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The "should-I-study-X-language test" | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7097 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes  5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 17 of 50 09 April 2006 at 11:51am | IP Logged | |||||
While I'm not against studying more than one non-fluent language, the fact remains that the student in your example above would learn Spanish much faster if he were only focusing on the one language. It's really not all that serious anyway though because he would only get penalized 1 point (Zero langs = +1, One lang = +0, Two langs = -1). This wouldn't affect the overall number too much, and he'd probably end up learning Spanish successfully. The system is really designed to penalize people who are dividing up their time and energy between several non-fluent languages (say 5 or 6) but haven't achieved Basic Fluency in very many others.
You're right. The chic factor may be a strong source of motivation or discouragement for many, but will probably not be a factor for more grounded individuals. I think the chic factor affects most people who are learning languages, at least on a subconscious level. However, if it does not affect you at all, you can just give it the neutral answer so it won't affect your score. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eidolio Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 6643 days ago 159 posts - 164 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, Flemish*, French, English, Latin, Ancient Greek, Italian, Greek | Message 18 of 50 09 April 2006 at 12:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ow, I think I understood "how many other NON-FLUENT languages are you studying" differently. I was thinking about advanced to near-native fluency. If it's just basic fluency, the student in my example wouldn't be affected because you're supposed to have achieved a basic fluency after one year at university. (I was just wondering why my results were so bad, and then I figured out I always got -3 or something because I'm studying Greek and Latin at university while I still try to keep up my English and French.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hokusai77 Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6934 days ago 212 posts - 217 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Italian*, FrenchB1, EnglishC1 Studies: GermanB1, Japanese | Message 19 of 50 09 April 2006 at 12:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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And here's my list and relative scores...
Swedish 10 Norwegian 10 Russian 5 Mandarin 2 Spanish 15 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| reltuk Groupie United States Joined 6598 days ago 75 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 20 of 50 09 April 2006 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was suprised by my scores:
Spanish - 16 Latin - 16 French - 16 Esperanto - 15 Ancient Greek - 14 German - 14 Italian - 13 Russian - 11 Mandarin - 11 I wouldn't have expected Esperanto to be so high, but I guess it gets a big boost because it's so easy and since Esperantist are so eager to converse in it, making it easy to find oppurtunities to use it. Russian and Mandarin get hurt more by their difficulty, and my lack of oppurtunities to use them, than from my lack of interest in them, as my interest is very high :/. Also, according to the language test, I could take up French, Spanish, Latin and German all at the same time, spending 30 minutes a day on each, and all their scores would still be above 10. I think I'll stick with Spanish for now though, given my failure to come to any semblance of basic fluency in the three years I've studied it in school. -- reltuk 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dadafeig Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6768 days ago 82 posts - 83 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Dutch | Message 21 of 50 09 April 2006 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was fairly suprised by how high my scores were:
Hungairan 11 Swedish 12 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eriol Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6648 days ago 118 posts - 130 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Portuguese | Message 22 of 50 10 April 2006 at 4:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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Good work with this test! Of course it doesn't give the absolute truth, but it's quite fun and could be a good tool for beginners and indecisive people.
I did the test for a large number of languages and it seems to give believable results: Portuguese: 15 Spanish: 14 Italian: 13 Icelandic: 12 French: 11 Dutch: 11 Romanian: 9 Finnish: 8 Serbo-Croatian: 7 Turkish: 3 Arabic: 3 Mandarin: 2 I was surprised by the high score for Icelandic. But I know why, there is no parameter for "usefulness" in this test. Perhaps there should be? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6639 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 23 of 50 12 April 2006 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This is fantastic. Good work!
My scores are: Russian 16 Spanish 20 Czech 16!! Portuguese 12 French 7 Japanese 3 German 13 Polish 12 This outlines pretty well something I've known all along, at least on a subconscious level. I wonder how much of a factor desire would be. I have to admit that I for many years I had no desire whatsoever to learn Spanish. Without the desire, I would think there'd be no potential. German, on the other hand, fascinated me and I ate it up in college. It was much more "easy" for me to learn than Spanish, because I wanted to learn it so badly. It was only two years ago that I decided to open my mind to Spanish, to see what a positive mindset could do. The results have been overwhelmingly positive and now I think Spanish is beautiful. And I'm assuming this could be because, despite my negative biases, the potential was always there? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6485 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 24 of 50 14 August 2006 at 5:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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That test is just brilliant. Consider the number of people who ask the forum whether they should study Spanish or Mandarin next year, then it's amazing that we just answer instead of referring the irresolute newbies to Malcolms test.
By the way I couldn't open Reltuk's homepage and I cannot see the test in automatized form anywhere on this site, but it is easy to do the test manually. Of course there are always things that could be changed, but Malcolm's choices are generally sound. I really like the formulation of question 2, where even limited possibilities to use a language actively is rated higher than excellent possiblities to use it passively. If I should point to one moot point it might be the stability of one's interest in a language. If you have thought about learning a language for twenty years then you would probably have a greater chance of succeeding if you finally took the decision to learn it. On the other hand, if you haven't been able to take that step for twenty years, then maybe you just never will. So Malcolm may be right not to include that aspect. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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