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Why people have problems with learning la | ||
Tags: Learning Difficulty | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5141 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 25 of 32 06 March 2011 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well sorry to derail. But the problem with me learning another language isn't the devotion it requires, etc. For me, the problem is remember the vocabulary. I do remember quite a bit, but I worry about how will I keep this in my head without forgetting it. Then there is the speaking part, like in German, remembering the order of the verbs you use and put them all at the end. Then understanding when it's spoken to me. I understand it, only if I have a transcript, but if I don't it's all gibberish.
But I have to motivation and the desire and what not. I'm not afraid of making any kind of mistakes because I know, practise makes perfect. But, I'm just worried about the memorising of words and not forgetting them, and the listening comprehension. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5466 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 26 of 32 06 March 2011 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||
But you WILL forget words, and you WILL struggle with listening comprehension. That is part of the whole process of language learning. Accepting it, living with it, and overcoming it. That is exactly what motivation is for: keeping at it no matter what! As I typed this I was reminded to the following dialog, between a boxer and her trainer, from the movie "Million Dollar Baby": Maggie (boxer): (Her opponent in the ring is beating her) She's tough, I can't go inside, I can't get close enough to hit her. Frankie (trainer): You know why that is? Maggie: Why? Frankie: Cause she's a better fighter than you are, that's why. She's younger, she's stronger, and she's more experienced. Now, what are you gonna do about it? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6500 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 27 of 32 06 March 2011 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||
Exactly I had the same problem with vocabulary and for certain languages with listening comprehension. I ascribe the first to the way my memory works and the second to my environment, but in both cases it is necessary to find techniques that address precisely those problems - instead of just stepping up your time expenditure. In my case the use of wordlists (from copied texts, random sources or directly from dictionaries) solved the vocabulary retention problem. I have made some headway with listening comprehension through a technique where I ignore the meaning and just concentrate on parsing the sound stream, but the basic problem is not quite solved - the low availability of comprehensible speech in some of my languages. But thanks to the internet and other media the solution is closer now than ever was - there is hope ahead. If you can identify some weak areas in your language learning it is always a sign that you need to tweak your methods, but the things that have worked for one person may not work for others. Some people need personal interaction -I don't. Some people can't sit down and do wordlists for 3 hours in 3 languages while watching TV - I can. And some people may not be able to define their problems clearly, which is a major problem in itself. Then they may have to ask for assistance, but that help has to be fine tuned to their problems, and you have to know the persons in question well to give relevant advice. In a forum like this one we can only present a selection of possible solutions - which however is better than no advice at all. Edited by Iversen on 06 March 2011 at 12:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5808 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 28 of 32 06 March 2011 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | ||
On an individual level, there's no reason to care. If you individually have strategies that work effectively for you, you can continue applying them without needing to analyse them. But until and unless someone can demonstrate when and how to account for learning styles and specific aptitudes, there's no point trying to do so. An article in a US psychology journal* reviewed all the available literature on learning styles and found not one that genuinely demonstrated any link between learning styles or aptitudes and the effectiveness of teaching methods. They found that the evidence given for learning styles didn't stand up to scrutiny -- they never saw the situation where one group's results improved by being taught to their "style" while another's results fell because they were taught against their "style". Normally both groups improved or both groups suffered. Sometimes one group stayed more or less the same while the other got better or worse. Their conclusion wasn't that learning styles don't exist, but that: learners are more similar than different; that modern teaching focuses on the differences and neglects to exploit the broad common basis for learning; and that it doesn't matter whether or not learning styles exist, as even if they do, we don't know how to exploit them. We don't need a zero theory for the existence of learning styles, because it doesn't affect us here and now. * Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence (Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, Bjork), Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Volume 9, No 3 (2009) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6069 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 29 of 32 06 March 2011 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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It may be a simple matter of individual talent, or the lack of it.
At school, I could get reasonably good marks (say, Bs) in languages almost without trying, though I did do the set homework. Getting As did take a lot of work. However, in subjects like mathematics, I needed to work very hard just to pass. So I concluded early on that I had a talent for languages and little talent for mathematics. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6500 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 30 of 32 06 March 2011 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
I prefer this solution: use varied methods - then it doesn't matter whether you can prove the existence of different learner types. And don't fix things if they aren't broken - let good learners use the methods that made them good, and then it doesn't matter how their brains are organized (or why). However I must add that those researchers could have used me as a group whose learning was spoiled because of style-incompatible teaching methods. My notes in French conversation at the university of Århus shot up by three points when I decided to boycott the conversation classes, which were of the mainstream kind with dialogues plus discussions about literature. Instead I went on a two-week interrail trip to France just before my exam. That did the trick for me, not listening to my fellow students. Edited by Iversen on 06 March 2011 at 3:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5808 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 31 of 32 06 March 2011 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||
But there's no proof that going interrailing wouldn't have given them better results too, or that those conversation classes were any good for them either.... Varied methods: I agree, but it's not about covering multiple styles, it's about having a complete education. Edited by Cainntear on 06 March 2011 at 5:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6335 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 32 of 32 06 March 2011 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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From some of the articles I've read on language learning I've found out that this question of how people learn languages is hopelessly complex. Folks in the humanities, save the few who were biologically engineered in the basements of MIT, simply don't have the skills to demonstrate what works in language learning and what doesn't; and what they do say is only pointing out the obvious: "interacting with the linguistic community is the best way to learn a language". The folks in the sciences can't even figure out how to build A.I. matching that of a 3 year old, so using a computational method in language learning is way off into the future.
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