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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| JasonE Groupie Canada Joined 5075 days ago 54 posts - 78 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 9 27 January 2011 at 5:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello Everyone. I started studying my first foreign language several months ago and as to be expected, there
have been ups and downs in this quest. Today however has been a good day, and on reflecting, it seems like I've gotten better at this whole language learning business than I was even a month ago. For all you accomplished polyglots out there: When did you begin to feel like you've hit your stride in language learning? I know that learning a new language never becomes easy, but when did you feel like you had a pretty good system worked out and felt confident when approaching a new language, or improving an old one? Is there improvement in learning ability followed by a plateau, or do things get continually easier as time goes by? Stories and reflections are what I'm looking for here, but of course a tip or two for us beginners couldn't hurt. Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| thecrazyfarang Diglot Newbie France thefarangsdiary.blog Joined 5056 days ago 18 posts - 25 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Thai | Message 2 of 9 27 January 2011 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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My story : I studied English at school, as everybody, approximately from 12 to 17 years. One day, at 17, I visited London...
It was a real shock : I understood nothing and couldn't make a coherent sentence. "Stupid teachers!", I thought, and left the school and English at 17 years. 6 months ago, at 29, I decided to REALLY learn English, WITH MY OWN METHOD, and the last month, I visited London again. I was in the hotel and an man, native English speaker, asks me if I could fix a problem with his computer. It was magic! I understood everything and talked with the man for 1 hour. I made some mistakes, but I knew I've hit my stride in English. Now I can watch CBC news or my favorite TV series and I have no problem to understand what is said. The last week, I started to learn thai. I use the same personnal method to do it. I'm so happy with the results that I've made a blog to talk about it! I know that there will be some "plateaux", but I don't care because I feel VERY confident now. My advice : HAVE FUN WHEN YOU STUDY A LANGUAGE. Don't be ashamed if you want to start learning french with books for children of 5 years old. Do whatever you want and you'll improve your knowledge, trust me. Have fun !!!!!!! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Darya0Khoshki Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5073 days ago 71 posts - 91 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Iraqi) Studies: Persian | Message 3 of 9 27 January 2011 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have learned that when all of a sudden I feel like I stink and I don't know anything ...
... that's a good sign!! Because it means I've broken through to a whole new level of material that I hadn't even been exposed to before. Once I feel complacent and like I know everything that means I've exhausted my current level and as soon as I move up to the next level I'll feel like I don't know anything again. Of course it doesn't feel good, but remember it DOES mean that you're getting better because the material is getting harder. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| thecrazyfarang Diglot Newbie France thefarangsdiary.blog Joined 5056 days ago 18 posts - 25 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Thai | Message 4 of 9 28 January 2011 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
+ 1 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| laidlaw7 Newbie United States Joined 5051 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 9 08 February 2011 at 4:45am | IP Logged | ||
Great post, but I was just wondering if you wouldn't mind divulging your "personnal method" to a newbie like my self? I have been studying putonghua for the last six months and fortunately for me there are several "Tangrenjie" where I live (NYC metro). Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5991 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 6 of 9 08 February 2011 at 7:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been interested in languages for many years, and my skill at learning them has gone up every year. Sometimes I've thought to myself "oh, I'm getting the hang of this now!", and then soon afterwards I learn something new and realize I didn't know that much before. When I discovered this site, I learned a lot more than I had previously dreamed of, even though I'd been learning on my own for a long time.
I think language learning is similar to other complex skills in that you can make a lot of improvements pretty fast if you work hard, but you'll always have room for improvement for years and years to come. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| polyglHot Pentaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5071 days ago 173 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 9 08 February 2011 at 8:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd say it got somewhat "easier" between number 5 and 6. Comfortable is the word I'd like
to use though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6708 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 8 of 9 08 February 2011 at 10:06am | IP Logged | ||
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A large portion of my language learning has always been home study, even at school and during my university studies. However I had a long period after my exam were I didn't actually study languages - some simply survived better than others because I used them more, for instance during travels or by watching TV at home. When my interest in language learning was rekindled due to the discovery of this forum I first used normal textbooks, but also oral sources on the internet - which hadn't been possible 30 years before. So the use of internet TV and podcasts is one thing that has improved since my first learning learning period.
I restarted my studied in the summer of 1986, but the next big breakthrough came in january 1987, when I discovered my wordlist method, which roughly builds on the idea that you don't learn one word with its translation and then proceed to the next, but instead you work on groups of wordpairs - typically 5 to 7. The idea is that you don't learn much from repeating mindlessly, but more from dragging words back kicking and screaming from the first part of the slippery slope towards oblivion. I have refined the layout since then, but the basic idea stems back to January 2007, as I said. Since then I have also stepped up my use of parallel texts - and the eyeopener in this case came from the socalled L-R system (Listening-reading), though I haven't used it in its original form - mostly due to the lack of long scientific texts where you could get a recording, a transcript and a literal translation. Instead I have been more and more convinced that even the use of machine translations is warranted, provided that you always keep the original in the target language and the translation in your own language. The boon is of course that you mostly get your doubts resolved here and now, not after several minutes of looking things up. The site GLOSS - which now seems to be accessible again for us Europeans - was also a revelation in this sense. The third revolution in my study methods is more subtle, but also much older: when I studied French in the 70s I found out that my grammars not only were more or less detailed, but also explained things differently. I then started out making my own summaries, which developed into a situation where I quite simply made my own theory for subordinate phrases which I have used ever since. As a part of this I also make my own morphological summaries, the socalled "green sheets", and I use these for reference, not a thick textbook. This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I like being in charge of the grammatical analysis too. Edited by Iversen on 08 February 2011 at 10:09am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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