Desertbandit Groupie Netherlands Joined 5105 days ago 80 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Arabic (Iraqi)*
| Message 1 of 17 27 January 2011 at 2:24pm | IP Logged |
Learning a language is not something that can be done overnight it needs allot of patience .
So how do you cope with patience? and are you a patient person?
I personally a very unpatient person, I have to constantly tell myself ''mastering a language takes time be patient''
1 person has voted this message useful
|
vilas Pentaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6965 days ago 531 posts - 722 votes Speaks: Spanish, Italian*, English, French, Portuguese
| Message 3 of 17 27 January 2011 at 2:52pm | IP Logged |
It is not a question of patience, is a question of passion.
If you are passionate for languages you like to study it.
It is relative.
A quote from Einstein
"If you sat on a hot stove for 5 minutes, it would seem like an hour. If you talked to a beautiful and charming woman for an hour it would seem like 5 minutes. Thats relativity"
To me, do something with mathematics is like to sit on an hot stove
To study languages is like to talk with a beatiful woman
17 persons have voted this message useful
|
Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6110 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish
| Message 4 of 17 27 January 2011 at 6:36pm | IP Logged |
Sometimes for me it's both.
For example, when I'm battling through Polish conjugates it's like sitting on a hot stove while talking to a beautiful woman!
10 persons have voted this message useful
|
g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5987 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 5 of 17 27 January 2011 at 6:50pm | IP Logged |
I don't think you need patience as much as you need persistance. Patience suggests waiting passively for something to happen but with languages you just need to keep chipping away at it until it comes together, which takes persistance. I'm not so good at patience or persistance, but I am very good at being single minded and stubborn, which helps a lot.
4 persons have voted this message useful
|
aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5538 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French
| Message 6 of 17 31 January 2011 at 8:25am | IP Logged |
I'm in the same camp as Vilas on this one. Ideally patience would have to have nothing
to do with it. If you're engaged in it, you do not count the hours or days or months.
One might as well ask how on earth millions of young people have the patience to play
World of Warcraft for hours and hours every day. Ask them and they say that patience
does not even enter the equation.
I'm extremely impatient person myself too and as soon as my motivation drops, learning
drops too. And instead of fighting myself, forcing myself to be patient and sit through
another grammar lesson and whatnot I'd rather find a way to cooperate myself and make
myself want to go and read another page or two. It's like making choices between "you
have to go to work! now!" and "let's go play! now!". Only thing is I have to let go of
the notion of deadlines and terms like "a language per year". Works for some people,
does not for me.
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
Quabazaa Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5614 days ago 414 posts - 543 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written)
| Message 7 of 17 31 January 2011 at 1:39pm | IP Logged |
Think of it as a journey rather than a destination ;) Depending on how pedantic you are, you may never be finished learning a language - the beauty of it is that you can keep delving deeper and deeper! It will never get old. Even when I'm 80 or 90 I will be learning new things about my languages because they are always changing, they are living languages.
It can be very discouraging when it takes a long time (I'm looking at you, Arabic!) but just set small goals and keep reaching them. As if you were climbing a mountain - instead of always looking up to the peak 3000m above you, look around you on the path and enjoy the beauty of the landscape, lie under a tree for a while, and then keep going! By the time you get to the top you will have had a lot more fun than if you are always just pushing on looking up.
4 persons have voted this message useful
|
TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6362 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 8 of 17 31 January 2011 at 5:00pm | IP Logged |
Mooby wrote:
when I'm battling through Polish conjugates it's like sitting on a hot stove while talking to a beautiful woman! |
|
|
Ha ha, how long before somebody comes up with something that's like talking to a woman who is sitting on a hot stove? ;-)
I think Vilas is totally correct. A lot of people quit FSI courses, for example, because they find the extensive drills too boring (don't have the patience to continue), but I really like FSI. It's very motivating for me to go thru an FSI unit the first time and do horribly on the drills, then after a second time really improve, and after maybe 3 or 4 times I can instantly spit everything out like a champ.
1 person has voted this message useful
|