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Is mindfulness bad for language learners? | ||
Tags: Meditation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5242 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 9 of 14 16 March 2014 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ever since I've learned about meditation and mindfulness I've seen a lot of benefits. It's not something you
have to practice all the time but a few moments spent practicing focus feels really beneficial. They'll tell you that sitting and trying not to think of anything will inevitably fail - that's the point. You learn how to practice meta thinking and reigning your mind in when it wanders. And every once in a while you will be able to achieve "perfect" mindfulness which feels pretty amazing. You realize how overstimulated we really are. Also it's been great for developing a mind body connection - I'm so much more in tune with how my body reacts to stress and negative stimuli now so I'm able to catch it before it starts to spoil my mood. Finally, through language Hunters I've come to respect the importance of taking care of yourself before engaging your mind in an intense task such as language learning (think Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Sure, we can cram every moment of our lives with language exposure but as animals we need rest to work optimally. And TV, books, etc aren't really rest for the brain. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4679 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 10 of 14 16 March 2014 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Ari, nice to see you again.
I haven't done meditation properly, although it has long been something I've meant to study at some point, although I think I tend to do something like it fairly naturally. I can sit through long films, radio plays or audio books so long as the bladder holds out....(you youngsters won't understand...). But thinking about this not quite strictly in terms of meditation, up until recently most of my language learning has been in terms of fairly traditional means with a lot of book-work, reading, some writing, and not nearly enough speaking. Although I did initially study Spanish via Michel Thomas, which as people will know is all audio and speaking, once I'd done his CD courses, I switched to a relatively traditional course (which was also fairly academic, and would have become more so, if I'd continued along those lines). Now when I started learning Welsh last year, with SSiW, this was like MT only more so, with lots and lots of speaking, no reading whatsoever (in fact, strongly discouraged at first). What seemed to be happening was that you were being trained to react to prompts pretty much automatically. After a while, you'd find you were beginning to form the TL response well before the English prompt had finished, and more often than not almost as soon as the English prompt had started. In other words, you were doing it without thinking - now, is that almost the direct opposite of "mindfulness"? I'm really not sure, because this is just the kind of thing we can do - apparently without thinking - in our target language - EDIT: In our native language, I mean - sorry! Imagine: you are in a conversation with one other person. You are batting the ball across the net to each other, to borrow MT's analogy. While they are speaking, you are listening, but you are also thinking of your response at the same time. Is that being mindful, or not? Edited by montmorency on 16 March 2014 at 11:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5113 days ago 2238 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 11 of 14 16 March 2014 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome back, Ari! It's good to see you posting again. I follow the blog of Leo Babauta of Zenhabits. Leo is the first to say that he is not a Buddhist but follows the philosophy of mindfulness. His posts have helped me a lot in language-learning and life. He specializes in creating new habits. As a successful writer, he must be creative by definition. I don't think being mindful has hurt his creativity at all.
As with many things, moderation may be the key. Perhaps there is a time to be mindful and a time to let your mind wander and embrace its creative side. Again, nice to see you back! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5058 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 14 17 March 2014 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Even if the research is accurate, I reckon the benefits would still outweigh the drawbacks.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4653 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 13 of 14 17 March 2014 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's me stuffed. I'm about to start doing Mindfulness training with my psychiatric OT
to help my chronic depression/anxiety. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4698 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 14 of 14 18 March 2014 at 2:45am | IP Logged | ||
The iguana strikes again! What a site. Just wanted to say thanks! Now back to our regularly scheduled programming... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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