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Learning a language? Don’t tell anyone! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 1 of 30 08 February 2012 at 6:32am | IP Logged |
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This short 3:00 vid from the TED talks tells why you shouldn't tell people your goals.
http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you rself.html 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 2 of 30 08 February 2012 at 7:11am | IP Logged |
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>link<
Interesting point and certainly reasonable. I was about to note that I already keep my language studies to myself anyway, but then I realized that discussing my language studies here on good ol' HTLAL may yield a similar effect... Edited by nway on 08 February 2012 at 7:11pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6126 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 3 of 30 08 February 2012 at 9:03am | IP Logged |
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Oh no! It's too late.
I do tell my father I'm working on Japanese, but he wants no part of this, and simply respond with silence. (Perhaps silent horror -- honestly, he just says nothing, I think he just doesn't care.) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 30 08 February 2012 at 10:48am | IP Logged |
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Mr. Sivers has a point, but maybe for other reasons than the one stated. If you tell everyone that you will be able to speak Hungarian or Korean or Volapük or whatever in three months' time then you will according to him feel gratification 'too early', and you will be tempted to give up early because you already have had that nice feeling.
My explanations are different: 1) if there is any risk that you won't be ready to speak Hungarian/Koran/Volapük in exactly three months you will give give up well in advance with some vague explanation in order to avoid your final judgement at doomsday 2) you will hate the people you told the secret because you'll feel that they somehow pressure you into doing something which may be slightly above your capabilities. 3) when you fail you will have failed absolutely - and if you readjust your expectations it will just be seen as a lame excuse for being a loser. The silent ones can redefine their goals in a way that make them more realistic, and nobody will blame them. Cure: don't tell people what you want to achieve - tell them what you already do. Nobody can deny that you study Japanese. If they don't like it then tell them to put a sushi somewhere where the sun never shines. Or find some other friends. Or say "and so what?" next time they want to speak about their interests. Goldensupercup (or whatever the Americans call it). "And so what?". Madonna sang for half an hour. "And so what? Who is Madonna, by the way? Oh no, don't tell me - unless Joseph played the guitar with Jesus on the drums". It won't make the world a more peaceful place, but you will have marked your lack of interest. PS: I liked the illustrations in the video Edited by Iversen on 08 February 2012 at 10:50am 17 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Northernlights Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 73 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 5 of 30 08 February 2012 at 12:50pm | IP Logged |
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I find it depends on who you tell. Discretion and modesty are usually good but not telling anyone seems a bit OTT.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jellitto Diglot Newbie Finland Joined 4901 days ago 17 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: German, Swedish, Japanese | Message 6 of 30 08 February 2012 at 2:04pm | IP Logged |
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I don´t tell my goals to other people before I know that I´m good enough in it. It feels like the people I tell my goals think that I have already achieved my goal, even if I don´t think so myself! Edited by Jellitto on 08 February 2012 at 2:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 30 08 February 2012 at 3:30pm | IP Logged |
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I haven't watched the video yet, but I tell everyone about my goals, as long as I've set reasonable goals, of course. It forces me to work harder so I don't look like a fool.
At some point, I'm going to have to talk to someone in the language. From that point on, it's impossible to pretend I'm not studying and I need to improve anyway, so I don't see the point of hiding it. Language is a communication tool, so if you are hiding it, you aren't using it... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6106 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 30 08 February 2012 at 6:28pm | IP Logged |
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I spend a lot of my time language studying, so when a new acquaitance asks me; 'What do you do in your free time?', I tell them the truth, although I can't help feeling a little sheepish. It's not a shameful secret that I'm learning Polish, but I generally keep quiet about it because most people don't really know what to say in response. Even my Polish friends are baffled....I never tell them how much I study because they already think I'm crazy. That's why it's such a relief to come to confession at HTLAL...forgive me friends, I studied 8 hours last week.
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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