32 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5168 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin
| Message 25 of 32 03 May 2011 at 7:06pm | IP Logged |
It can be helpful for shy people, but only if they don't get sloshed!
Edited by Lucas on 04 May 2011 at 4:38pm
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| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6121 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French
| Message 26 of 32 03 May 2011 at 8:00pm | IP Logged |
I find that cannabis works really well also.
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish
| Message 28 of 32 03 May 2011 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
In all seriousness, the common thread here is that some alcohol or whatever substance can help relaxation, reduce inhibitions and therefore enhance speaking performance. That's certainly possible for certain individuals. But, of course, the central problem is how to accurately dose usage of these chemical techniques or evenly possibly forego them completely.
Many musicians and performers experience terrible stage-fright. There are certain things one can take to help, and there are all sorts of relaxation exercises one can do. But, at the same time, it is important to keep in mind that the fundamental key to performance success in foreign language performance, just like in music performance, is mastery of the material. Alcohol, pot, yoga or standing on your head will not make you a better speaker if you don't know your stuff. I've always felt that the best source of confidence in language performance is simply knowing the language extremely well. Sure, being relaxed, naturally or artificially, is good for fluidity of speech, but if you don't know your grammar, you'll just be spouting fluid mistakes.
Edited by s_allard on 03 May 2011 at 10:31pm
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| Dragomanno Triglot Groupie Zimbabwe Joined 5004 days ago 80 posts - 98 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Lithuanian, Albanian, Ancient Greek
| Message 29 of 32 03 May 2011 at 11:02pm | IP Logged |
As far as I am concerned, it definitively helps out. Cheers!
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 30 of 32 03 May 2011 at 11:59pm | IP Logged |
s_allard wrote:
In all seriousness, the common thread here is that some alcohol or whatever substance can help relaxation, reduce inhibitions and therefore enhance speaking performance. That's certainly possible for certain individuals. But, of course, the central problem is how to accurately dose usage of these chemical techniques or evenly possibly forego them completely.
Many musicians and performers experience terrible stage-fright. There are certain things one can take to help, and there are all sorts of relaxation exercises one can do. But, at the same time, it is important to keep in mind that the fundamental key to performance success in foreign language performance, just like in music performance, is mastery of the material. Alcohol, pot, yoga or standing on your head will not make you a better speaker if you don't know your stuff. I've always felt that the best source of confidence in language performance is simply knowing the language extremely well. Sure, being relaxed, naturally or artificially, is good for fluidity of speech, but if you don't know your grammar, you'll just be spouting fluid mistakes. |
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I've posted before on using a similar technique for working on new phonemes. Being tickled can be surprisingly effective. It doesn't replace reading about the new phoneme, having heard it a lot of times, or a lot of practice, but it does help early production when the rest of these elements are in place, I find.
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| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5634 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin
| Message 32 of 32 04 May 2011 at 7:20pm | IP Logged |
While I agree that alcohol clearly reduces inhibitions and makes the speaker more confident, these are psychological problems and should be dealt with in other ways in my opinion.
I don't drink and have never drunk and despite a conservative upbringing that would encourage shyness, I have learned in recent years to be more outgoing. It was a longer road than slushing something down my neck in a couple of seconds, but it has been effective in confidently speaking a language at any time of the day or week.
Alcohol can also act as a placebo. This is one of many studies that show that people already have the potential to think themselves drunk: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3035442.stm
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