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First major crisis of confidence | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4591 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 15 14 January 2015 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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How do you deal with this, particularly if you have depression or similar?
I've been learning German for about 16 months now. My weekly class has just folded as our tutor wasn't continuing after Christmas. After months of prevarication, I booked my first ever Skype lesson via italki. The next day was the start of a week of stress and anxiety including wanting to give up entirely. I do have chronic depression and non-depressed people would be nervous so I was goading myself into the lesson telling myself I can quit after the lesson but not before. Sunday came, the lesson happened, my teacher was brilliant as I'd let her know in advance I was nervous. My speaking was appalling but I did understand her much better than I expected. Met up with my study buddies the next day enjoying pancakes and maple syrup and a text-book free gossip in English. However, since then I'm back to completely uninterested. I feel like a metaphorical horse refusing a jump. I'd recommend to myself a break to gain perspective but I'm worried about 1. Slipping backwards and wasting all the hours and effort put in since I'm not yet at B1. 2. Stopping the German and not going to the study group isn't good for me socially. It's not even that I'm being tempted by my love of Chinese or anything else. I feel like a kid that's really tired and frustrated and is playing up. Any psychological tactics I can use to manage feelings like these? German has (until now) been a really positive thing in my life giving me new friends and showing that my brain isn't all shriveled up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6994 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 15 14 January 2015 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I recommend having your Vitamin D level checked. It that's not feasible, I'd just start supplementing with
1000-2000 IU per day. (I take 5000 IU and have for about 3-4 years. When I get my annual D check, my level is just in the mid-range. It's never high. It's no longer low. When I was taking just a strong multi-vitamin and eating healthy foods, my D level was very low). Vitamin D is the sunshine vitamin. I've found it very helpful for depression. Vitamin D has a long half-life, so it make take a month or so to build up your level and begin to feel the difference. If you are tested and your Vitamin D level is extremey low, they will probably give you a much higher dose. On the psychological side, the most important thing is to keep doing something you enjoy with German. Use your experience and focus on activities you have enjoyed for a while. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4496 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 3 of 15 14 January 2015 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Do something you know you can do, succeed at it, and then realise it's not as bad as you
thought it was. Positive feedback is important. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jtmc18 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7034 days ago 119 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 4 of 15 14 January 2015 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Keep going. I've been through this myself... my depression and anxiety have reached extreme levels in the past, and have often interfered with my language studies. I know what's like to lose interest at times, but the secret to success, and to overcoming negative feelings, is to act your way through them. Your feelings and interest levels eventually catch up to your actions if you just keep going. I had to learn some hard lessons along the way:
- Success only comes to those who are willing to accept failure... and keep on anyway. - Feelings are temporary. There will be times of feeling down or uninterested in things. This often happens when we over-think the meaning of everything, or the future implications of our current paths. Our main business, as a wise man once said, is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. - It doesn't matter how bad I think I am at Language X... I am usually better than I realize, and if I keep at it I can only improve. I bet I made a million mistakes on the road to Spanish, and still sometimes make mistakes, but neither the universe nor the bulk of Spanish-speakers care. Most people are just happy I made the effort to learn. - It's important to stay focused. This forum is littered over the years with my "Which language should I learn?" posts, as every time I needed a different language at work I thought I had chosen the wrong one. Finally, last year, I said the hell with it... I speak Spanish, some Italian, and- for my job- a little French. I'm going to improve these. Guess what? I too am taking italki classes, in Italian... and I'm making tons of errors, but for once I'm having fun with it. That's all it was ever about anyhow. Stop judging yourself, don't make excuses, and don't take "time off for perspective"... every time I step back and contemplate it all I fall into a black hole. If you want to speak German fluently, keep going as though you already do and reality will catch up... - 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4919 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 5 of 15 14 January 2015 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
While I can't comment on the depression aspect, I'll comment on this. You won't slip backwards and waste any of the hours you've put in. If you take a break, particularly a substantial one, you may need a little refresher, but you won't forget what you've learned. A couple years ago I was actively studying Polish, although I never made it past A2. I dropped it after a solid year of study. I recently picked it up again, and had no trouble picking up where I left off. Although I will say that I'd occasionally listen to something in Polish every couple weeks or so when I had dropped the language. R. == 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Xenops Senior Member United States thexenops.deviantart Joined 3614 days ago 112 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 6 of 15 15 January 2015 at 3:48am | IP Logged | ||
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I would try to see if there is a reason for the depression:
-is it diet? Are you not eating as you should? -is a relationship or family member bringing you down? -are job circumstances bothering you? -are you exercising as you should? And it could be you just need a break from German, and when you tackle it next time, your enthusiasm will soar. :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6371 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 7 of 15 15 January 2015 at 9:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Can you find pleasureable and not too difficult tasks to do in German? Can you read easy books? If you have a Kindle or something that can run the Kindle app (even a smartphone can do that, or a laptop connected to the web), you could read with a popup dictionary, which helps a lot. Or maybe get a reader with parallel texts. There are free such parallel texts online at Farka's Translations (don't have the URL right now, but you can probably Google it). Kraschen says that the best way to learn a foreign language is doing something enjoyable that gives you input that you can mostly understand. Even if people might disagree about the "best" part, this is a method that works. You don't have to speak if you don't feel comfortable with it. Speaking can come later, once you're more confident in your ability.
Maybe you could suggest a book club with your study group? You choose a text together and read it, then meet up and discuss it. Even if you can't understand the text completely, it could be interesting to meet up and try to figure out the difficult parts together. As for taking a break, I'd be more wary of the social loss than the linguistic one. You don't need to worry about losing your German just because you have a break for a few months. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4591 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 8 of 15 21 January 2015 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Firstly, I must say a big thank you to everyone who's replied. I know I get very blinkered when I'm extra down and forget that these are common feelings that others have negotiated and got past. So I do really appreciate your willingness to share :)
I have the kind of depression which is proving tricky to treat- I'd rattle if shaken...But I'd not heard about the Vitamin D idea. I do live in Scotland which isn't the sunniest of places, especially in winter. I will enquire about it. I had 2 quiet days at home this week to level out but got back to my volunteering today and felt better for the rest. I agree that I need to plod on, adjust my expectations/ideal time frame and appreciate the fact that I've kept going all this time. The speaking has definitely spooked me, especially that I didn't get a big release of anxiety for having done it once. But the ability to speak German is what I want so I need to push my comfort zone. I also have to admit to being easily crushed by criticism. I had my first diary post on italki politely corrected and it really deflated me. I know I need to get back on there and learn from it so I can make fewer mistakes in the future. Picking things that interest me is tricky in that things like tv and watching dvds are all a bit 'blah' to me at the moment but that shouldn't be a reason not to try. I did look at a B1 speaking test on YouTube last night and was surprised that I'm not that far off (I didn't actually find out if they passed though...) Thanks again for all the support :) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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