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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5260 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 49 of 94 24 June 2015 at 12:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I used to believe that members here with a list of languages under "studies" as long as your arm actually studied all of them every day (most don't, Expugnator being the exception!). I used to think, "ahhh, no wonder they're having so much trouble learning 'x'- they need to drop their other six languages and concentrate on 'x'. Then I started reading the logs of some amazing and exceptional people- Expugnator, Serpent, Teango and Iversen, Fasulye, Sprachprofi, Cristina, Robarb, Tarvos, Luso and many others! What an inspiration they are!
Of course, these folks are experienced learners, not raw (monolingual) beginners who think they can learn multiple languages starting them all at a beginner level (a daunting task). The experienced know what they can do and how they can best learn because they have done it before- multiple times. I used to believe that I would never be multilingual and now I can speak four languages. I could count Ladino too to make it five, but I never speak it and it isn't listed here. I just read, listen and write (occasionally) Ladino- mostly read. Being able to read two centuries old Ladino written in Rashi and Solitreo scripts is something I never thought would happen. I used to believe that I couldn't learn a language with few resources available, and then along came Haitian Creole and Ladino. These are languages with no dubbed TV series or films that I can find at least. They don't have the latest Grisham novel translated either. I learned that sometimes (in terms of resources) fewer can be better and that "by any means necessary" works if one has the will to do it. For Haitian Creole I've used a friend, even random strangers (at first), US government pamphlets about the Everglades, the Bible, Bible study transcripts with audio (the Old Testament is great for learning), transcribed interviews with Haitian Voodoo priests, Voodoo songs, Twitter, democracy podcasts, elementary school guides for Haitian immigrant parents and anything I can get my hands on. I've used whatever I can find for Ladino as well. I relish what I truly find interesting and tolerate what I don't, because I keep my eyes on the prize- I want to learn the language and I know that every bit helps, especially in a rare or uncommonly studied language. This will come in handy if I ever start to study Sranan Tongo, Plattdeutsch, Manx, Q'eqchi, Aymara or Quechua (even Catalan) someday because they have even fewer resources available. Learning a rare/uncommonly studied language is not easy but I now know it can be done and how to do it- "by any means necessary" (-Malcolm X). Edited by iguanamon on 24 June 2015 at 3:52am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 50 of 94 24 June 2015 at 3:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I think we actually get more exposure than those who treat their one language as a once-a-week or even 1-hour a day hobby. Those who put in the time and then lose the contact with the language as soon as they close the textbook.
The difference between studying and using is also more blurry. You must be very well aware of that, as you get some exposure to Catalan but don't actually "study" it. For me, Spanish, Dutch, even Italian all started out like this before becoming full-blown adventures (especially Spanish). Now Galician is knocking on my door although that will definitely be a passive-only language. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4288 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 51 of 94 24 June 2015 at 4:58am | IP Logged | ||
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A big one is that one does not need to learn grammar in L2/3/4/.../n/n+1, especially
because one does not learn grammar in one's own language. Having worked through literally more than 40 grammar books in Spanish, my strongest language, as well as reading in full Nueva gramática de la lengua española: Manual, it certainly helped. I have two books that as I understand, are approved by the government of the Netherlands for A1-A2 and B1-B2 to practise grammar systematically like the Gramática de uso del español books for Spanish. I also learnt English grammar in both primary and secondary school, so from ages 5 to around 17, which my English composition module had grammar even in the lessons. I remember in primary school that almost everyday I had grammar lessons, that had things like how the concordance of tenses (in English), past participles and strong verbs, perfect and pluperfect tenses, subordinate clauses, dependent clauses, and many other things that mirror heavy grammar learning that a non-native would learn for English. I remember doing pages of grammar exercises as homework after school, very clearly, and it was fairly straightforward. It was logically more difficult for immigrants whose language was not English, but eventually they learnt, just like how anyone else learns L2. Likewise, this spans generations--my mother and grandmother both had daily grammar lessons in their native language (English), and as my grandmother said, "If you went to school when I went to school, there was no way in hell that you would not learn how to write and speak grammatically correctly." So why not in L2? Edited by 1e4e6 on 24 June 2015 at 5:06am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 52 of 94 24 June 2015 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
Yep, over most of my language learning time I've placed too much importance on conversation practice, especially after reading a certain famous blog, and it's caused me a lot of undue stress and wasted time: unreliable language exchange partners, learner-dominated meetups where you hear mostly incorrect language, native speakers who say they'd love to help me and then change their minds. Plus the resulting frustration of feeling like I'm not making as much progress as I'd like because I can't find enough opportunities to converse. I still believe that conversation practice is important: there's no real substitute for it, and having opportunities to converse is a great motivation in itself. But it doesn't need to be the focus, it can just be part of a balanced strategy, and other activities do contribute to conversation ability to some extent. If you do have readily accessible opportunities then you might as well take full advantage, but it's not worth stressing over if you don't, and there's an element of quality over quantity: less frequent conversations with natives over more frequent ones with learners, and a paid tutor can be more "economical" than a free language exchange purely for reliability: much more chance that they'll turn up at the given time and will continue with you beyond one or two sessions if you want to. Conversations aren't a waste of time, but pursuing them sure can be! 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4531 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 53 of 94 24 June 2015 at 11:23am | IP Logged | ||
Unfortunately, I would put this under bull I used to believe. :) I think for some languages (English might be the exception) the gap between receptive skills (reading/listening) and productive skills (writing/speaking) is too great for expertise in reading/listening to translate automatically into excellence in speaking/writing. What seems to happen when you read is that the brain extracts meaning, and ignores grammar that is unimportant for meaning (e.g., word gender) so over time you get better and better receptive skills, but productive skills remain far behind. Of course the gap could close with sufficient practise, but I found even for my native English that my writing greatly improved when I was forced to write a lot at university. Edited by patrickwilken on 24 June 2015 at 11:24am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 54 of 94 24 June 2015 at 11:50am | IP Logged | ||
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80% lexical coverage gives you the gist...only if by gist they recall the original etymology from the Old French gésir indicating "to lie down", "take a rest", or be "buried".
Edited by Teango on 24 June 2015 at 12:05pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5764 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 55 of 94 24 June 2015 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | ||
You completely missed my point. Of course, if I don't spend time on reading increasingly difficult books I won't get better at reading difficult books, and will have to rely on outside help like a reader or a dictionary if I try to read a difficult book. If I don't spend time listening to increasingly difficult content I will have to ask/expect people to slow down and speak more clearly and use scripts or subtitles to understand movies and plays. If I don't spend time on spoken interaction I will have to rely other people's ability to guess what I mean and to adapt their speech patterns to what I can understand, which, incidentally, many native English speakers are rather good at. I personally think that when you've read a number of examples of writing for a certain purpose attentively you should be able to emulate that convention in a couple of attemps - but you'd still need practice for it to become a reliable skill. When I use an outdated/written register word in English native speakers will compliment my 'good English' and/or just continue with the conversation. Spanish speakers often rephrase what I am trying to say and continue. Japanese speakers will not understand what I am trying to say and, depending on the situation, ignore me or change the topic. (With friends I can insist on looking up the word, having them tell me 'but we don't use that word' and try to come up with a better expression, but the results are not that reliable and it completely destroys the conversational flow. Oh, and German speakers will probably tell you the word isn't used that way - and if it's one person, give you an ok explanation why and tell you what to say instead; if it's more than one native speaker it often happens that we start arguing with each other about how to use all of those words correctly ...) If my sole goal was to read difficult books it wouldn't make sense to practice any of the other skills. Historical research comes to mind. And being a proficient reader should make you catch up with the other skills faster than somebody who didn't spend any time on the language, once you choose to work on those skills. But calling reading by itself "learning a language" is incorrect. Doing so in a context where you give advice to the reader, for example on here on a thread about techniques that work, makes it sound like you believe the statement to be true for yourself and most likely for other people, too. Doing so in a context where you are asked to talk about things that don't work ... to me, there are a number of possible motivations that come to mind, for example (a) using the contradiction to annoy people and engage their annoyance (aka trolling light) (b) being not as good at the target language as one believed one was (c) being starved for attention or recognition (d) needing to self-present as superior (e) being dimly aware that the belief is incorrect and trying to use the specific context to bring out its contradictions and, if possible, adjust it to reflect reality more closely Of course there may be many more but I'd have my pick from these for starters. Edited by Bao on 24 June 2015 at 1:29pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 56 of 94 24 June 2015 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||
The more exclusively input you go, the more you need three things: language learning experience, an understanding of linguistics and deliberate attention to details. It's definitely not as simple as having fun and learning with zero effort. edit: i agree that tastyonions' idea wouldn't work, due to way too little listening. Edited by Serpent on 24 June 2015 at 4:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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