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Polyglot language learning goals | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Torbyrne Super Polyglot Senior Member Macedonia SpeakingFluently.com Joined 6094 days ago 126 posts - 721 votes  Speaks: French, English*, German, Spanish, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Czech, Catalan, Welsh, Serbo-Croatian Studies: Sign Language, Toki Pona, Albanian, Polish, Bulgarian, TurkishA1, Esperanto, Romanian, Danish, Mandarin, Icelandic, Modern Hebrew, Greek, Latvian, Estonian | Message 1 of 9 22 August 2011 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hands up if you've made a promise to yourself about learning a new language?
Hands up if you made a public declaration of it? Hands up if you didn't get where you wanted to be in the time you allowed yourself to do it? If your hand was down for the third question, good on you. That's fab! :) These are things I think many of us can put our hands up to and keep them up throughout. I, of course, include myself in this category. That said, it is normal and definitely nothing to be ashamed of. I see a lot of debate about people who make these claims over and over publicly. They seem to have short-term goals of varying levels of ability in a variety of languages. I myself am just over halfway through my month in Poland, learning to speak Polish. It's been three weeks so far and I can hold a conversation without reverting back to English, albeit with mistakes and speaking in a slightly stilted manner at times! ;) I don't have a particular level in mind that I wish to attain this month, but I wanted to start speaking the language with some degree of confidence. I appreciate that my previous studies of Czech have helped no end in being able to speak the language very early on in my studies. My plan is to continue studying Polish in the longterm. I definitely do not see this month of studies as an end goal. Language learners tend to find improving their level in multiple languages to be a challenge. Finding time for each one and knowing how to prioritise their studies is a battle. My thoughts are... How helpful is it to others to hear about these stories/accounts of language learning? Does it give an unrealistic or unhelpful perspective to would-be learners when they hear of accelerated learning plans? What do you make of it when people seem to go from language to language, seemingly leaving the old one(s) behind? My interest in this is two-fold. Firstly I am using my experience to catalogue what I do when I learn a language. The hope is to produce an interesting and helpful blog for other language enthusiasts. Secondly I am not the sort of person who takes on new language after new language just to "do it" and move onto the next. Usually my motivation is work/social. That said, some languages I only need at a certain level and I do not plan to improve them drastically. This however is a by-product of my changing circumstances and not a premeditated plan. Edited by Torbyrne on 23 August 2011 at 10:39am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Torbyrne Super Polyglot Senior Member Macedonia SpeakingFluently.com Joined 6094 days ago 126 posts - 721 votes Speaks: French, English*, German, Spanish, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Czech, Catalan, Welsh, Serbo-Croatian Studies: Sign Language, Toki Pona, Albanian, Polish, Bulgarian, TurkishA1, Esperanto, Romanian, Danish, Mandarin, Icelandic, Modern Hebrew, Greek, Latvian, Estonian | Message 3 of 9 22 August 2011 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Glad to hear that you find the stories useful to read about. Regarding BSL...
We moved to Skopje full-time, so I couldn't continue with the second year at the college I was attending. I would have taken on the local sign language, but there are no obvious places for me to learn it there. In the UK there are courses in most colleges across the country. The other issue is that I have never come across any people who know BSL to practice with outside the UK. We lived near the deaf centre in my hometown, which was my main motivation to learn as I came into contact with the deaf community on a daily basis. I use YouTube to look at BSL signed songs that I like and I have some DVDs, which I watch. The goal is to not forget what I learnt, so that I can pick it up again if I ever decide to live in the United Kingdom in the future or meet other people who know how to sign BSL. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 9 22 August 2011 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I enjoy very much reading about your experiences with the Polish language in Poland and the multiple ways of practicing the language there in combination with intensive study - besides the workload for your job and the communication with your family.
Like me you are working with long-term strategies. Once you seriously learn a language you will stick to it depending on your personal circumstances (of course you have to alternate the study of one language with the study of your other languages). I can never stay for 4 weeks or longer in foreign countries, so I will not get the chance to experience a similar immersion situation. But if I could, I would also communmicate a lot with other people, like I did, when I was on holidays in my guest families many years ago. Torbyrne, the important quote of your post is: "My plan is to continue studying Polish in the longterm. I definitley not see this month of study as an end goal." END OF QUOTE Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 22 August 2011 at 11:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 9 23 August 2011 at 12:31am | IP Logged | ||
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(Raising a hand) I made public declarations about which language I absolutely won't pick up in a certain year! So far, I stuck to my plan.
Seriously, reading other people's stories can be enjoyable but I tend to avoid blogs and logs because too often I end up bashing myself up over why I can't be as outgoing as most other people. But what I always find interesting are in-depth descriptions of people's methods. For example the articles written by Greg Thomson made me start to pay more conscious attention to patterns in conversation that can be used for practice. I'd like to read more about what people notice about their own habits when conversing with native speakers and why they think a certain habit may be helpful, not helpful or neutral. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6315 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 7 of 9 24 August 2011 at 7:57am | IP Logged | ||
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In the main I consider myself averse to the idea of hopping between languages in shallow fashion and soon discarding them like disposable objects, because I know such an approach will ultimately only leave me with true depth in a single language, namely my own. That's not to say that I can't see the appeal in "sampling the buffet" as it were, nor that I am not curious and fascinated by the world's many varied linguistic structures and writing systems. Very much to the contrary, a curiosity about how languages work in different and often seemingly bizarre ways is my principal interest in learning foreign languages, but this fascination goes part-and-parcel with the desire to develop sufficient abilities so as to actually be able to use them competently and comfortably. This extends to a whole range of abilities from being able to follow humorous talk shows in a particular language to reveling in its greatest literary works, not to mention being able to live among the people who speak it every day and developing a nuanced knowledge of the culture and history to which the language belongs. And nothing makes me more cognizant of this goal than the fact that after damn near a decade of studying German, my best foreign language, I still cannot claim to have entirely achieved this. Languages are life-long commitments and many (if not all) can provide you with lifelong enjoyment, something I wouldn't myself, personally, get from banging away at one language for a few weeks and then banging away at another to the exclusion and abandonment of the first.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4858 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 8 of 9 24 August 2011 at 11:43am | IP Logged | ||
And it's the main wind-up of your statement. Learning languages should be nothing but great fun. I find myself getting stressed that I can't learn something easily, that I forget the words, that it takes too long, that I make loads of mistakes... Etc. Maybe it's because I treat languages not anly as an entertainment, but also as a chance to find my niche in labour market (as I've previously mentioned, I cannot imagine myself in a different job than language-oriented). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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