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Risk of Interference in Passive Study? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4035 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 13 06 February 2014 at 1:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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I was just wondering is there any risk of interference when studying 2 closely related languages passively at the same time? And if so would it be better to study them together to highlight the differences between them, or to try and keep them as separate as possible?
My biggest worry would be at possible problems with accent formation. I do most of my reading aloud, and I could see the possibility of forming bad habbits there. But I also shadow almost all the audio materials I use, which would potentially be an opportunity to notice and correct some problems. Is there a chance of this causing problems if I tried to start using one or both of them actively years later? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Melya68 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 4072 days ago 109 posts - 126 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 2 of 13 06 February 2014 at 1:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'd stay far, far, far away from Spanish if you're learning Italian, and I'd even avoid studying French at the same time.
I studied Spanish on my own for a month, and while I could hold a basic conversation after a few weeks, I messed up (what was left of) my Italian pretty badly. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5547 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 13 06 February 2014 at 2:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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You'll have to sort it out sooner or later. Some people - many people - get really demotivated when they already understand a language well passively, but have a hard time activating it because of interference of a related language, and some people might then give up on one of those languages.
I don't think accent formation is much of an issue, as long as you listen enough and practice, the issue is rather learning to use the grammar and expressions you know fluidly (and not inferring half of it from the other language). I think the main problem with this lies not in the difficulty or amount of interference itself, but in the fact that when you learn two related languages passively, the similarities are an advantage and you progress more quickly than you would have otherwise, leading you to believe the language is "easy" or you "are good at it". And when you learn to use it actively later the similarities don't give you as much of an advantage and you have to motivate yourself in light of your own expectation of a faster rate of improvement. So, doing this makes sense when you have reason to assume you will be able to motivate yourself nontheless (which you may very well be, but I've heard so many people say they dropped a language because they kept mixing it up with a related language, so I think it's easy to underestimate this hidden difficulty), or when you know you will have some strong external motivator to make you activate the languages - and with this I mean something like homestays planned in countries of both languages, an intensive language class focusing on speaking abilities you have to pass, that kind of thing. (It'll still be hard, and you might 'lose' the non-immersed language for some time and have to re-activate it later.) Otherwise it'd be more sensible to learn one until you're at least at a solid intermediate speaking level (B2 in CEFR), and only then start to learn the other - and learn to use it actively from the start. Edited by Bao on 06 February 2014 at 3:06am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 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 4 of 13 19 February 2014 at 6:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh my, I'm sorry I didn't see that before. In fact when someone is already learning one language and wants add one more but is worried about interference, I always tell them to consider the possibility of learning the new one only passively for now. Because in my experience, no, it doesn't lead to interference. (which is basically just feedback anyway)
We actually seem to be pretty similar learners :-) I watch lots of video too, though in my case it's not films but football (soccer). I also do LR. In my experience, with a lot of listening you can even tell where you sound off when you finally start speaking. What exactly do you mean by studying them together or keeping them separate? In terms of timing and study sessions, I think it's better to have separate study sessions for each language (although you can certainly do multilingual flashcards, read twitter, listen to music on shuffle and do anything else that makes you switch between the languages - in fact it's highly recommendable!). For example, if you have a French session in the morning and an Italian one in the evening, seeing what you learned in the other language will work as revision and help you build a system. In terms of resources it seems to vary. I try to learn my Romance languages through one another as much as possible, I own an Italian-Spanish-Italian pocket dictionary for example. However, the member iguanamon learned Spanish first and later Portuguese, and he started with the usual Spanish to Portuguese resources but soon decided against using them. Related languages definitely should be treated as separate languages, but there's no need to artificially keep them apart so to say. (like dedicating different days of the week to them or something) I think that with pronunciation, your best bet is to make sure you learn the rules properly, and perhaps post a recording and get some feedback. Reading incorrectly to yourself is certainly a bad idea. I would also say be careful with reading aloud, though - in the modern world it's better if you're not your own main source of input. (See also: strategies for reading books) Also, you may notice that the threads on "activating" your knowledge often recommend listening. That's because a vast, vast majority of learners doesn't do enough listening. I do it a lot, so for me it's usually reading that takes me over that boundary and activates my knowledge. Reading is also extremely important for writing; according to folks like AJATT and antimoon it matters more than writing practice itself. Here are some great examples. I would say another danger is treating too much as a filler (Volte's written about the pronunciation issue too). Try not to ignore the various "little words", but learn how they work and (at least roughly) what they mean. Lyricstraining is great for paying attention to details, I saw in your log that you've been using it and even uploaded some songs. Making your own exercises is another nice intensive activity. Sorry if I'm throwing too many links at you. Just one more, or actually two. Here's a wikia article I started, about deciding whether to learn languages simultaneously. Follow the link above the contents, too. These are not only about similar languages, but this is mostly what I had in mind. Oh and as for "years later" - I'd say that you should just avoid taking long-term breaks. Dangerous both for the active and passive skills, especially those gained quickly and intensely. Edited by Serpent on 19 February 2014 at 1:21pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6484 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 5 of 13 19 February 2014 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you are 100 % sure that you never will have to write or speak a couple of related languages then it isn't too important that you know exactly what belongs where - you may need to learn a number of false friends by heart, but the main point is that you understand the meaning as it is intended (which is a good deal more than just getting the gist!). If you have one active language at somewhere above rock bottom level then the risk that you import things from a passive language at a low level not that big. Like when I read Sardic just for fun - I can't see that this would harm my Italian to any significant degree.
But you can't be that lax about interference if you actually study both languages and you intend to make them both active. I personally had to put Russian on hold for a fairly long time because I couldn't manage both Russian and Greek at a low level at the same time - I even mixed the alphabets when I tried to write something by hand. Maybe you can avoid the worst effects of the clash by keeping your study sequences separated: one language one day, the other the next day. And different teachers, different background music (if you can live with that), maybe even one chair for language A and another for language B, etc. In other words: two half AJATTs. But the best rule to go by is to learn one of the languages to a level where the other can't harm it, and where you can check what you bring with you of habits, words and other periphernalia to the other language. For instance I knew a certain amount of Dutch (though mostly passively) before I added Afrikaans to my project list. And I would not have been able to close my eyes to that fact even if I had wanted to do so. But I didn't even want to. The point is: if you don't know a word in one of the two language then the parallel word in the other language with some suitable adjustments is probably your best bet. But in the best of all worlds you know that you have made a guess, and then you should check as soon as possible that the word in question also exists in language no. 1. The real problem arises when you don't notice that you have borrowed a word or phrase or construction from language no. 2, and that's where a good background in this language can help you to identify the imports. Edited by Iversen on 19 February 2014 at 2:40pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4035 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 6 of 13 19 February 2014 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
Lots of great information thanks!
Well I've been doing a lot of L2->L3 scriptorium recently, and I'm wondering if it's better to always do say, Germanic -> Romance, Romance -> Slavic, etc, or if would be it help to do say Romance -> Romance or Slavic -> Slavic to compare the languages side-by-side and try to highlight their differences.
I meant to say years of passive study before I start using the language actively. I don't really see myself needing to use any of my languages actively within at least the next few years (Though I may at some point decide to post on some films message boards in some of the languages I study). But I'm sure one day I will end up wanting to visit some of the countries whose languages I'm studying, so I just want to make sure I'm laying good groundwork for future active use. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6986 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 13 19 February 2014 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Awesome article! In the "Possible Outcomes" section, it seems that confusing two languages to some degree should be mentioned. E.G., I have noticed at times when speaking I might say a small but frequently used word like "toujours" instead of "siempre" if I've been focusing on French and de-focusing on speaking Spanish. This particular example for "always" isn't necessarily what I've done, but it is an example of a simple word that I've heard pop out in the wrong context. On the passive side, for listening especially, I have found simultaneous multiple language study is complementary, It's that active side I'm less sure about. I have a few personal theories about this, although I value the experience of more experienced language learners a great deal. I note too that there are vast individual differences with regard to language. One question I would ask myself on the concern about confusion is, "do you sometimes throw in your target language in a conversation in your native language, or at least have to quickly mind shift to say, wait, in English, my listener will more appreciate "hello", than "bonjours"? Theories with respect to confusion... a) If you study multiple languages in the same study session (like 5 minutes of this, 3 minutes of that, 20 minutes of this other), you may open yourself to more frequent unexpected confusion. b) A program like FSI drills, where you have a quick response and know you've just responded perfectly will help train you not to confuse things (assuming you can do the drills without confusing the languages). I haven't noticed an issue on the pronunciation side. In fact, it's usually the pronunciation that tells me immediately, "you just said a French word in that Spanish sentence". Edited by luke on 19 February 2014 at 5:07pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 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 8 of 13 19 February 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
The main downside of the different chair thing is that it limits your opportunities to practice. If you have a chance to use the language, you don't want to waste it just because it's a different day of the week. My uni tends to put English and German classes on separate days, for example - but they didn't think of the fact that students generally do homeworks the day before the class, and even if not, it's better to revise the day before. But other than this I very much agree with what you said, and of course it's a great post as always. @OP, yes, I got that you meant years of passive study and then activating. However, one danger of passive learning is that it's kinda easier to neglect. Your skills fade very slowly so if you don't watch any movie for a month and still understand well, you might be tempted to watch like 1 movie per month. But it isn't enough really, although related languages definitely keep one another alive. But yeah basically don't stop even when you've watched all the films you wanted to see :) what do you mean by L2-L3 scriptorium? @luke, feel free to edit the article. (and include your name at the bottom) I think this "danger" is not specific to simultaneous study, but can happen if you just dabble in a language and abandon it. It also means that you're not recalling these simple words in your stronger language fast enough or even have less strong emotional connections to them. Edited by Serpent on 19 February 2014 at 8:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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