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Do Polyglots’ Returns Have to Diminish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5137 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes  Speaks: Spanish* | Message 41 of 55 23 October 2014 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Coincidentally I've been going through Brahms's symphonies myself these last couple of days along with the deutsches Requiem and some overtures, from the Klemperer, Philharmonia set I just got. Absolutely fabulous, touching performances, I might add. I would never interrupt them though to watch TV. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4851 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 42 of 55 23 October 2014 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Does that mean a good portion of your hitting each language each week consists of rereading printouts of things you've already read? That sounds like it would work well for relatively fast review of multiple languages (<20 min each). Longer times could be reserved for new content, which maybe doesn't need to be done every week.
I do believe it's possible for some people to maintain speaking skill in known languages over years of no practice. There might be a period during reactivation where word/structure recall would be noticeably slowed, but if you review often I don't think it would have to come out wrong or not at all. It might require some thinking as you study to at least simulate active usage. I can't yet test whether it applies to 20 languages at C1-C2, but I have personal experience that my languages will go from a fast B2 to a slow B2 with occasional searching for words if I don't speak them for a year. Some people like to argue that maintaining many active languages is impossible, but I didn't want to argue that here despite believing that to be false. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6495 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 43 of 55 24 October 2014 at 7:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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That's also my experience - I get slower because I have to ransack my memory for certain words, but passive skills aren't lost, and if I just get some time to fumble around I can also express myself in moderately rusty languages. The problem is that the occasion where I could have used one of these languages may then have ended - like when a possible conversation partner has moved on to another language (or even physically moved on).
I use some old printouts for refreshing languages, but also fairly new printouts which I just haven't used yet. Right now I'm eating my way through a number of printouts about paleontology in at least half a dozen languages, but I have plans to reread a number of excellent articles from the past (like a long one about the 'snowball Earth' hypothesis in Russian). And besides I can always refresh the vocabulary of a language by making a wordlist directly from a dictionary - but this activity obviously can't stand alone. Edited by Iversen on 24 October 2014 at 10:40am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4922 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 44 of 55 24 October 2014 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
I believe this also, but I believe that some "inner" practice is needed, too. A long time ago - pre-internet for me, I read a story of a classical pianist that was imprisoned for 40 years. When he left the prison system, he was able to play as if he'd never stopped. He had mentioned that he mentally envisioned himself playing every day. On the other hand (and still speaking musically), there are still certain pieces that I've not played since college (decades ago) and can still sit in front of a piano and play them. I'm inclined to chalk that up to the extreme practice schedule I had in college though. The times I've actually recently played something from my college days, it's full-on rote. I don't even have to think about what I'm playing. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4741 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 45 of 55 24 October 2014 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So, for discussion's sake: What if one were to "maintain" a language strictly by instantaneous output (talking, not even writing). And not reading or listening... would that maintain the language better than just passive review.
I ask because we all seem to agree, and multiple literature also, that active output decays faster than passive (which seems to decay at almost imperceptible speed at the higher levels of language). Would a strictly speech-oriented maintenance keep all the other abilities, PLUS speech, and thus be more effective? I assume vocabulary size would take a hit however, since more and more one would rely on "staples" of our active vocabulary. But then if we were to go to an environment we needed that language, we could simply read and listen a bunch a week before, and because we had spoken the language all that time as maintenance, that skill would be tip-sharp. Any opinions? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5137 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 46 of 55 24 October 2014 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The concern is not maintenance - a language that has been conscientiously self-taught will not fade from your memory with ease. There have been months where I have not had the opportunity to work on my Russian for instance, yet I can pick it up where I left it without the slightest difficulty. I can do this even in the case of Arabic or Hungarian, where I am nowhere near that level.
The issue is progressing from there to the kind of proficiency that goes beyond actual language study and can be more properly regarded as obtaining an education in it - and actually enjoy your new language by reading books that interest you. For this however there is quite simply no escaping the fact that it requires longer, more concentrated sessions than might have sufficed in previous stages, and this will in turn severely limit the number of languages that you can engage simultaneously with any sort of momentum. I have been reading Wittgenstein's works in German -my first attempt at substantial books in this language- and as I read on I become more attuned to the syntax of the language and comprehension friction progressively dissipates. It would be a crime at this point to put down the book because my allotted time span has expired and I must pick up another language! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4741 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 47 of 55 24 October 2014 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Here is the problem I see with that: when you reach such a high level, to see any progress, even with full study as you suggest, is basically imperceptible. We all learn more in our native languages every day, but do we notice it every day? Absolutely not. We may notice we have a better vocabulary only years later. That's a long time.
So, how can you chart or even measure daily/weekly progress, or education as you put it, in an advanced enough language, when the gains are so slow? Let alone elaborating better methods to improve this process. It's like trying to understand the changes from Latin to French/Spanish/Italian, by examining solely the writings of some longing aristocratic wife somewhere in Provence in the mid 700s (if such letters were found), and extrapolating from just that to improve a theory of language change. Dubious undertaking. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4851 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 48 of 55 24 October 2014 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
If you disagree with the premise of this discussion, that's fine. Progressing from "advanced study" proficiency to "full educated user" is a huge issue in language learning, but it's not the issue discussed on this thread. This thread is to discuss specifically maintenance of a large number of languages. No one claims this is even desirable for all polyglots, but there are enough of us to care about how to do it efficiently. The idea is to do the kind of deep activities you mention in 1-5 languages at a time, while also maintaining another 15-25 at whatever level they're at, in a short, efficient time-- specifically so that it doesn't disrupt the kind of deep activities you value so highly. Some of the maintained languages will be used for deep activities later, some may be used only for lighter activities such as travel. A language you speak well enough to support deep activities shouldn't need a lot of review to maintain at that level-- it's the deep activities themselves that take the time. Something always has to be sacrificed for time pressure, and there are people in this world who like language better than literature, who want to become hyperpolyglots and would rather sacrifice the ability to engage deeply with all their languages all the time, and avoid sacrificing the ability to maintain large numbers of languages ready to speak, listen and read in at any time, even if those times are infrequent for some of those languages at some periods of the person's life. Your values do not make this discussion pointless.
I'm completely certain that 100% output practice would not be optimal. However, it's a fantastic idea, worth investigating, that a high proportion of output practice might be better than the high proportion of input practice that most people do. Personally, I value comprehension more than speech, so I've always tended to practice using 95+ % input activities and only a little bit of output. I bet output practice could be really effective at preventing output decay, and with the proper mix, it wouldn't have much impact on the benefits of passive study. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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