German well enough. If more people learned English as smoothly as I did, I'd lose my only edge with which I tend to identify - my job :-) I also gained a lot of perspective through my high school friendship with one very interesting girl. She was in a different class, but the same year as me and in the final year, we took German together and we became friends. I was in kind of a IT- focused class, so most of my classmates and friends were really bright, most of them were boys and most of them also slacked a lot. On the other hand, she wasn't that natural at grasping things, but she was a hard worker. For that, I respect her a lot more than some of my classmates. Example from the German classes we took: she didn't naturally pick up the language - she worked on it and focused and with this approach became top of the class. I guess that knowing her, along with my own language learning, I stopped giving people a break when they moaned and groaned about language learning. I knew a LOT of girls who thought all of the language learning is supposed to be done by a teacher, at school - not by them, at home (AND at school). They were just lazy and society gave them a break, because it's not that common to speak a foreign language in Slovakia. So yeah, I'm basically very tolerant when I see someone tries really hard, and yet struggles. I have no mercy if someone just doesn't try at all. Once I met an African guy who just casually striked up a conversation with me on the street. Turned out he'd been doing that a lot and had learned a lot of Slovak with this approach. He was humble in his language learning and in return, I tried to help him as much as I could. I've also met a few Arabs who studied here and knew a bit of Slovak. Slovak is pretty difficult, so I was prepared to overlook their often made mistakes, but what I just couldn't swallow was when they stated they spoke as good Slovak as I did, at times even better. That couldn't be further from the truth. Even native Slovak speakers vary in their proficiency and once I actually ranked 6th in a state-wide Slovak language competition (competing, of course, with other natives). I can't really be tolerant towards that kind of arrogance. They thought they didn't even need to speak better Slovak than they did. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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