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The Appreciation Factor | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Le dacquois Diglot Groupie France Joined 5647 days ago 54 posts - 69 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, German | Message 1 of 4 23 April 2010 at 2:14pm | IP Logged |
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This might seem like a strange post, but getting bogged down in all the details of language learning has blinded me somewhat recently and prevented me from remembering just why I do it and how enjoyable it is to taste those fruits of success.
I've been struggling along with German for roughly a year now. I've had no real plan, I'm very unorganized, however, I keep at it. Anyway, today I watched a bit of German TV for the first time in a long while (DW-TV is the only channel I can get here on freeview) and I was quite surprised at how much I understood. To go from not understanding a single word to getting the gist of things is a huge step for me and it reminded me of how satisfying learning languages can be. Even more gratifying for me is the fact that I haven't done a whole lot of listening, so to understand some spoken German is a real buzz. Before I just heard a mush of sounds (less mushy that French though!) but now I can hear words and repeat them, even not knowing what they mean. I can even take a stab at how to spell them. It's great to experience a new clarity in listening even if I still have to learn the meanings of a great many words. It reminds me of my first exchange in French with a Frenchman I met back home. It was the first time I understood another language and I was able to reply, it's the same sense of achievement. Anyway, just thought I'd share my excitement. It feels good to get my head out of all the technicalities and just appreciate the big picture again. It seems you can make progress even when you're not very aware of it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 2 of 4 23 April 2010 at 6:49pm | IP Logged |
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Congratulations. But your choice of the word "appreciation" made me think that you were referrring to appreciation of your progress from other persons. Which isn't what you describe above. It sounds more like an epiphany moment, though less sudden ('epiphany moment' is a term mainly used in this forum, and it means the sudden discovery that you understand a language). And an epiphany moment is something that happens just with you and your target language.
I notice that this happens after a period where you have worked in an unsystematic way with German, but not watched much German television. And this just shows that even unsystematic studies in the long run have an effect, and this effect is particularly clear when you try to listen to spoken German for the first time after a long pause. But without those unsystematic activities I doubt that you would have seen the same improvement. Edited by Iversen on 23 April 2010 at 8:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Smart Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5339 days ago 352 posts - 398 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French Studies: German | Message 3 of 4 23 April 2010 at 10:13pm | IP Logged |
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I hope this does not happen to me :)
But I understand what you mean :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5924 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 4 of 4 24 April 2010 at 12:27pm | IP Logged |
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I definitely understand what you mean about realizing you understand a language you've been learning. One of my favorite appreciation moments was listening to someone read a poem in Afrikaans and realizing after it was done that Afrikaans sounded natural to me and I understood every word. Now I just have get to this same point in the other languages I'm learning. I hope to have these types of experiences more frequently until eventuallly I understand nearly everything I hear. Edited by mick33 on 24 April 2010 at 12:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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