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Introverts and Extroverts | ||
Tags: Introvert and Extrovert | Conversation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| argentum Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4989 days ago 15 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Russian*, Ukrainian*, English Studies: Italian | Message 49 of 59 20 November 2010 at 8:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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thephantomgoat, thank you very much for the article. It really helped me understand myself a little better.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| thephantomgoat Groupie United States Joined 5259 days ago 52 posts - 103 votes  | Message 50 of 59 20 November 2010 at 11:38am | IP Logged | |||||
You're very welcome! It helped me understand myself better too. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6491 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 51 of 59 20 November 2010 at 11:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Crafedog gives some sound advice about inner monologues. Let me just add a few points.
An inner monologue is an extremely fast way of finding out whether you have a hole in your vocabulary or store of expressions. So if you several times wonder how to say something then it would be practical always to carry a small hardcover notebook and a pencil to jot down what you need to look up. I say notebook and not dictionary because you get more information from looking things up in a large dictionary than in a tiny one, you have more time to search and you stand a better chance of remembering the things you find. Well, it is OK also to carry a small dictionary around, and when I'm on travel I often do so - but with more than one target language to tend to it becomes impossible to carry enough dictionaries around. Maybe an electronic gadget will serve that purpose better than paperbased dictionaries, but even then I would make a note of what I had to look up for later use. Second: a total novice can also have an inner monologue, even though it is restricted to short fragments like "There is a green tree", "I must leave the bus now". And even "there is a ???? tree" is better than no monologue at all. I'm not that worried about fixating errors because normally you know when you are on thin ice. The problem is rather that you stick to a small number of expressions. And that's one of the reasons you have to do a lot of intensive work on genuine texts so that you can extend your range of expressions. Third: Your inner monologue shouldn't consist in formulating something and then translate it. Do your thinking entirely in the target language if possible. In practice you may have to formulate your lacunes in your native tongue (what else could you write in that notebook I mentioned?), but the idea is certainly not to reinforce a bad habit. Some persons claim not to have an inner monologue. I have no idea what they do instead, but I guess they have some alternative strategies. Edited by Iversen on 20 November 2010 at 11:53am 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| justberta Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5373 days ago 140 posts - 170 votes Speaks: English, Norwegian* Studies: Indonesian, German, Spanish, Russian | Message 52 of 59 10 December 2010 at 4:19am | IP Logged | |||||
I love how the green is just an image of green color, this is a great description of language learning.
I disagree. I was completely shy in Norwegian. I have never felt comfortable speaking it, specially not being social in it. I don't like the person I am in Norwegian. With English my personality changed and I am more of the myself I'd like to be. I am an introvert by nature, I have also been a shy introvert. I have even been a selective mute. Now I am overly social at times, specially - or thanks to languages and travel. Had I been social as a child and teen I would have spoken Norwegian I.R.L instead of (passive) learning through media such as TV and the internet. I never would have achieved this level of English. I believe most language learners/polyglots are introverts. Extroverts would just end up speaking their native language. Besides, if they don't have an ongoing monologue/don't talk to themselves in their heads, how would they continually revise what they had already learned? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5554 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 53 of 59 10 December 2010 at 6:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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I read through this, but will probably repeat something nontheless. As for me, I'm not only introverted but also sociophobic to the extend of having been hikikomori.
- I can't talk about topics when I haven't daydreamed dialogues about those topics before. Well, I can, but it is really difficult for me as well as for the conversation partner because instead of using words I describe mental images that make sense to me. Usually not to the other person. It seems to me that I need to prepare the mental representation I have of a concept or topic to be able to express it in words. I go for long walks just for thinking and daydreaming. - Thanks to my phobia I cannot spare much processing capacity to use my declarative knowledge of grammar actively in a conversation. So I don't use conversation as a tool for internalizing grammar. Instead, I write and memorize short texts (usually lesson texts, song lyrics or dialogues from movies), sing along to songs or shadow and do drill-like exercises. - My brain can't ignore things. Let me watch a subtitled movie in a language I never heard before and after some minutes I will have started matching sounds and translation. I thrive on comprehensive input. - Input makes my inner monologue try to switch to that language. Repetition of the same content soon gets boring, and so I almost involuntarily begin to play around with sentence patterns, grammar and vocabulary. I however can't bring myself to come up with sample sentences for the sake of coming up with sample sentences. I also find it difficult to tell myself to 'think in X language'. Took me a while to figure out that for me, the correct plan is to 'imagine a conversation with person X who only speaks X language'. - For actual production practice, delayed communication is nice. I would read English without the internet, but I wouldn't speak it. Having to use the language because it's the only way to communicate when you need to communicate works, and for me it works a lot better than talking to people just for the sake of talking (or learning the language). Oh, and not beating oneself up over the lack of sociability is probably a good idea. It would be for me, at least. ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5122 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 54 of 59 10 December 2010 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
That is not just introvert/ extrovert. That is just as much adult/young. When I was 20 I would without a doubt have gone for an evening with friends. 20 discos in 30 days was my idea of fun. Now the perfect evening is at home with my kids, with my feet up high,taco on the table and a nice film on the DVD-player. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Qbe Tetraglot Senior Member United States joewright.org/var Joined 6923 days ago 289 posts - 335 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Japanese, German, Mandarin, Aramaic | Message 55 of 59 10 December 2010 at 10:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A few months ago at the library I checked out a book with the very long title, "Networking for People Who Hate Networking: A Field Guide for Introverts, the Overwhelmed and the Underconnected" by Devora Zack. It's fairly short and has some helpful information about/for introverts.
The book seems aimed more at professional/career "networking" and I never considered how it might apply to language learning, but now I'm tempted to take another look. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5481 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 56 of 59 18 December 2010 at 3:17am | IP Logged | |||||
Ah, but the interesting thing is, it's actually not! I am a college student and would *vastly* prefer the first scenario listed here to the second, as would most of my introvert friends (whether they're around my age, early twenties, or older). I also have several 30-something friends who apparently can't have fun without going out to clubs or parties, which I just find exhausting. So, you see, it's actually just as much (if not more) a personality-type difference as an age difference. (I understand you said this, but I want to make this difference very clear...) Frankly, the idea of "20 discos in 30 days" horrifies me – and at no point in my life so far have I been attracted to that idea of a good time. ;) Edited by Jinx on 18 December 2010 at 3:19am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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