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Importance of "studying" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4763 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 11 01 July 2015 at 2:51am | IP Logged |
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I imagine that many people will disagree with me, but here goes.
I have rarely had any improvement in a language when I wasn't actively "studying." I'm just one anecdote, but I wonder why my experience isn't more general. In Peace Corps, I hit my village with less than an A-1 level of Samoan. I was told that though the "magic of immersion," I would soon be fluent. I could understand nothing, I could say nothing. I was completely isolated, even though people talked to me all the time. After three months, I had learned nothing. I memorized the equivalent of a phrase book, and my Samoan took off. I kept studying native speaker materials, memorizing word lists, reading aloud, conversing with a tutor, and my Samoan exploded to a C1 level in a few months. I learned nothing until I started studying, and I stopped improving rapidly when I stopped. I started my time working in the refugee camps in the Philippines as a total 0 in Tagalog. I knew enough to start "studying" immediately. I improved rapidly, and after about 6 months was at about a B1/B2 level. I found this pretty comfortable for living in the Philippines, so I stopped studying, and decided I would learn "from using the language." It's been 30 years now. I lived in the Philippines for 8 years and I've been married to a Filipina ever since. I use Tagalog every day. I listen to hours of TV in Tagalog most days. I'm not as good today in Tagalog as I was the day I stopped studying. I've met adults who claimed they learned a language just hanging out with native speakers and reading and listening to native speaker materials, but I really don't think I would. My experience so far seems to be that I need to be doing something that is hard for me, that pushes the envelope of my language abilities, in order to see much improvement. I don't mean courses, I mean word lists, shadowing, reading aloud, making formal speeches to the village chiefs (Samoan), or something else that takes effort. If I don't push, I don't get anywhere. Getting input and waiting for improvement hasn't worked for me yet. Is my experience typical or is there something wrong with me? 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3534 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 2 of 11 01 July 2015 at 3:41am | IP Logged |
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I imagine people's experiences in this can widely vary. I'm not a very observant person
nor am I good at imitation. I worked in a place where I heard a particular language all the time and aside from phrases I specifically memorized I never picked anything up despite being "immersed" 9-10hrs a day in hearing them converse with each other in it. What I've found to be the case for me is conversation helps "activate" what I already know. Through regular conversation I try to use new vocab I've learnt and through that it becomes more ingrained then through memorization through flash cards and the like. I am terrible in picking up subtle patterns in a conversation, or getting new vocab for that matter. I am far better at doing this through written material than through conversations, so I would say with myself at least I share some parallels with you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 11 01 July 2015 at 3:48am | IP Logged |
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I think you need to study and do work at home, but I am not sure it has to be any
traditional variant of studying with dusty old books. It's more about maintaining a consistent flow and being very aware of what you are reading and improving what you are doing. 5 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 4 of 11 01 July 2015 at 10:16am | IP Logged |
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Agreed completely, in my experience I need all three of input, practice, and study to make progress, especially at a more advanced level at which point the "just hanging out with native speakers and reading and listening to native speaker materials" has resulted in a plateau.
For me, "studying" largely comes down to identifying weak points and doing focused work on them. This has included grammar study and exercises, seeking out content on particular topics and using SRS for vocabulary and expressions, pronunciation improvement, self-talk or working with a tutor to practise expressing ideas in speech, intensive reading or listening to work on comprehension. Those are just a few examples from my learning over the last few years, I'm not saying they're the best or the only study methods to use. I'd like to think that anybody on this forum would be beyond the "dusty old books" straw-man idea of studying! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 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 5 of 11 01 July 2015 at 1:48pm | IP Logged |
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For me, it's about achieving a balance. Study is important. Speaking for myself, it's more important in the beginning and starts to diminish (again, for me) in importance as I begin to build my skills in the language. I don't often finish a course but somehow end up learning a language or three. If I don't finish a course, that doesn't mean I do no study at all. That's when the grammar book becomes quite useful to me as I progress further. It becomes my guide and consultation rather than my source of instruction.
I do use grammar drills. I like to speak with a tutor to improve my conversational abilities. I do like good, useful writing correction. It's just that at a certain point, I feel it is more useful to engage with the language, make my mistakes, learn from them, notice proper usage and try to incorporate it. Here on HTLAL, one of the problems I see with "study" is when "study" becomes the overwhelming focus of a learner's interaction with a language to the point of exclusion of native materials, speaking and listening. Some feel as if they must do multiple courses and enter everything into srs. They do this to such an extent that interacting with the language outside of course/anki world is so limited that there is little opportunity to consolidate the knowledge that they are ostensibly "learning". The reality for most self-learners who live far away from TL speakers here on HTLAL is sitting at home in front of a computer. In this situation of "home learning", it's easy to get out of balance and skew the vast percentage of time with a language to "study". It's also easier than one thinks to engage with a language even being far away. Finding a way to interact with a language is important if one is to advance beyond a low intermediate level and be able to speak with people and engage in listening, reading and writing. Study, whether that be with word lists, some srs and or a good grammar book combined with reading, listening, speaking and writing is very effective in my experience and observation. As the OP says, I find it important to challenge myself. Edited by iguanamon on 01 July 2015 at 9:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 11 01 July 2015 at 2:57pm | IP Logged |
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Great topic, and thank you for sharing your experiences, sfuqua!
I can bring two data points to the table: - My wife made it from a strong B2/weak C1 level to a near-native conversational level while living in the US, and I never saw her study or practice. But as previously noted, she still edges me out for the title of family polyglot. :-) - The single best thing I can do for my French right now is to be fully immersed with French media and French speakers. I've tried studying, but I only see very slow improvement. Throw me in an immersion situation, and I see improvement within hours or days. I do study, but it generally comes in two flavors: 1. Focusing on a week skill consistently for a month. This works very well for some things, but the payoff diminishes rapidly. 2. Occasionally looking up stuff that puzzles me, or paying attention to interesting details in input. Virtually all of my big jumps in comprehension came from consuming massive amounts of native media in a short period of time, in a mostly extensive fashion. It's entirely possible—and no real surprise after all these years on HTLAL—that one size might not fit all. :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4519 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 7 of 11 01 July 2015 at 5:24pm | IP Logged |
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To study or not to study is for me mostly a question about the effort-success
relation and boils down to motivation. At some point, improvement is not big enough to warrant the effort of studying. Studying might be the more efficient way to improve, but when it comes to "immersion", I just don't care about how fast I improve - I just enjoy the road and don't think about the goal - it's more or less effortless. That being said, I do believe in tackling small particular problems by explicit study, but only after I've undergone a lot of input. It's the icing on the cake, input is the bread and butter. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5226 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 8 of 11 01 July 2015 at 5:52pm | IP Logged |
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This is an area where I think there's a lot of individual variation. Some people I've known can intuitively grasp a new language fairly easily just from hearing it (strangely enough, these people were all musicians--but then again, I know a lot of musicians, and classical musicians find themselves exposed to more foreign languages than people in other fields).
I can't do this. I also will never pass amateur status in piano. So I study. That's just the way it is. At the same time, at one point obviously I was able to grasp a language just from hearing it, when I was very young. This could mean the critical period is real, at least for some people, or it could mean I'm doing something different now that prevents me from learning in the same way. Also interesting, I never had an intuitive grasp of music, either hearing or playing, but I was able to analyze a piece of music much more easily than any of my more musical colleagues. My brain just seems to work differently. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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