|
 |
Being stressed while learning | ||
Tags: Learning Difficulty | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6764 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 17 of 39 04 May 2012 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
They say that in the end languages are acquired, not learned. This means that some of the mental processes involved are biological in nature and just take a certain amount of time. One may as well enjoy what goes into having a new language become a natural and well-devloped part of one's mind instead of stressing over how it's not happening faster than nature has meant for it to happen. This is also the reason why one must use a language to acquire it and not just study it all the time.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6418 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 18 of 39 04 May 2012 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I also write about this in my log. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4680 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 19 of 39 04 May 2012 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Thanks for an interest in this topic. I was interested in how it is with others if it comes to this specific kind of stress.
These 100 words were a metaphore. Of course everyone here (I guess?) knows that 10000 words without grammar, decent pronunciation etc. are useless. I've meant more that I'm simply dissatisfied with my language abilities.
Okay, it's time to reveal a secret (or maybe it has been already revealed here? I don't know, actually). So, a) I see that, even if i'm still in my early twenties, time flies and I can be only older. b) I see how many years I've already lost (not only if it comes to learning languages) and how poor my abilities are, comparing to c) other people - I know, I know, psychologist (and not only them) say that it's not good to compare to the others, but... Well. Somehow it happens. And - it's connected to d) How can I have any chances at job market with the skills I currently have? (yes, languages are fun, but I can also see that they are probably my only chance to receive a decent job)
Well, not only within this forum, but yes. It is discouraging. It's not even about the speed, it's annoying that sometimes it's SO difficult to learn. And, in theory, something that we love, even if slowly, should come (RELATIVELY) easy.
Definitely the worst thing. So, probably I have to find my methods not only for learning, but also for staying relaxed for a long period of time :) (easy to say...) Edited by prz_ on 04 May 2012 at 10:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5587 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 20 of 39 04 May 2012 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Quick calculation: On workdays I spend four and a half hours at work, five hours at school. Commute is about one and a half hour. I need eight hours of sleep, on average. The rest of the time I can use for socializing, exercise and grooming, household chores, food, studying for school and - studying languages. Can I fit a daily average of six hours of foreign language study and exposure (paying full attention) into my schedule?
I create the stress I suffer from myself, and I'm fully aware of it. (It's even welcome at times: Hey, I can't go out with you guys, I'm busy studying!) But the kind of stress caused by too high ambitions isn't that bad; I'm not the kind of person to decide on a goal, make a schedule, stick to my schedule and expect to reach my goal in exactly that time frame - I rather tend to take a lot of enjoyable detours that teach me wonderful things and change the initial goal at the blink of an eye. I even manage not to compare myself to other people most of the time as the gap between the feedback I get in real life and what I think when I compare myself to other people (guess whom: accomplished polyglots and native speakers of my target languages) is so big that I manage to let neither impress me too much. But there's another kind of stress that comes from feeling insecure about what I'm doing, and that one gets to me. Often, when I'm working at something I can't concentrate because there's a part of me that wonders if my approach isn't wrong. That often happens when I'm tired, when I'm frustrated, when my lopsided acquisition makes it hard for me to work with a textbook and I end up wondering if I'm a freak or stupid for not being able to do it the way other people seem to do it. What helps is not to look at my goals and accomplishments, but to find joy in the procedure, in learning itself. Of course I'm worried about the future and whether my skills may have any value (to counter those the sensible thing would be to replace language learning with honing my social and networking skills!), but if I let myself be overcome by worries, I won't get anything done at all. Better to learn one skill that might prove not to be the perfect one than to learn none. And I don't learn languages because I want to be better than somebody else, or because I want to set some kind of record - I learn them because I want to understand and connect with people, because I want to learn new ways of seeing the world; I want to savour words that have travelled between cultures, and be delighted by the way expressions align and diverge between different languages. And I want to do it now, not somewhen in the future when I might've mastered the language. Edited by Bao on 04 May 2012 at 11:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5362 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 21 of 39 05 May 2012 at 2:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
See this is where I'm going to disagree with you. I think that it's unreasonable to expect that something that we love should come relatively easy. Music is a very good example of this (sorry I keep using musical examples - that's where my mind is right now). Playing music isn't easy and it takes years of practice to become proficient in it and there are always things to learn, get better at, etc. Philosophy is another example though I'm not able to go as in-depth with that. I do see where you're coming from however. It'd be really really nice if things that we loved came easily, but love and ease of doing aren't synonymous with each other. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4492 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 22 of 39 05 May 2012 at 8:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
What a great post garyb. I'm the same way. There are so many bloggers out there that try to convince you that you have to enjoy and be happy about every little step. I think it's much more realistic to be somewhat detached. Very few people can be positive all the time. Good day, bad day, average day - who cares? Just keep on studying and making progress. It will all settle out in the end.
I can't speak for others, but I find the learning process difficult and not nearly as pleasing as being able to use the language well. Also, the faster I learn a language, the more languages I'll be able to learn in my lifetime. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5236 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 23 of 39 05 May 2012 at 8:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
All time is spent learning a language, be it learning new material or simply reinforcing what's already been learned. Spending more time on one language simply means you'll be more proficient in that language than some other language. Conversely, rushing through a language simply means you'll be less proficient in that language than some other language. It all adds up to the same, and it is very much so a zero-sum game. Languages unused will inevitably atrophy. If increasing the speed at which one learns a language results in spending less time learning that language (as opposed to merely spending the same amount of time learning that language, but at a faster rate), then this language will simply not be learned as well. To put it another way, spending five minutes learning 50 words is no more productive than spending five minutes learning five words. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| nakrian keegiat Diglot Groupie Thailand Joined 4728 days ago 70 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English*, Thai Studies: Russian | Message 24 of 39 05 May 2012 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
If I understand you correctly, then you don't consider efficiency in learning to exist? If I spend one hour learning x amount of material and then find a new method where I can learn x+1 in 45 minutes then that isn't as good because I spend less time with the language...is that what you're saying? If so, then I strongly disagree. When I was at low intermediate level in Thai I tried to read books that were too difficult for me and I used a paper dictionary to look up words. Later, I found a program called Thai2English that lets the user type or cut and paste text and then use a mouseover to show the individual words/phrases and the definitions. This saved me a huge amount of time and I could easily read 5x as much material in a single hour. One hour like this was far more productive than several hours previously. Ideally I would continue to study the same amount of hours and just make much more progress but even if I cut my hours in half I would still be far ahead. "To put it another way, spending five minutes learning 50 words is no more productive than spending five minutes learning five words." I agree because I don't know of anyone who can learn 50 words in 5 minutes and retain them. If I study a word list I can learn 50 words in about 50 minutes and remember them fairly well, so I agree that it doesn't matter if I try to learn 50 in 5 minutes and then keep reviewing or learn 5 words in 5 minutes, then learn 5 new words, etc. At the end of 50 minutes I'll know the 50 words about equally well using either method. However if I can learn 5 words in 5 minutes but I choose to only learn 2 then there is no way that the long term results will be the same even though I've spent the same amount of time with the language. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
