Cavesa wrote:The first time Shakespeare was on the obligatory reading list, I was like 12 years old. The age was not the issue though. At that point in life, I was choosing my books by length and epicness, my favourite authors were Dumas, Hugo, King, and other representats of the "the longer, the better" attitude.
Somewhere in Canada, there was a 12-year-old girl reading all the same books as you
At the time, that was what felt exciting and rewarding for me.And I think that's the essential question, both in reading and in language learning: what excites and motivates and feels fulfilling? For some people, the height of achievement would be cracking hilarious jokes in Polish or smoothly navigating social situations in Turkish or some other feat of spoken skill. Other people just want to read literature in the original, whether a translation is available or not. When I started studying Russian, I had zero desire to speak to anyone. I just wanted to read. Fate, however, has a sense of humour and delivered me a pack of Russian-speaking in-laws.
cpnlsn88 wrote:I think this is important because there could be a big market out there for a reading course in a given language rather than verbal efficiency and I imagine that, say, someone well read in Italian literature will be able fairly easily to develop spoken skills (maybe with some quirks).
Anyway it's worth thinking about because there might be a big market out there of people interested in language learning who are put off or not adequately catered for.
I think this market absolutely exists and is massively underserved. Perhaps someone reading this thread should drop everything and start drawing up a business plan.
In university, I took a German reading course specifically designed for people like me, who needed to read obscure, untranslated scholarly articles in German and had no need for speaking or listening skills. It was one of the better institutional learning experiences I've had, simply because its objectives were so perfectly tailored to my needs and desires.
zgriptsuroica wrote:Heck, I primarily learn because I'm interested in reading, but I qualify my abilities accordingly, which is the only thing I'm advocating. If you say "I know Portuguese" when you really mean "I've read the major works of lusophone authors and can comfortably read anything, but I can't speak, write or understand it," you're misrepresenting your abilities and should be clear about them. Not everyone needs to have the same goals, and different goals are perfectly valid.
This problem of people misstating their abilities is always going to be part of the language learning community, I think. Humans are often imprecise, self-aggrandizing, uninformed, etc., all of which can lead to inaccurate descriptions of ability, either intentionally or otherwise. The extent to which I care about this varies widely depending on whether the misrepresentation is hurting anyone or not. For example, pumping up your supposed level to get a job can harm your future clients, coworkers, etc. Selling your dodgy method on YouTube based on inflated claims of your success can mislead other learners. I am sure we can all think of plenty of examples of true harm done. But, for the most part, if nobody is being hurt, I don't care about people's stated levels of skill or their accuracy, and I try to assume ignorance instead of malice wherever possible (if only because more cortisol is the last thing I need).