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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4700 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 1 of 5 04 February 2012 at 12:21am | IP Logged |
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I started following "Colloquial Chinese" a week or so ago. I'm on Chapter Four (looking ahead to Seven). I'm suspicious of some of the language, and the speaking speed on the audio is rather slow - presumably to "help" me - in fact I think it makes it harder to understand. Though I suppose the words themselves are clearer. And the Hanzi are sometimes only semi-legible - I suspect they have been hand-written. But the point is, as I have previously been a generalist, I want to get into specifics now, and I think this course will help me get to a good basic level. I'm not going to stop! Only 10 more chapters to go. It's not really a lot, is it? Yet when I was new to languages I rarely got beyond chapter three in a book.
I need to listen to each audio piece at least 100 times to get into it. Mandarin is really new to me, and my most difficult language as it includes both Hanzi and tones! (my two most difficult obstacles) So, calculating, it requires 23 hours of listening to get to the end of the course. Except I will be more proficient at hearing as I get further on so it might be a bit quicker than that. When I finish, I will make some decision about what to do next. I'd really like to be good with Mandarin so I might possibly go on to the second book (Coll. Chinese 2), as it exists and is a handy way of getting some vocab and grammar points. We will see... Edited by mizunooto on 04 February 2012 at 3:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6623 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 2 of 5 04 February 2012 at 9:21am | IP Logged |
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That's a lot of languages in your "studies" list. Do you really study all those at once, or are they just things you plan to study. I find I have too little time to concentrate on more than one at a time, but some people do a lot of languages at once, only doing a few minutes a day of each, or spreading them out over a week.
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| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4700 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 3 of 5 04 February 2012 at 11:26am | IP Logged |
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I'm just doing Mandarin this month. I would normally keep rotating them, but I'm trying out this other way to see what happens.
In most of the languages my goal is to be conversationally fluent. I think that that is not really a very deep level of fluency...I think it does require proper grammar, and an intelligent choice of vocabulary. Maybe that reduces the time needed? Also I must say that the gap between studying is one of the most important things. For example, studying one day and then coming back the next week. Doing the same thing every day, I feel like some days are more effort than they need to be (maybe getting bored is an important symptom to notice!) Do you do your Japanese every day? 毎日練習？ ＾＾ Edited by mizunooto on 04 February 2012 at 2:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6623 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 4 of 5 04 February 2012 at 3:34pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, I study Japanese everyday at this point. I was doing Japanese, Spanish, Chinese and Norwegian at one point, but I've found I'm better off concentrating on one at a time. I think it is easier to bring one language up to a point where you don't really have to work at it anymore, but can just enjoy books and TV and learn more in that way before going on to the next language. I hope to reach that point in Japanese by the end of this year at which point I will take up Spanish again. As it is, I struggle to do three hours a day on Japanese. If I had to divide that time among several languages, I feel like it would take forever to reach a reasonable level of fluency in any of them. I don't know exactly what you mean by conversational fluency, but if you want to be able to have interesting conversations on a wide variety of topics, that can take years depending on the language and the intensity of your studies. If you just want to talk about the weather and where you come from, that shouldn't take very long.
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| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4700 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 5 of 5 04 February 2012 at 7:28pm | IP Logged |
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It's nice to study intensively. There are so many ways of learning that get overshadowed by how we learned at school (speaking for myself). They said, "Don't daydream", which makes it hard to use any intuitive process, and they also said "Don't specialise too much" which makes it hard to learn something in real depth. Anyway, that's their business!
I like your target for Japanese. There is a useful level one can achieve after which it's possible to learn the language, in the language. It's very interesting thinking about how much time it takes to learn. Obviously different languages have different difficulty for various reasons, but ignoring that there must be a basic calculation one could make that says how many hours it might take to get to whatever stage one is aiming for. Certainly I am trying to be more practical about my goals and expectations. By conversational fluency I meant obviously ability to talk and function generally (weather etc), as well as being able to talk about concepts and meanings somewhat. But then I like to keep my English simple no matter what the subject (this is partly because I know mostly non-native English speakers) so maybe I have set the bar low! But the test of real fluency for me could be - writing a book or article in the L2, doing a long radio interview in the L2, something like that. I'm sure this has been debated at great length elsewhere. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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