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Do Polyglots’ Returns Have to Diminish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6997 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 17 of 55 17 October 2014 at 11:02am | IP Logged | |||||
I think that's what Professor Arguelles talks about when he says learning a language "permanently". By that, he begins by learning and ultimately mastering a handful of courses for a given language. At that point, normally he would shift into using the language in a less structured way, such as reading or listening to audiobooks. He has talked about dropping a language for years and then coming back to it with a quick refresh and then finding his skills were where they once had been. In that case, I imagine he's talking about having mastered an Assimil course on some obscure language over the course of a couple years at the rate of 15 minutes per day, he found that after doing nothing with the language for a few years, he could refresh/shadow that Assimil course which he had at one point practically memorized in a few hours and find his skills were back to the previous level. I believe there is something in this. If one masters a language course over an extended period of time, one can let it go for a similar period and then come back and re-activate the knowledge or ability that one once had. I had an experience like this FSI Basic Spanish. I quit studying and using Spanish for 3 or 4 years. Later, when I became interested in language learning again, I went through the substitution drills in that course and a few other things and found my previously dormant abilities rapidly coming back. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6374 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 18 of 55 17 October 2014 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So this suggests that learning multiple languages at the same time (and thus slowing down the progress of each one) might be more efficient in the long run, since the language will be more resistant to decay and thus require less maintenance?
If that's so, I've been going about this all wrong. I tend to stop working on my other languages when I begin a new one and focus on it intensively for a period of time, until I get it up to a comfortable level, at which point I sort of let the other languages back in and go back to refinement and maintenance of my languages. I might try starting several languages simultaneously and work less intensively over a longer period next time. I do find I'm having a hard time choosing a single language to work on after Portuguese. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5222 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 19 of 55 17 October 2014 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The emphasis in the OP here seems to be on passive or receptive knowledge of a language and potential
transformation into active skills if and when necessary. I think there's a huge difference between the two skill sets and the kind of maintenance activities required. Whereas maintaining a large number of passive skill sets seems doable, I'm highly skeptical of claims of high active proficiency (C1-C2) in anything more than a small handful of languages except in unusual cases where the speakers have regular opportunities to use the languages. Edited by s_allard on 17 October 2014 at 8:44pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6389 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 20 of 55 17 October 2014 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Haha, I've added them all. Only the polyglot tag was automatic because the word is in the title. As for maintenance, I was referring specifically to daily pointless activities. I generally find that a period of extensive usage (like reading a book or watching a series) is more important than the small routine stuff. That said, reviewing with Twitter or awesome stuff I put into SRS is meaningful enough for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4499 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 21 of 55 17 October 2014 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is also the method I use. I like coming back to them later on when I'm inspired again. I usually switch focus every couple months or so. Right now it's Chinese due to me going to China. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5137 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 22 of 55 17 October 2014 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
If your objective is to achieve an advanced level of proficiency, without which the high culture of your target language will remain inaccessible, you will face an exponentially increasing demand on your time. Professor Argüelles roughly estimates that to reach each successive level it takes twice as long as it took you to reach the preceding one. The more advanced you are, the more exacting further progress becomes. Unknown vocabulary becomes diverse and individually infrequent, yet as a whole retains the ability to effectively hinder full comprehension and enjoyment of literature. And at that point, there are little to no gains to be had from efficiency or better methods. The only recourse remaining is quality time spent reading good books. Progress becomes a decreasing function of a single variable, time, which brings us back to my original post. I do find your suggestion of alternating periods of intense activity for a subset of your languages a possibility. Languages that are self taught in a conscientious manner do not fade from one's consciousness with ease. Perhaps long term this is the only approach I find viable. Of course, the above applies to a specific kind of learner with particular aspirations. As s_allard points out, other competencies make different demands on the learner, and as they are of no interest to me, I have not reflected on what those would be. Edited by Juаn on 17 October 2014 at 7:54pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6997 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 23 of 55 17 October 2014 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
But if they did it with a 300 word vocabulary ... 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4499 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 24 of 55 17 October 2014 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is if you are talking about literature. There's often a quite significant gap between literature and common spoken language. If you want to be well-versed in a more all-round spectrum of a certain language, you need to move in those circles where that jargon is spoken. For example, I know a lot of Russian slang words, but not so many overly literary terms. The reason being that I spend a lot of time chatting with Russians (and sometimes Ukrainians) online. The result is that I can tell you that чайник "teapot" doubles as "novice, dummy, idiot" but there is plenty of literary stuff I haven't the foggiest about. And there's nothing wrong with that - because it's a part of who I am it's certainly something I am more well-versed in than other parts, and for me this type of language is a great part of my enjoyment of Russian. I do like literature (actually I like poetry much better than literature) but for me Russian is a social language and I try and use it as such. I think once you get to B2, those particular domain-specific vocabulary groups start playing a huge role in your further progress. If you limit yourself to one domain then you'll get stuck. I tend to have a very good general vocabulary in my better languages but what always sticks out is your use of idiomatic, specific vocabulary suited to the context of your life and personality. I'm also more apt to learning grammatical terms and scientific words in languages because that's what I use them for. I know a lot of more scientific words in French, not only through their relationship with English and Latin but more specifically because that is what I have trained to be able to do in French. 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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