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What are your biggest problems/challenges | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Fiona S. Bilingual Diglot Newbie United States Joined 3964 days ago 26 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch* Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 1 of 6 18 June 2014 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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When studying a language?
My personal biggest one is figuring out the next step I need to take once the beginner stuff is too easy but the more advanced stuff is still too hard. And going out and talking to people when my confidence in my target language is still low.... I'm scared of going out and looking like an idiot! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5535 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 6 18 June 2014 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Read books! Watch TV! Join the Super Challenge. Write on lang-8 about your hobbies and what you did today.
Oh, and don't worry about looking like an idiot—we all do, it's perfectly normal, and if you can laugh at yourself and blow it off, native speakers will almost always be totally cool about it. James29 and I were just talking about this in my log: the only way to learn many intermediate and advanced skills is take some risks and fall down a bit. If you can find or invent reasons to use your skills, you'll get better naturally. If you want to talk to people, I've had good luck with iTalki's community tutors, and most cities will have Meetups for praticing languages. Another fun idea is to offer to teach people a useful skill using a language that you're learning. And as Benny Lewis points out, if you look like you're enjoying yourself, people will often put up with pretty mangled language. But if you look like you're suffering horribly, they may not want to talk to you. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5394 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 3 of 6 18 June 2014 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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My problem is the crippling stress and anxiety I get when having to do "academic" tasks
such as more formal writing and preparing a presentation. This is also a problem for me in English and plagued me with anxiety through college (and what is keeping me from doing an advanced degree). I used to be ok for in-class exams since you're just forced to do it and get it over with but now that I haven't been a student for a while that seems pretty daunting as well. This is the main obstacle keeping me from preparing for the DALF. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5769 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 6 18 June 2014 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | ||
That's not exactly my experience though. I would rather think that it's more about whether you seem willing to engage and eager to learn, or defensive, hostile even. It's perfectly possible to show that using the language is quite hard for you, but you want to engage with the other person and their culture and language, and when the other person has the time and patience to put up with it they will probably help you. And it's also possible to look like you're enjoying yourself but not open to hints that what you just said or did was incomprehensible or socially unacceptable, and then most people will stop trying to point those things out to you. In some recent thread I wrote 'mistakes and motivation'. Often, I'm too focused on [myself] and on not appearing stupid or incompetent and wasting everyone's time to pay enough attention to the other person to build a relationship. And that is exhausting, so I usually only feel like I can ignore my anxiety when the relationship already exists and it isn't better for the other person to talk in a language I know better, or when I have information the other person would benefit from. Edited by Bao on 21 June 2014 at 3:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4892 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 5 of 6 18 June 2014 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Finding balance.
There are too many languages I want to know, and I haven't found a long term strategy for maintaining them. I'll push forward in some while others fade away, I'll have periods of energy where I can balance four or five languages in a week, and periods where the rest of my life is so busy I only have time to read occasionally. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 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 6 of 6 20 June 2014 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Perfection and elegance. I only have achieved that in two languages, one of them my
native language and one of them which may as well be my native language. I would consider myself fluent in 7, and in none of the 5 other ones do I come close to matching my level in the first two, even though I'm not an awful speaker of any of the other 5. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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