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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6501 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 9 of 13 03 April 2011 at 12:44am | IP Logged |
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I'm not sure about how Thantophobia's original post should be interpreted, so I'll just comment on some of the notions in it.
Point one: Yes, you have to try. Languages don't come by themselves - not even if you live surrounded by native speakers. But I'm sceptical about the formulation "You have to make it hard for yourself". No, you should search materials that are just above your present ability. If you have to use materials that in themselves are much too difficult then you should either abandon them or find methods to make them comprehensible. In practice this could mean finding translations, although looking up tons of words and grammatical features also will work - when you then return to the texts you should be able to understand. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Thantophobia Groupie United States Joined 4960 days ago 49 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 10 of 13 04 April 2011 at 12:31am | IP Logged |
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"Make it hard for yourself" is not really what I mean...it's hard to put to words. Probably one way to say it is, "you have to get into it." I've done this a lot. Playing a game with someone, I'll say, "You're not even trying. You have to get into it." They'll realize what I mean and suddenly start doing a lot better. It's amazing. It really works.
Irrationale knew what I was talking about. But I don't think it's some special feeling only achievable by meditation or something like that. I think it's very, very easy to do. Before I realized this, I couldn't get my Japanese to work very well. Now it does. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| elarsen21 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4783 days ago 7 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 11 of 13 04 April 2011 at 1:08am | IP Logged |
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Very true words about the "flow" state, entering the focused learning zone.
I believe the key element is challenge, striving beyond your current abilities so you begin feeling uncomfortable but become more focused "in the moment." It always happened to me with Spanish when I found myself in a new, unfamiliar situation. The recent book "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle refers to this as "Deep Practice." In another excellent book, "Bounce" by Matthew Syed, it is called "purposeful practice." 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5005 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 13 04 April 2011 at 3:04pm | IP Logged |
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It made me think of the cornerstone of weight lifting, which can be applied to any other activity - progressive overload. Once a certain weight is easy to lift, you increase the weight slightly, and once that becomes easy you increase again, and so forth, and that's how you get stronger. Like with languages, you need to keep pushing yourself and working on material that's just outside your comfort zone in order to progress. Kinda like the "L+1" theory or whatever it is that comes up every so often - that the most beneficial material is material that's just slightly above your comprehension level.
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