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Negative aspects of being a Polygot? | ||
Tags: Polyglot bashing | Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Roger Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6406 days ago 159 posts - 161 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Indonesian | Message 33 of 94 22 March 2007 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Well, that's the thing, i'm struggling to learn even Italian which people say is supposed to be easy. I have been learning it for about a year nearly, and am still far from being able to converse with people. I just can't seem to take thing's in which is a right pain, and English when I read English it look's all jumbled up when I try and read it fast, so it's a very slow process, but I feel i'm getting there. Vocabulary doesn't seem to stick either which is another pain. So I guess my answer to your question is, it's very hard, my younger brother also has it, slightly worse though. Look on the bright side, i'm good at athletics:)
PS. My English grammar is all over the place sometimes aswell, and that offer's more pain for learning Italian grammar. But the funny thing is, I haven't ever looked at my dyslexia as a problum for language learning (Until now) which is a bit stupid, because if I do it put's me off doing it, and makes me feel I can't do it, as if i'm fighting an never ending battle. I can't do math's either (To the point I struggle with *so called basic* math's skill's), at all. Edited by Roger on 22 March 2007 at 7:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6757 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 34 of 94 22 March 2007 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't think you'll find many first-time foreign language learners studying on their own who do well at conversation after one year. One reason is that it can take months just to try out different methods before hitting upon something that works for you. Even with the right method it can take many months to get to an intermediate stage and a couple of years to an advanced one, so your schedule is entirely normal. It's interesting, by the way, that you settled upon reading, as opposed to watching movies and listening to the radio, as your current preferred study method. If it is actually working well, perhaps it means that dyslexia is not such a big hindrance in your case. Any way you cut it, learning a language takes a lot of time, but once you get there, you'll feel it was worth every minute of it. Edited by frenkeld on 22 March 2007 at 11:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| iieee Groupie United States dreaminginturkish.bl Joined 6401 days ago 78 posts - 80 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, German | Message 35 of 94 22 March 2007 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Roger:
I had a friend in a language class who had dyslexia. She found it effective to focus on listening/speaking ability and to accept that she would have trouble reading/writing in the new language just as she did with English. It just depends on what your objectives are, of course, she was satisfied with gaining conversational ability so that she could speak with her husband's family. She did better than many students in the class because she had what truly matters: the burning desire to learn the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Roger Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6406 days ago 159 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Indonesian | Message 36 of 94 23 March 2007 at 5:13am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Frenkeld:
'It's interesting, by the way, that you settled upon reading, as opposed to watching movies and listening to the radio, as your current preferred study method. If it is actually working well, perhaps it means that dyslexia is not such a big hindrance in your case'. It takes me age's to read and right, age's, but if I speak a new language I want to do the whole package. An assimil lesson take's me hour's to complete. And with the listening thing, I don't have any proper material, and I don't have a clue what the Italian's on the internet radio say, they speak so fast it almost blow's me over, but maybe I should focus on listning/speaking more. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6757 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 37 of 94 23 March 2007 at 9:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You do read and write English, but from what I've gathered from your comments, not as well as you speak it, so it's reasonable to expect that you will eventually arrive at a similar distribution of skills in Italian as well.
You mean just to read it? Have you tried some simple readers instead of reading Assimil lessons? Also, how well do you do with other reading sources in Italian, newspapers, magazines, web sites, etc?
With the radio the advice I've seen is (a) in the beginning you will only understand a word here and there, and this is normal for everybody, (b) you should persist and listen daily, but listen only for 10 to 15 minutes a day and then just turn the radio off until the next day, (c) it's good to start with some daily news program, which you should listen to in Italian after listening to the news or reading morning newspapers in English.
If reading is bearing fruit, in the sense of you gaining vocabulary and reading more and more easily, you may as well keep riding that horse for now. You'll still need to work on listening and speaking later, but as long as you feel you are making good progress, there's no need to dilute the efforts. If you do have some extra time, have you tried Pimsleur in addition to Michel Thomas? Also, what about some Italian movies or TV shows? You can watch one with subtitles first and then without. Edited by frenkeld on 23 March 2007 at 11:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Roger Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6406 days ago 159 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Indonesian | Message 38 of 94 23 March 2007 at 10:14am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Yes with reading assimil it take's about an hour and a half to get it, and looking through a dictionary sometime's throws me, that's why I like the internet dictionary because I can just copy and paste. I think maybe this is why I gave up on assimil before. I like reading Italian news from 'La stampa', I do find it difficult and only notice a few word's when reading. But the structure is comming along, and retaining vocabulary is especialy hard, and the thing is if someone spoke a word to me I would remember it better than if I read it. I'll try the radio idea sound's logical. Again with reading, I am getting posotive benifit's from it, but at a slow rate.
Basically, MARC FRISCH didn't know i'm dyslexic, and I do find english spelling hard, harder than Italian in some cases. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6829 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 39 of 94 24 March 2007 at 8:03am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Roger, thanks for answering my question. I really admire your determination in trying so hard to learn another language despite your difficulties.
That's because it is! Imagine if you'd have learned English as your first foreign language! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| jstele Bilingual Senior Member United States Joined 6469 days ago 186 posts - 194 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean* | Message 40 of 94 25 March 2007 at 5:26am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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"While in Spain, Fazah said he was contacted by an Israeli official. "They asked me if I was interested in working for the Israeli government but I feared what the Palestinians would do to me," said Fazah, who is Greek Orthodox. In the early 1970s Fazah also had a run-in with officials from the U.S. consulate, who were suspicious of his abilities to speak Chinese and Russian. "They feared I was a terrorist and asked Brazilian police to bring me in for questioning but after two hours I was let go."
http://www.spidra.com/fazah.html 1 person has voted this message useful |
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