How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

General discussion about learning languages
User avatar
IronMike
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2554
Joined: Thu May 12, 2016 6:13 am
Location: Northern Virginia
Languages: Studying: Esperanto
Maintaining: nada
Tested:
BCS, 1+L/1+R (DLPT5, 2022)
Russian, 3/3 (DLPT5, 2022) 2+ (OPI, 2022)
German, 2L/1+R (DLPT5, 2021)
Italian, 1L/2R (DLPT IV, 2019)
Esperanto, C1 (KER skriba ekzameno, 2017)
Slovene, 2+L/3R (DLPT II in, yes, 1999)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5189
x 7265
Contact:

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby IronMike » Wed Mar 29, 2017 4:27 pm

Technically, I guess I must consider Spanish my first, as I started with it in 8th grade, and continued till 10th. But I didn't learn much besides the days of the week, the months, and how to say "I want to sleep with you."

My "real" first foreign language I learned in the Defense Language Institute in 1986. Seven hours a day of class, four hours a day of homework, for 47 weeks. Brutal. Insert firehose in mouth, turn on water. Incredible. But I left with B2/C1.

But as fast as I learned it, I lost it. Took much effort to get back to the B2/C1 level years later. I'm maintaining it now, but what I would do for an intermediate course of all-day, every-day. I'd be C2 in no time.
7 x
You're not a C1 (or B1 or whatever) if you haven't tested.
CEFR --> ILR/DLPT equivalencies
My swimming life.
My reading life.

YtownPolyglot
Orange Belt
Posts: 227
Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2016 9:42 pm
Location: Ohio, USA
Languages: English (N), French (C1), Spanish (B2), German (B2), Italian (B1)
On the wishlist: Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch....
x 311

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby YtownPolyglot » Wed Mar 29, 2017 6:29 pm

My first foreign language was French; I started in first grade. The class was very oral, and there was almost no writing. I then went to a different school with no languages and lost almost all French in the following seven years.

Fast forward to high school, where I took four years of French and three of Spanish. What helps for me--not necessarily for anyone else--is the structure of a class and the opportunity to ask people questions. If I work on a language all by myself, it's too easy for other things to get in the way. I benefit from the structure of a schedule and deadlines. Again, that's just me.
1 x
Native language: English
Other languages: French (C1), Spanish (B3), German (B2), Italian (B1)
Wish list: Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Norwegian....

User avatar
Xenops
Brown Belt
Posts: 1444
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 10:33 pm
Location: Boston
Languages: English (N), Danish (A2), Japanese (rusty), Nansha (constructing)
On break: Japanese (approx. N4), Norwegian (A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16797
x 3559
Contact:

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby Xenops » Wed Mar 29, 2017 6:35 pm

IronMike wrote:Technically, I guess I must consider Spanish my first, as I started with it in 8th grade, and continued till 10th. But I didn't learn much besides the days of the week, the months, and how to say "I want to sleep with you."

My "real" first foreign language I learned in the Defense Language Institute in 1986. Seven hours a day of class, four hours a day of homework, for 47 weeks. Brutal. Insert firehose in mouth, turn on water. Incredible. But I left with B2/C1.

But as fast as I learned it, I lost it. Took much effort to get back to the B2/C1 level years later. I'm maintaining it now, but what I would do for an intermediate course of all-day, every-day. I'd be C2 in no time.


That sounds like the experience of a friend of mine: she went into the army, studied Dari hard-core, was nearly fluent when she went to Afghanistan, and has promptly forgot a lot of it (to her chagrin).
1 x
Check out my comic at: https://atannan.com/

Xmmm
Blue Belt
Posts: 821
Joined: Tue Oct 06, 2015 1:19 am
Languages: ru it tr
x 2221

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby Xmmm » Wed Mar 29, 2017 6:54 pm

IronMike wrote:T
My "real" first foreign language I learned in the Defense Language Institute in 1986. Seven hours a day of class, four hours a day of homework, for 47 weeks. Brutal. Insert firehose in mouth, turn on water. Incredible. But I left with B2/C1.


Could you characterize both the class time (total immersion or grammar lecture in English or something different every hour or what ... how were the seven hours spent?) and the homework (written, listening to tapes, etc?).

Thanks!
1 x

Ещё раз сунешь голову туда — окажешься внутри. Поняла, Фемида? -- аигел

User avatar
luke
Brown Belt
Posts: 1243
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 9:09 pm
Languages: English (N). Spanish (intermediate), Esperanto (B1), French (intermediate but rusting)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16948
x 3631

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby luke » Wed Mar 29, 2017 7:48 pm

I was crazy in love with a girl who learned French in High School. She learnt it well enough to pass an exam and get 2 years of college credit. French is a "romance" language. I didn't know that meant a descendent of the language spoken in Rome.

I spent all my free time learning with the textbook, going to the language laboratory to hear the accompanying audio, and talking to myself in the language. I got to fluency, but not perfection. (This was at 3 semesters, 1.5 years of college French. Quite remarkable really. I could speak with more fluidity than classmates who had 2 years of French in Middle School, 4 years in High School, and another year in College).

Then the professor embarrassed me for my bad French outside of class in front of a couple of attractive French majors. I unplugged from the class and coasted from that point on, just getting the grades for the graduation requirement.
3 x
: 124 / 124 Cien años de soledad 20x
: 5479 / 5500 5500 pages - Reading
: 51 / 55 FSI Basic Spanish 3x
: 309 / 506 Camino a Macondo

User avatar
tomgosse
Brown Belt
Posts: 1143
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2015 11:29 am
Location: Les Etats Unis
Languages: Anglais (langue maternelle)
Français (A1)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1185
x 2378
Contact:

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby tomgosse » Wed Mar 29, 2017 8:06 pm

luke wrote:Then the professor embarrassed me for my bad French outside of class in front of a couple of attractive French majors. I unplugged from the class and coasted from that point on, just getting the grades for the graduation requirement.

I hate it when teachers do that. It has happened to me more than once in my life. And not just in language classes.
3 x
Rejoignez notre groupe français ! Les Voyageurs

User avatar
jeff_lindqvist
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3135
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:52 pm
Languages: sv, en
de, es
ga, eo
---
fi, yue, ro, tp, cy, kw, pt, sk
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2773
x 10462

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Wed Mar 29, 2017 9:55 pm

Xenops wrote:Is it normal for polyglots to take a class for their first language, and then branch out from there? Or do some pick up a German book at age seven and pour over it? How did you guys learn your first foreign language?


Many of us have learned English in school - myself included. My story is similar to Iversen's above. As a Scandinavian, I've always had some access to the language through popular media (series, films, documentaries on television;songs on radio). When it was time to learn it in school, I had already heard a lot of English at home (through music).
3 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

Llorg Blog - Wiki - Discord

User avatar
tastyonions
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1570
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 5:39 pm
Location: Dallas, TX
Languages: EN (N), FR, ES, DE, IT, PT, NL, EL
x 3853

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby tastyonions » Wed Mar 29, 2017 10:27 pm

Learned Spanish badly in three years of high school classes, with the "badly" part probably due more to my lack of interest than to poor teaching. Forgot basically all of it during ten years of total neglect. Started my real learning (autodidactic) with French in 2012 and never looked back.
3 x

garyb
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1572
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 12:35 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: Native: English
Advanced: Italian, French
Intermediate: Spanish
Beginner: German, Japanese
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1855
x 5992
Contact:

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby garyb » Fri Mar 31, 2017 8:18 am

My story is the usual UK one of studying French for years at school without learning a whole lot. With hindsight, I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it gave me a foundation that made the idea of taking up the language again as an adult seem much more approchable compared to starting from scratch, and we studied the verbs to death (aside from a few forms that were missed like the subjunctive, but filling in the gaps was easy enough) and they came back quickly, skipping one of the big hurdles for adult learners. On the other, it gave me bad habits in pronunciation that took me years to undo. That foundation would have only taken a few months to develop with self-study, and I might have been more inclined to start with a more useful and rewarding language: I was undecided on whether to start with French, Spanish, or Italian, and what made me choose the first was mainly the previous experience, but now I wish I had chosen one of the other two. I suppose the previous French experience would have also made Spanish or Italian easier to pick up, but I wasn't really aware of that at the time.
3 x

User avatar
IronMike
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2554
Joined: Thu May 12, 2016 6:13 am
Location: Northern Virginia
Languages: Studying: Esperanto
Maintaining: nada
Tested:
BCS, 1+L/1+R (DLPT5, 2022)
Russian, 3/3 (DLPT5, 2022) 2+ (OPI, 2022)
German, 2L/1+R (DLPT5, 2021)
Italian, 1L/2R (DLPT IV, 2019)
Esperanto, C1 (KER skriba ekzameno, 2017)
Slovene, 2+L/3R (DLPT II in, yes, 1999)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5189
x 7265
Contact:

Re: How Did You Learn Your First Foreign Language?

Postby IronMike » Sat Apr 01, 2017 3:38 pm

Xmmm wrote:
IronMike wrote:T
My "real" first foreign language I learned in the Defense Language Institute in 1986. Seven hours a day of class, four hours a day of homework, for 47 weeks. Brutal. Insert firehose in mouth, turn on water. Incredible. But I left with B2/C1.


Could you characterize both the class time (total immersion or grammar lecture in English or something different every hour or what ... how were the seven hours spent?) and the homework (written, listening to tapes, etc?).

Thanks!


No English at all. In fact, on the first day I thought I'd stepped into the Chinese course, every time the instructor said "хорошо," which sounded not Russian. So, yes, immersion. The teachers never spoke English, wasn't even sure they spoke it. The books we used explained things in English, but the instructors only spoke Russian.

The homework was lots of exercises, audio and reading. Loads of it. It literally did take at least 3 hours to complete the homework, then there was studying of words and dialogues. For the first six months, I would go back to my room after PT and dinner and shower, and I'd sit down at 1800 and start studying. I finished everything at 2200. After the first six months, I got faster at doing the homework and studying the words (vocab tests every day) and dialogues. So my homework would take 2-3 hours instead of 4.

Also about halfway through I started dreaming in Russian. That's when I was sure I'd pass the course!
7 x
You're not a C1 (or B1 or whatever) if you haven't tested.
CEFR --> ILR/DLPT equivalencies
My swimming life.
My reading life.


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: bombobuffoon and 2 guests