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Optimal time to activate a language? | ||
Tags: Activating a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4065 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 14 04 April 2014 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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So I’ve been doing primarily passive language study so far, and I’m getting to the point where I’m starting to incorporate more and more native materials and use less and less course books. And I’m wondering if I should plunge myself into passive native material work, or if I should try to incorporate some active study as well at this point.
Firstly I should state my goals for learning languages. Essentially I’m primarily interested in passive understanding and particularly being able to watch films as well as read books and listen to music. I’d been watching non-English speaking films and listening to non-English music for years before I started learning. And my impetus for language study has been to better appreciate these materials in their own language and to allow myself access to materials that haven’t been translated. Speaking for is a secondary motivation for me. I don’t currently have the means to travel to another country and don’t expect to within at least the next few years. But I think I would like to travel one day, and it seems that if I should go through all the trouble of learning to understand a language I should learn to speak it too. I think several times I’ve heard people mention knowing language learners who seem to be stuck in passive learning always reading and listening and being afraid to have conversations. I’m wondering if this is more an issue of not developing any active skills, or if it’s more a fear of speaking. I do lots of passive speaking and writing, IE: shadowing, reading out loud, and scriptorium. But I freeze up a bit at the thought of thinking up my own original sentences outside of very basic ones. I’m also wondering if more intensive methods of passive study help make the transition to active skills smoother. I’ve noticed using the French for Reading course has helped a lot for checking that I understand the specific meaning to French sentences rather than simply getting the gist. And I think something like Lyrics Training is useful for testing if you can hear well enough to type something out perfectly. Are some stories of getting stuck in passive more a matter of getting too comfortable and not burdening the brain with more intensive tasks? Would more intensive passive study help with the eventual transition to active skills? I’m not expecting active skills to develop automatically; obviously it’s going to be a challenge no matter when I start it. But basically my question is, if I don’t have any immediate need for active skills now, is it better for my overall development to wait or to start sooner? My preference would be to just plunge myself into more passive native material study until I can read and listen comfortably without any learner crutches. But I’m wondering if incorporating some active study now will help me catch onto to certain grammatical concepts faster and be better for my overall language development? Is there an optimal time for active study for people with no pressing need to develop active skills? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 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 2 of 14 04 April 2014 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my experience, if you continue to develop your passive skills, eventually you'll find yourself developing the active ones too. For that, it's crucial to do both reading and listening - countless people do only one or the other and don't feel the benefits. And of course they can't be at the same level as your passive ones - which is completely normal and happens in our native language too. I've once compareed that to a cat climbing upstairs, lol. Its tail will always be a few steps behind its front paws haha.
See this and other stuff on antimoon. If you feel under-challenged, definitely add something more intense though. Either use more challenging materials or add elements of production, such as SRS cards with cloze deletion or lyricstraining. Try also playing with the vocabulary/sentences. If by intensive passive study you mean a better awareness of the grammar, that's definitely a good idea. But it's up to you. I can't find the thread where this was discussed but some say that explicit grammar study messes with their ability to learn naturally. It's quite true in my case, but I do like having a linguistic understanding of the grammar. Also, read about the difference between global and sequential learners, for example here. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7016 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 3 of 14 04 April 2014 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | ||
That's a good link. It makes me wonder if the answer of "when to activate" is to some degree related learning style. It seems an Intuitive/Global learner might be more comfortable and possibly better served by postponing "activation" and focusing more on getting listening/reading skills up to a very comfortable level first. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4065 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 4 of 14 05 April 2014 at 7:03am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks serpent, lots of really helpful advice as always!
I guess I use the term intensive passive study for a number of possibly unrelated activities. But basically think of it as anything that puts a little bit of stress on my brain where it's burdened to do something it's not quite comfortable with, which I find helps keep me focused at times and gives me the feeling of making tangible progress, So for example when I work through Assimil, I can shadow while looking at the English translation quite comfortable and start absorbing sentence patterns and commonly repeated vocabulary. But eventually when this seems to become less efficient and it seems once I get the gist in the dialog there may still be a few gaps in my understanding that fill in very slowly if I continue this way. But if I switch to a different language base and do L2->L3 shadowing, suddenly my brain focuses more intensively on understanding all of the L2 audio because it needs to in order to make sense of the unfamiliar L3 text. If I know the gist of the dialog and they have a logical development like a punchline setup for a joke, then often I can infer the meaning of unknown words. Another example would be when doing scriptorium I look at the word, I start to write it, and then as soon as I'm tempted to look back at the word to check the spelling, I sometimes try to force myself to recall the next few letters before checking back again, and most of the time I'm correct just my brain want to check back more frequently to be 100% sure. I figure this might in some way help develop spelling abilities and faster word recognition. Grammar awareness can be part of it too, I think. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 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 5 of 14 05 April 2014 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, definitely do this sort of activities. Consider intensive reading too (and other reading strategies as well). And have you tried LR? Seems ideal for you.
Just make sure these activities don't discourage you from learning. If they get painful after a while, keep your sessions short. If, as emk described, you feel like you're banging your head against the wall, stop asap and think of the alternatives. If you're enjoying the challenge, you're doing it right :) But don't feel bad if you suddenly don't enjoy it - this can be due to anything, like your mood, the weather, the time of the day, fatigue etc. Always be honest to yourself, and don't do what you're "supposed to" enjoy if you actually aren't. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 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 6 of 14 05 April 2014 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Your active skills will always be a subset of your passive skills, so my logic is that you need a fairly large amount of passive knowledge before it is worth even trying to convert it into active skills. But at the same time it is clear that the transition won't happen unless you try out your active skills at a stage where they still are rather shaky. And I prefer doing that during holidays in a place where I hear and see the new language everywhere around me.
The first active activity with a new language is for me alway to try to think in that language - first single words or simple combinations, later sentences with big holes and even later complete, but not necessarily errorfree sentences- At that stage I do not really feel like trying speaking to native speakers (and even less in a class room setting), but I might do it - in small doses - if I'm on holiday and have found a person who actually has a reason to communicate with me. Writing is easier because I can make a pause while I write and look up a word or a grammatical construction before I continue. But this also gives me a simple way to test whether I'm ready to start speaking: if I can write a language more or less fluently (but not necessarily without errors) then I am probably also able to use it in speech without feeling like a complete fool. If I spend half the time looking things up when I try to write, then I'm not ready to speak in public. Edited by Iversen on 08 April 2014 at 12:45pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5073 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 7 of 14 05 April 2014 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
I liked this post from Ari. Imagine, straight from Sweden and into the Chinese frying pan- one word: guts!
This is just one of the reasons why I love the diversity of opinions/philosophies as regards language-learning. Just because I practice all the skills at the same time doesn't mean those who don't are necessarily doing it wrong. Like everything, your mileage may vary. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4180 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 8 of 14 05 April 2014 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think if you continue to focus on your passive ability, it will eventually transfer into active ability, and much sooner than you might otherwise expect. I don't know that I always agree with considering reading and listening as truly "passive." It's true that you may not be able to use every word or sentence construction you read or hear, but it's not passive to the extent that reading or listening to a mutually intelligible language is (in which case, one's understanding of the text/audio comes from knowledge of a related language instead of from knowledge of the language itself).
The global/sequential learning style is interesting, and I do wonder if it has any impact on how successful delaying activation is. I would consider myself to be primarily a sequential and sensing learner, but I haven't had any real issues with focusing on listening and reading, although I will do active grammar study as well, especially in the beginning. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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