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4 languages in 14 months | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| justgoogleme Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5335 days ago 26 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), French | Message 1 of 19 11 May 2010 at 3:27pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I have always been a goal driven person, especially when the stakes are high. I have entered into a bet that within 14 months I can become conversant and be able to adequatley read and write in Italian, Spanish, French and Arabic, with English being my mother tongue.
I have had no real prior experience in these languages and only started learning, Italian, and Spanish at the start of Feb, and Arabic and French at the start of April. I will dedicate an hour a day to each language(4 total) and 2 hours to each language on the weekend. I will be using Rosetta Stone and Assimil for Italian and Spanish and Michel Thomas for Arabic and French(3 months on MT) and then switch to Assimil for the remainder of the period. I do have a passion for languages as it will open many doors before closed but the financial incentive is just a sweetner. I have bet my Work collegues at 5 to 1 that I will achieve it. I have placed a wager of GBP 1000 with 12 of my collegues. So follow my journey and see it it can be done. I wish to start a weekley blog to chronicle this, would this be the right forum?? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5526 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes  Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 2 of 19 11 May 2010 at 3:51pm | IP Logged |
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You'll probably be spending around or more than half that time on Arabic. That being said, it is really possible.
In my opinion, you should be starting with Assimil right away, and put a wide space in Italian and Spanish studies, so that you don't get them mixed up. Edited by GREGORG4000 on 11 May 2010 at 3:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| justgoogleme Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5335 days ago 26 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), French | Message 3 of 19 11 May 2010 at 4:01pm | IP Logged |
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A lot oe people have said that about Italian and Spanish. I am not sure if it is just me but I actually prefer studying one hour on RS and then immediately witch and do the exact same lesson but in Spanish and find it easier to retain information as when i look at the Pics, i immediately think of the Italian one and to make sure i am learning the Spanish translation. I am finding that I retain it much more. When i used to study one at a time, i would always score low on the grammar, but now i am scoring nigh on 99 percent all of the time.
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| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5352 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 4 of 19 11 May 2010 at 10:15pm | IP Logged |
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How are you intending to prove your level to your colleagues after that time?
What will they accept as adequate reading and writing and conversant? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6442 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 5 of 19 12 May 2010 at 12:05am | IP Logged |
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I also wonder what's your job that you get to spend 4 hours a day on language learning!
My advice from a business point of view would be to ensure you set out clearly how you prove the level in each language that you have obtained, and from a linguistic point of view, don't hold rigidly to an hour each per language, if you need more time on Arabic than on Spanish and Italian, do so. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| justgoogleme Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5335 days ago 26 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), French | Message 6 of 19 12 May 2010 at 1:50am | IP Logged |
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All very true. I am a self employed FX trader so I can pretty much work any hours I want. I am also going to be fairly flexible to the time alloted for each subject.
In terms of testing, i will have to be able to read 2 pages from a newspaper for each language. I have to be able to converse to an Englis h A level standard and write to a GCSE standard. All the guys know me and know that i have have no in depth prior knowledge of the languages 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6473 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 7 of 19 13 May 2010 at 9:31am | IP Logged |
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Studying one or two hours a day for each language seems like an awful lot, and real
life is likely to interfere. You will also certainly experience burn-out at some point. Be sure to vary your materials, study with different materials (for the same language) at the same time in order to experience a synergy effect. I believe that for Italian / Spanish / French you should be able to achieve your goal if you actually pull through with this. For Arabic however, I'm highly doubtful. According to this site, which is backed by US government stats, it normally takes students around 3000 hours (in a classroom or immersion) to reach a general-purpose level in Arabic. The most talented ones can do it in 850 classroom hours, not counting hours of homework even. However, over the course of 14 months, you'll barely be hitting half of that, and at a less intensive pace (the FSI students do 25 hours a week). So in order to have any chance at all, you have to focus a whole lot more on Arabic. The problem with Arabic is that spoken Arabic will almost certainly be one of the dialects - Michael Thomas teaches you Egyptian, which is a good choice - while to read a newspaper you need to know Modern Standard Arabic, which is mutually unintelligible. So essentially you'll have to learn two languages in order to meet that newspaper requirement, and Egyptian is the significantly easier one in terms of grammar. Another thing is that as a first-time language student, there will be a period where language study is ineffective until your brain has really assimilated the idea of a foreign language and accommodated for the ways that it's different from English. After that, Italian, Spanish and French should come rather easily as they are similar enough to English (and to each other), but Arabic is an entirely different beast and you will need a lot of time simply to wrap your head around the workings of it, for example the mad way they make words irrecognizable ('yaktubu' (he is writing) derives from the verb 'kataba' (to write), and this is NOT an irregular verb). Finally, Assimil is the only language program that even tries to get you anywhere near the level you need, no matter the claims of Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur or Michael Thomas or Teach Yourself, but the Assimil Arabic programs are particularly bad. I really wish you had chosen any language other than Arabic, aside from maybe Chinese. [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Di fficulty_for_English_Speak ers]Here's[/url] an evaluation of the objective difficulty of languages. To improve your chances of success, you may want to take some one-on-one classes, as they can help you understand things faster and improve your conversational ability. Myngle has a program you should appreciate given the generous amount of time you have for study: a "full immersion" plan where you can take a half an hour private online lesson every day for 30 days for 195 EUR. They only offer it for two more days though, so not sure what you'd do for the other 13 months. One more thing: you probably want to include Anki (free, cross-platform) or another SRS into your routine in order to cram vocabulary. You have to learn at least 10 words a day English-to-target-language in order to wind up anywhere near the level you're aiming for, 20 would be better. Edited by Sprachprofi on 13 May 2010 at 9:52am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| justgoogleme Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5335 days ago 26 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Spanish, Arabic (Egyptian), French | Message 8 of 19 13 May 2010 at 10:09am | IP Logged |
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Thank you very much for your reply. It was both insightful and helpful.
Your comments in particular about Arabic are duly noted. I in fact have been looking to hire a private tutor for that one as i do feel it will give me the most problems. I will be looking to allocate at least 4 hours on Sat and Sun for that one whilst also taking 3 months off from work to spend time in Egypt(something which trading allows me to do as I can trade anywhere) It will be hard, but ultimately, in 14 months I will be a hell of a lot more advanced than I am currently. Whilst better people than me have commented that French, Spanish and Italian will cause too much trouble due to interference, I can say so far, I find it much easier to learn that way(admittedly at an early stage). Burnout is not a concern as I dont see how I can burn out of something I have set my mind to. Of course when my motivation is trying, I will jump on here and seek some words of encouragement from all of you!!! Many Thanks 1 person has voted this message useful |
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