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Being stressed while learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5577 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 33 of 39 07 May 2012 at 3:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I know this is going more and more off-topic, so I'll try to make a point and then return to topic.
The last couple of posts showed two main communication problems: Firstly, we don't know of each other how the other person assesses themselves nor the methods they use to reach a certain level. This is relevant, because self-assessment and methods influence the way we judge our progress in the languages we are studying. And the second point I noticed: Wulfgar showed in previous posts that he makes a clear distinction between 'learning' a language and 'using' it; something I do not completely comprehend, as I rely mostly on native material from high beginner level on and even at my current level in English I constantly monitor input for new or unusual expressions and my output for possible mistakes. I believe I will never finish learning a language, and that in turn means that I will spend a considerable amount of time on the languages I speak well. I do not think of this as maintenance, I think of it as amelioration. Most other members surely fall somewhere between the two of us in what they associate with the either word. Not knowing many other members well, we easily fall into the trap of thinking they think similar to ourselves. Of course, you can judge my self-assessments from the English I display in my posts and see if I might over- or underestimate my own prowess. And that gives you a glimpse into my thought processes, a guideline on how to interpret my contributions. (Just FYI: according to the description, I should change my Spanish to 'Basic Fluency', according to my own value system I want to change English to 'Basic Fluency'.) Other members write in their non-native languages as well, or they post videos or audio files of themselves, which does help to understand their communication style. In their own way, and in their own reference system I think both Wulfgar and nway should be 'right', going by the assumption that Wulfgar thinks of the same activities as maintenance that nway understands as studying. I can't find foreign language contributions of either you, but wouldn't be too surprised if your actual level in certain languages was quite comparable, or if nway, who thinks of himself as a learner, is even better than Wulfgar, who thinks of himself as a user. Yet nway has a point in stressing that if you do not spend additional time on 'maintenance' or 'amelioration', and instead spend it on learning a new language, the first language will suffer from it. Language attrition is not a myth, but neurobiologial reality. What happens is basically that by learning a new, but related skill, your brain needs to block the known pathways from messing up your new skill. This is done with certain proteins that suppress the activation of interfering neural connections. If you do not reactivate those connections for months or years (depending on their starting condition), they are treated as obsolete and the connection is removed, releasing its neurons to form part of new connections. This will also happen if you maintain only one or two of your language skills, if not as quickly. (By the way, intermittent learning combined with forced retrieval seems to be the best way to ensure that your connections are kept even when you don't have the time to constantly use them.) Is this relevant to the original topic? I actually believe so, because the OP stated comparision and the fear of not learning effectively enough as two of his stressors. I hope I have been able to point out how elusive comparision is between people who use different reference systems, especially when all you have to go by is their own statements. Oddly enough, I end up comparing myself to other people based on statements; when I observe other people doing things I can't currently do, I feel the desire to learn those skills myself, rather than feeling bad about myself for not having them. (Mirror neurons, I guess. The ape learns by copying other apes.) As for not learning effectively enough, or even forgetting the learnt - if you take away the comparision with people who, based on your own reference system seem to overestimate themselves, it becomes easier to not expect too much from a certain method. Forgetting is an integral part of learning. One interesting bit of research showed that directly after a study session, people can't judge what they or did or did not understand; if asked the next morning they can - and the parts they feel they didn't understand are exactly the ones they will forget quickly. It helps to train one's perception of these things, and review based on it. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5109 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 34 of 39 07 May 2012 at 3:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Where do you get this from? Is it your own experience? I mean, nothing personal, but age may be a factor when judging such matters. A young person who never had a longer phase of inactivity may take a very optimistic point of view on this. School and/or university force you to keep things fresh, so where do you get the long pauses from, so that you would be in a situation to make such statements? In my experience what you say is not true, although anything can be relearned, of course, but there is a big difference between knowledge and abilities you have made your second nature over a long time and the ones which were, well "forced". Regarding languages: Saying one forgot all the words but knows the grammar sounds noble and may be kind of true, but the time needed for refreshing or relearning will be considerable. Maybe this is just a matter of definition, I have emphasized often enough that refreshing is always possible, but your way to put this stretches reality, sorry. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5226 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 35 of 39 07 May 2012 at 3:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's the point. It's simply impossible for someone of average cognitive capability (by this, I mean someone who doesn't possess some amazing autistic gift of memory) to simultaneously have a working proficiency in each of 59 different languages. And this guy wasn't just some fraudster—Solfrid Cristen has talked with him and he seems very much so to be a genuine polyglot and language enthusiast. It's simply unrealistic to expect an individual of average cognition to be able to retain the entire lexical, grammatical, and idiomatic repertoires of each of dozens upon dozens of languages. The correlative factor here is time.
A concept learned in your native language through hard-earned experience is not easily forgotten. When you learn of the concept of a paper cut for the first time and you simultaneously associate it with the verbal collection of phonemes that is "paper cut", this will instantly be your reference point with any further encounters with the concept. Compare this to the artificial learning process of reading the translation on an Anki flashcard or in a bilingual dictionary. Reading text or audibly hearing a translation is simply not as memorable as an actual genuine life experience.
I wasn't referring to the overall "gist" of a language's grammar, but rather all the subtle intricacies and details, like knowing to say "mice" instead of "mouses", or "slept" instead of "sleeped", or "think similarly" instead of "think similar". These are not something that can simply be collectively intuited or remembered. They must be learned and reinforced one at a time, which brings us back to my original point that usage and proficiency are positively correlated, and therefore more time spent learning and using a language will inevitably result in higher proficiency—ceteris paribus—than less time. Finally, I'll just note one last time that learning technique is assumed to be static in this equation. Obviously, using a more productive technique is more productive than using a less productive technique. But I'm not talking about spending two years studying Russian intensively versus spending four years studying Russian half-assed. Edit: @ Bao: Brilliant post! Edited by nway on 07 May 2012 at 3:51am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6754 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 36 of 39 07 May 2012 at 5:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I am not sure how easy it is to characterize the level of a speaker at the highest levels of knowlege. There is this feel for the language, Sprachgefühl being probably the best term for it in any language I know, that is not necessarily fully captured by the A1-C2 classification, which may be too superficial for that. I know from my own experiences with English that there may come a point in your knowledge of a language when you realize that you think in it. Not as a game of some sort, but that it really has become a new medium of thought in your brain. It's not entirely about grammar or vocabulary - you may still have inaccuracies or incomplete knowledge in both. What you do, however, have at that point is the ability to discriminate the subtleties of meaning in a deep-seated intuitive way that may have been hard to imagine happening outside your native language. I don't think one can storm one's way to this level of knowledge, which is probalby beyond C2 - some call it "near-native". I don't even know if it is possible outside immersion - if it is, it would probably require a lot of input and output, which means putting in the time. With Spanish, a language I probably (hopefully?) know at some kind of B level, at least passively, I have always had the impression that my feel for it somewhat exceeds the level I would likely test for, and the reason I suspect behind this is that I had had a fair amount of input and had avoided using bilingual materials from a certain point. All of this meant putting in more time to reach the same level of knowledge, but it is possible that the "quality" of knowledge had ended up being somewhat better as a result than it might have been with more focused, quick, and limited materials. So, I do think getting to the same formally testable level by a different, possibly slower, route may still mean a different level of Sprachgefühl. In other words, I suspect that there may be intangibles to one's knowledge of a language that aren't easily measurable, and that a slower route may be a better way to acquire these intangibles. Edited by frenkeld on 07 May 2012 at 5:18pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4482 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 37 of 39 07 May 2012 at 7:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
We are talking about spending months and years to learn a language, not cram for an exam. But if you check you'll see your definition of short term memory is wrong. This is definitely long term memory. IMO, if I learn a language to C1, the speed with which I forget it has nothing to do with how long it took me to learn it. It has everything to do with what I do after I reach that level. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5577 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 38 of 39 07 May 2012 at 10:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
But if what you're doing with it is to learn a new language intensively, due to the process mentioned in my last post, your attrition rate will be much higher than the one of somebody who does not push the time spent learning to its shortest and by doing that forces his brain to block its own access to the first foreign (or first) language, but instead allows himself the necessary time to learn to switch between those different languages at will. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4512 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 39 of 39 08 May 2012 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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All the "forget" expectations assume you will learn the language, then stop immersing.
What would you even learn it for in the first place? If it's just for the sake of "collecting", there's little value in active production skills. That would make it easier to forget it as well. First and foremost, a language is a communication tool. If you can't or don't want to use it for that purpose, of course your brain will shove it out to make room for essential things. I didn't think we had to even discuss that here, but obviously, this seems not to be common knowledge. However, I still think people didn't read Wulfgars replies, yet bothered to reply. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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