TAC 2017-2018 dEhiN

[dEhiN]

This is the current state of my LNTP project:

Language Notebook #1: 7/96
Language Notebook #2: 0/64
Language Notebook #3: 0/148
Language Notebook #4: 0/166
Language Notebook #5: 34/166
Language Notebook #6: 5.5/29.5
Language Notebook #7: 4/8

A few days back I decided to take the 50.5 pages worth of vocab/grammar and add it to Anki. I finally finished formatting it all, and importing it into Anki. So currently I have about 2027 cards, but more importantly I have about 580 new cards for French, Portuguese, Swedish, and Tamil. Now the question is whether to learn them at a rate of 20 new cards / day, or at a slower rate. Slower rate = more time to learn all the cards; faster rate = less time to learn all the cards. In other words, 20 cards/day = 29 days; 5 cards/day = 116 days.

Lately I haven't been having much motivation to do language learning apart from Anki. I talked about focusing only on Swedish; I talked about using 3 different resources for Swedish, Tamil, and Portuguese, respectively; I talked about completing my LNTP project, even just to not have repeat vocab or forgotten learnt material; and I talked about my personal struggles a bit. I think for the immediate future, i'm going to keep doing Anki and just learn the new cards I just added. I want to go through my resources; I keep looking at them and feel the yearning to crack them open. But maybe until I work through some more of the personal stuff that has lately come up, and until I either get more motivation to do more than Anki, or figure out how to tackle the resources, Anki is the most I can manage and still keep learning.

On a side note, after Vijay's response I connected with an online therapy site, and am going to try online therapy.

[vijayjohn]

I don't know if moving to another country it's is the solution or not. But I think it's an interesting experience in life, and a question of opportunity, too. And if someone is really willing to do it, it's better to try (it) when you still have the possibility. Because maybe afterwards, life could be more complicated, with family, stressing stressful jobs, and all the kinds/sorts of things.

Sure, but part of what I'm asking is whether this actually is the time when dEhiN has an opportunity to do it. It's a major life change and has to be thought through carefully; it probably won't work out well if it's just done on a whim.

Like you (basically) said Vijay, working through my internal shit will be probably the most effective. And it is something I've been doing, but then every so often something seems to happen that triggers all the old feelings and makes me wonder if being in this same environment is chaining me down. Plus, truth be told, even though I do want to travel and experience other countries and cultures, and even though I have a draw to Sweden for a few reasons, I also deep down prefer to, anytime I'm feeling hurt, say fuck it, cut the ties to my present situation, and run. I'm more comfortable being like a chameleon and adjusting to a new environment than facing a hurtful environment.

The thing is, if you do want to move to Sweden, I think it's best to first make sure that that's possible for you. Do you have enough money to move there? How much would the air fare cost? How much would it cost to move everything?

For me, when people told me I should move, I didn't necessarily disagree with them at the time; I still think my anxiety had everything to do with the environment I was in, but what I didn't realize at the time was that there are ways of changing that environment to some degree. Yet there was always the question of where and how. In your case, at least there's a clear "where," but I'm not sure whether the "how" part is clear.

On a side note, after Vijay's response I connected with an online therapy site, and am going to try online therapy.

Good luck!

[Johanna]

About the discussion of Swedes' excellent English...


1) As a native English speaker from North America (or Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and possibly South Africa), it's extremely difficult to learn Swedish in Sweden by immersion if you don't know it on a decent level before moving here. Because it's hard enough to get people to speak Swedish to you even when you're on a C1 or a fucking C2 level if they get a whiff of what your native language is, and this is even when they first meet you as a fluent speaker.

Now imagine that they first meet you as a beginner, or at the very most on an A2 level... Yeah, you'll most likely end up the expat who never learns the local language, albeit by little fault of your own. Your Swedish friends will simply be so accustomed to you speaking in English that they will answer anything you say in that language, even if you are speaking Swedish!


2) Swedes don't speak excellent English on average. Not when you compare us to native speakers anyway, although we do score high when it comes to being able to hold a normal conversation compared to other countries where it's not the mother tongue of the majority.

I'd say that the average Swede is somewhere around low B2 level. And the reason anyone would think it's higher is that those whose English is any lower than that mostly keep to the Swedish corner of the internet and all other media. For example, if you ask people on the street if they have ever completed a novel in English, I bet that the majority would say that either the very thought scares them, or that they have tried but had to look up too many words, so they gave up within the first few chapters. And I'm not talking about a 19th century doorstop classic here, I'm talking about works that are pretty easy for a non-native to appreciate, like "Murder on the Orient Express" (for fans of the crime genre) or the first Harry Potter book (for fans of the fantasy genre).


My understanding is that dEhiN wants to integrate, it's not his goal to live as an expat who's always on the outside.

[dEhiN]

My understanding is that dEhiN wants to integrate, it's not his goal to live as an expat who's always on the outside.

Yeah Johanna's right about this. If I move to Sweden it would be to integrate and possibly eventually immigrate.

Of course I know things like it takes a while to immigrate to some place. I also have had my brother and maybe one or two offline friends talk to me about the fact that in another country I wouldn't have a support network.

But it's also possible to build a new support network. Plus with today's technology I can still communicate with people in Toronto. And of course I also have online friends as part of my support network.

For now I think the next step, before I decide about moving, is to work through more of my fears and causes of depression.

Plus I'm also thinking of getting CELTA certified. I'd probably want to do that before I move to another country.

[vijayjohn]

Swedes don't speak excellent English on average. Not when you compare us to native speakers anyway, although we do score high when it comes to being able to hold a normal conversation compared to other countries where it's not the mother tongue of the majority.

I'm not talking about how Swedes are compared to native speakers of English; I'm talking about how Swedes are compared to countries people go to expecting to get by using only English even though the majority of the population speaks no English at all. AFAIK people who speak English can visit, if not live in, Sweden without any problem and without knowing a word of Swedish. This is not the case in South Asia, for instance; you'd be crazy to go there without being helped on the ground by someone who is both trustworthy and very familiar with whatever area you're visiting - and, of course, whichever language is spoken in that area.

[dEhiN]

I finally started going through the new Anki words yesterday. So, Anki for Feb. 20:

[flag=]fr[/flag] le petit déjeuner breakfast

[flag=]pt-br[/flag] o/a dentista dentist [m./f.]
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] a tia aunt

[flag=]sv[/flag] en morbror -- morbrodern (a) maternal uncle -- the maternal uncle

[flag=]ta-lk[/flag] பெயர் name

Currently, I'm going to keep doing 5 a day until I feel like doing more.

In other language related news, yesterday/today (Jan. 20) was Family Day (in Ontario). So my parents made கோழி கறி (chicken curry), மாட்டுக் கறி (beef curry), and பருப்பு (lentils) and bought various types of அப்பம்கள் (hoppers). After lunch I got a chance to practice my Tamil a very little bit with my dad. I asked him to how say "what are you doing tomorrow" and he said "நாளைக்கு என்ன செய்கிறீர்?". So then I asked him that and he responded with "நாளைக்கு வேலை-something" (something because I don't remember whether he used வேலை (= work) as a verb, or if he used something like செய் (= do) as the verb, and also what ending he used). But I got the gist, that he is working tomorrow.

[reineke]

I hesitate to offer advice but I do think that health comes first. Try to engage in pleasurable language learning activities that boost your health and peace of mind. If that means doing Anki, watching Swedish movies, or going for a walk while listenimg to audiobooks, so be it. If you're interested in Sweden I agree that it would be a very good idea to learn the language. If you spent more time learning Swedish and exposing yourself to Swedish culture, you could get a clearer idea whether you want to live there. If you see that you're enjoying Swedish, you could work towards obtaining a Swedish language certificate.

[voron]

Try to engage in pleasurable language learning activities that boost your health and peace of mind.

There is also another side to this. By only engaging in pleasurable but not necessarily challenging activities you do not improve as fast as you want, and by not improving you get frustrated and depressed. So it is really a subtle question of how to find balance between these two extremes.

[Johanna]

Swedes don't speak excellent English on average. Not when you compare us to native speakers anyway, although we do score high when it comes to being able to hold a normal conversation compared to other countries where it's not the mother tongue of the majority.

I'm not talking about how Swedes are compared to native speakers of English; I'm talking about how Swedes are compared to countries people go to expecting to get by using only English even though the majority of the population speaks no English at all. AFAIK people who speak English can visit, if not live in, Sweden without any problem and without knowing a word of Swedish. This is not the case in South Asia, for instance; you'd be crazy to go there without being helped on the ground by someone who is both trustworthy and very familiar with whatever area you're visiting - and, of course, whichever language is spoken in that area.

Yep, there are a lot of people who get by on English only in Sweden.

The thing is that since there are a lot of people in South Asia who don't know any English at all, or only very little, it becomes a lot easier to learn the local language by immersion. I mean, move there and make the slightest effort, and you will probably have picked up a decent amount within a month or two.

In Sweden on the other hand... I've got an American Facebook friend who's lived in Stockholm for over four years now and speaks Swedish better than I speak English, and he still struggles with getting people to use Swedish with him. He dnoesn't have that problem with close friends any more, but definitely with work colleagues and acquaintances, even though he's extremely serious about using Swedish when everyone in the group understands it. Put someone who's a little less determined in that situation and they, like I said, risk sliding into the role of the expat who never learns the language no matter for how long they live here.

[flag=]sv[/flag] en morbror -- morbrodern (a) maternal uncle -- the maternal uncle

Note that the definite form is usually said as if it were spelled morbrorn.

[reineke]

Try to engage in pleasurable language learning activities that boost your health and peace of mind.

There is also another side to this. By only engaging in pleasurable but not necessarily challenging activities you do not improve as fast as you want, and by not improving you get frustrated and depressed. So it is really a subtle question of how to find balance between these two extremes.

There's no reputable research that shows the superiority of one method over another. In a way, if you look at language learning solely as means to an end and approach it with the intent to improve "as fast as possible," you're setting yourself up for some major frustrations.

Pleasurable activities can be very challenging. Listening is generally considered hard. If the learner engages in narrow activities that don't include much exposure or interaction with the living language, a learner's progress will be slower relative to what he is naturally capable of achieving. Similarly, if someone is concurrently studying five languages instead of one or two, I will assume that the learner is a willing victim of wanderlust.

Research and educated opinion suggest that under reasonable, guided learning conditions the difference between a "fast" and a "slow" learner could be considerable (400 vs 4000 hours to reach B2).

[voron]

There's no reputable research that shows the superiority of one method over another.

I believe there is in fact one principle that is essential to make your method effective, and which can be applied not only to learning languages, but to learning other things as well. Learning should be hard. Not too much hard, so that it demotivates you completely, but still not that easy that it requires no effort from you. If an activity becomes easy, it should be replaced with another one to increase the efficiency.

That said, if you only do the hard tasks, you'll burn out soon. You can find examples here on Unilang of people burning out after several months because of studying super-intensively (myself included). So you have to mix hard tasks with easy and pleasurable tasks too, and finding the balance is probably the key to successful learning.

I'm not arguing with anything that you've said, I just find that the advice "try engaging in pleasurable activities" needs a comment "but don't make it too easy for you, otherwise you won't learn anything".

[reineke]

I won't argue against any i+1 Goldilocks scenarios.
I do believe that most learners could profit from listening to something they don't understand (usually considered "hard" or "impossible"). I also think that most learners could profit from listening to "easy" material. I'm mentioning "listening" (a complex macro skill) instead of "tasks" on purpose. Individual tasks may indeed be too hard or too easy.

[dEhiN]

Similarly, if someone is concurrently studying five languages instead of one or two, I will assume that the learner is a willing victim of wanderlust.

Not necessarily. I think it depends on what level the person is in each of the languages. If the person is an A1 or beginner in all 5 languages, then I would say the person needs to focus and is setting themselves up for failure. (I speak from experience on this!) However, if say one language is C2, two others are B1 and/or B2, and either the last two are A1, or even one is A2 and only the last one is A1, then I think the person has a better chance of making progress in all 5 languages.

I hesitate to offer advice but I do think that health comes first. Try to engage in pleasurable language learning activities that boost your health and peace of mind.

Research and educated opinion suggest that under reasonable, guided learning conditions the difference between a "fast" and a "slow" learner could be considerable (400 vs 4000 hours to reach B2).

To me, those two statements contradict each other. I read the first one as "make the motivation for language learning about pleasure to boost your health" and the second one as "research shows that you should do such and such in order to progress in your language as fast as possible".

Perhaps I'm reading into things, but to me you can't have both motivations for language learning: to learn for fun, and to learn to progress to a particular level. I think of them as being in opposition to each other, and that actually applies to learning any skill.

If I'm learning a skill for fun, I'll progress because I'm learning things, but the focus is on fun. Therefore the progress might be slow or fast, and it also might halt at a certain point. It all depends on what you find fun about the learning process, what you want to learn, etc.

But if I'm learning a skill to get to a certain level of mastery, then it doesn't matter whether I'm having fun doing it or not. Yes I might need to balance intensive work and light work; tasks that are both hard and easy. But the goal is to reach that level, perhaps even with a certain time frame.

[dEhiN]

Anki for Feb. 21:

[flag=]fr[/flag] exactement exactly

[flag=]pt-br[/flag] o ano year
[flag=]pt-br[/flag] a gaveta drawer

[flag=]sv[/flag] en hustru -- hustrun (a) wife -- the wife
[flag=]sv[/flag] en fader -- fadern (a) father -- the father

[vijayjohn]

Perhaps I'm reading into things, but to me you can't have both motivations for language learning: to learn for fun, and to learn to progress to a particular level. I think of them as being in opposition to each other, and that actually applies to learning any skill.

I don't feel this way at all, at least not when it comes to language-learning. To me, the challenge of trying to progress to a particular level is fun. Well, honestly, almost anything regarding learning languages is fun for me.

[kevin]

I think you're the exception that proves the rule. Maybe even on this forum, though I'm not sure about that.

For me, it's the same as for dEhiN, and I'm know I'm only learning for fun. Whenever it starts to feel like work, I'm out. Which means that my progress really depends a lot on what I pick up on the side, and often that's very slow. But that's okay for me, I don't have any specific level in mind that I want to reach.

[vijayjohn]

I think you're the exception that proves the rule. Maybe even on this forum, though I'm not sure about that.

What do you mean by "maybe even on this forum"? That you're not sure anyone else here finds the challenges of language-learning fun?

I suspect that some other people on this forum might feel this way (Yasna?). Hyperpolyglots often, if not always, seem to feel this way as well.

I'm know

my progress really depends a lot on what I pick up on the side, and often that's very slow.

Except with English?

[kevin]

What do you mean by "maybe even on this forum"? That you're not sure anyone else here finds the challenges of language-learning fun?

It's definitely less exceptional here than among the general population. But you said "anything related to language learning" was fun, and that might be extraordinary even for Unilang standards. Many of us have aspects of language learning that they don't like (memorising vocabulary for me).

I'm know

my progress really depends a lot on what I pick up on the side, and often that's very slow.

Except with English?

Well, look at the correction you just made...

No, but seriously, I'm not sure how much progress there really is with my English, or whether it mostly just stays as it is. It's the extreme version of just picking things up and doing nothing else, so very hard to measure.

[reineke]

I hesitate to offer advice but I do think that health comes first. Try to engage in pleasurable language learning activities that boost your health and peace of mind.

Research and educated opinion suggest that under reasonable, guided learning conditions the difference between a "fast" and a "slow" learner could be considerable (400 vs 4000 hours to reach B2).

To me, those two statements contradict each other. I read the first one as "make the motivation for language learning about pleasure to boost your health" and the second one as "research shows that you should do such and such in order to progress in your language as fast as possible".

Perhaps I'm reading into things, but to me you can't have both motivations for language learning: to learn for fun, and to learn to progress to a particular level .

I disagree but first let me note that the two statements were taken from two different posts. The first post was addressed to you personally. Your health should take precedence.

The statement about research was accompanied by a statement that methods don't matter as long as they are reasonably implemented. The reference to 400-4000 hours refers to educated opinion about natural abilities and student progress under similar external circumstances. The main takeaway was that a statement such as B2 = 400 hours is unreasonably optimistic.

I have included a link to Paul Nation's free book about language learning in my log. I also recommend reading through Gianfranco Conti's blog. I don't recommend reading my logs since I'm always horsing around with language learning and doing silly things like watching cartoons or TV series. I also like audiobooks. Occasionally I get intrigued by the language itself or by language acquisition theories.

If the person is an A1 or beginner in all 5 languages, then I would say the person needs to focus and is setting themselves up for failure. (I speak from experience on this!) However, if say one language is C2, two others are B1 and/or B2, and either the last two are A1, or even one is A2 and only the last one is A1, then I think the person has a better chance of making progress in all 5 languages. .

Plenty of people have studied several languages with good results. That said, FSI people have noted that once a learner reaches a high level in at least one foreign language, language learning in general becomes easier. They also noted that time on task and the intensity of the learning experience appear crucial to language learning. I generally find it easier to get involved and spend a lot of time on language learning if I'm involved in pleasurable or engaging activities.

[vijayjohn]

What do you mean by "maybe even on this forum"? That you're not sure anyone else here finds the challenges of language-learning fun?

It's definitely less exceptional here than among the general population. But you said "anything related to language learning" was fun, and that might be extraordinary even for Unilang standards. Many of us have aspects of language learning that they don't like (memorising vocabulary for me).

That makes sense. I think there are aspects of language learning that can seem unpleasant to me, but I get over them whenever I encounter them and rarely find them worthy of mention. I guess that's how I (try to) deal with other things, too.

Well, look at the correction you just made...

No, but seriously, I'm not sure how much progress there really is with my English, or whether it mostly just stays as it is. It's the extreme version of just picking things up and doing nothing else, so very hard to measure.

As far as I can think of, you speak excellent English (or at least write excellent English!) to the point where you might make occasional errors, but they're so rare they look more like typos. I almost have difficulty believing that you're not a native speaker.