Habits of highly effective language learners

General discussion about learning languages
User avatar
jonathanrace
White Belt
Posts: 28
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 6:35 pm
Languages: English (N), Japanese (A2), Mandarin (A1)
x 23
Contact:

Habits of highly effective language learners

Postby jonathanrace » Sat Apr 13, 2019 10:28 am

Let me first introduce myself. I'm an English teacher (3.5 years) who is also studying Japanese (1.5 years). I have a website that provides information on learning English.

What I would like to do is write an article that has a collection of habits from people who are effective language learners. This can be difficult to define but I would say if you have reached basic fluency in a few or more languages, or maybe you just feel you seem to pick things up faster than other learners (that you know) then you are probably right for this. ;)

I think 1 habit per person (made up of around 3-5 sentences or so) would be a great insight into the way these people manage to acquire the language and could be beneficial to learners of a language.

Some examples of what these habits could be: -
-I read one news article a day (in my TL).
-I used x book several times a week to study.
-I made sure that I only spoke my target language on x day (not any other language).

Of course, it could be anything really. If it's something you feel is unique and different then even better! The plan is to take a collection of these and write the article up in the next month or so.

If you are interested please PM me on here and we can discuss further, I'm happy to provide a link to a website or resource from the article (if you have anything you would like to link to.)

Also, if you aren't interested in contributing but you have any ideas to make this better (or if you see any potential problems with it) then feel free to post in this thread. Anything that can possibly make a language learners life better is worth being discussed!

edit : Wording changed in an attempt to be more specific
Last edited by jonathanrace on Sun Apr 14, 2019 5:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.
0 x
Level up your English!

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: List of habits from people who have mastered many languages

Postby golyplot » Sat Apr 13, 2019 2:05 pm

My strategy is to focus on listening and just watch lots and lots of tv/videos in the TL (w/o subtitles).
5 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: List of habits from people who have mastered many languages

Postby Iversen » Sat Apr 13, 2019 3:31 pm

My strategy is to focus on written texts because I can sit at home and study them without having to negotiate time and place (and maybe even price!) with some other human being. If I should put my skills with a new language in some kind of chronological order, then (passive) reading would come first and speaking would come last.

Besides I learn most of my new vocabulary from wordlists, based either on the texts I study or directly from dictionaries. I suppose that also is somewhat unusual, but it has so far functioned for me -right now I can speak around a dozen languages and read at last two dozen (not counting dialects), and I plan to add a few more in the near future.
5 x

User avatar
MCK74
Green Belt
Posts: 251
Joined: Sun Jan 24, 2016 7:41 pm
Location: Ohio, USA
Languages: English (N), Studying: Spanish (intermediate) German (beginner) Latin (beginner)
x 314

Re: List of habits from people who have mastered many languages

Postby MCK74 » Sat Apr 13, 2019 8:01 pm

Alexander Arguelles on YouTube has several videos on this subject,

Here is one, he has also developed a survey for polyglots and made a short series of videos sharing and analyzing the results.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMdjLOrHjiA
2 x

User avatar
rdearman
Site Admin
Posts: 7231
Joined: Thu May 14, 2015 4:18 pm
Location: United Kingdom
Languages: English (N)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1836
x 23125
Contact:

Re: List of habits from people who have mastered many languages

Postby rdearman » Sat Apr 13, 2019 9:00 pm

jonathanrace wrote:What I would like to do is write an article that has a collection of habits from people who have either: -
a. Learned a number of languages or
b. Learned a second language in a faster than average time

What is the average time? What do you mean by "learned"? Do you mean A1/A2/B1/B2/C1/C2 or some other definition of learned?
7 x
: 0 / 150 Read 150 books in 2024

My YouTube Channel
The Autodidactic Podcast
My Author's Newsletter

I post on this forum with mobile devices, so excuse short msgs and typos.

User avatar
jonathanrace
White Belt
Posts: 28
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 6:35 pm
Languages: English (N), Japanese (A2), Mandarin (A1)
x 23
Contact:

Re: List of habits from people who have mastered many languages

Postby jonathanrace » Sun Apr 14, 2019 6:59 am

rdearman wrote:
jonathanrace wrote:What I would like to do is write an article that has a collection of habits from people who have either: -
a. Learned a number of languages or
b. Learned a second language in a faster than average time

What is the average time? What do you mean by "learned"? Do you mean A1/A2/B1/B2/C1/C2 or some other definition of learned?


Apologies for my ambiguity.

With regards to time: -

http://www.openculture.com/2017/11/a-ma ... rdest.html

The time needed to "learn" a language depends on your native language as well as other factors. The map above shows what this looks like coming from English but can be applied to any other language. I guess to be aware of this average, one needs to know roughly how long it takes to get for speakers of one's mother language to reach the target language.

As for the second issue of how to define "learned". Everyone has their own definition of it and of course, we never stop learning, so we aren't looking for a "100%", "completed" definition. However, for the sake of this I would say C1+ seems like a good place for it. :)
0 x
Level up your English!

User avatar
rdearman
Site Admin
Posts: 7231
Joined: Thu May 14, 2015 4:18 pm
Location: United Kingdom
Languages: English (N)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1836
x 23125
Contact:

Re: List of habits from people who have mastered many languages

Postby rdearman » Sun Apr 14, 2019 11:17 am

humm... Seems I've spend 10 & 15 years on two languages which should have only taken 23 weeks. Clearly I'm not doing this correctly.
10 x
: 0 / 150 Read 150 books in 2024

My YouTube Channel
The Autodidactic Podcast
My Author's Newsletter

I post on this forum with mobile devices, so excuse short msgs and typos.

User avatar
PeterMollenburg
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3229
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2015 11:54 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N), French (B2-certified), Dutch (High A2?), Spanish (~A1), German (long-forgotten 99%), Norwegian (false starts in 2020 & 2021)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18080
x 8029

Re: List of habits from people who have mastered many languages

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sun Apr 14, 2019 12:01 pm

rdearman wrote:humm... Seems I've spend 10 & 15 years on two languages which should have only taken 23 weeks. Clearly I'm not doing this correctly.


Well the differences on how long it takes to ‘learn’ a language, which I’ve found online today are just as wild. Some websites/people claiming 10 or 15 min a day is good to ‘learn’ a language. Benny’s website claims the FSI numbers are overstated and that we can get there much quicker.

To be fair, there, is meant to be basic fluency, and while I have surpassed 6000 hours of French (and prob have achieved C1-ish), basic fluency for me came much later. Such claims by such websites (that one can get there quicker than FSI stated numbers of hours) to me seem ridiculously optimistic (read: unfairly misleading) for first time language learners, as FSI is taking into account that learner XYZ has already a very considerable amount of language learning experience and their stated numbers do not include the many more hours of homework outside the classroom (with access to a native speaker) setting.

How about 10,000 hours to ‘master’ a skill? At one hour a day, that’s a tad over 27 years. So is the gap between basic fluency (say 2 years for a Cat 1 language) and mastering a language to become an expert in it, really 25 years? Probable, I think. All round native and beyond skills is a massive achievement.

Filurthermore, reaching C1 in your first foreign language is likely to be much slower than your third foreign language to C1.

Maybe when I reach my 5th language, I will agree with FSI numbers, and I do mean that - it’s possible, I guess.
4 x

User avatar
MCK74
Green Belt
Posts: 251
Joined: Sun Jan 24, 2016 7:41 pm
Location: Ohio, USA
Languages: English (N), Studying: Spanish (intermediate) German (beginner) Latin (beginner)
x 314

Re: List of habits from people who have mastered many languages

Postby MCK74 » Sun Apr 14, 2019 3:45 pm

As far as the FSI numbers, you need to remember what they mean and why they were made.

They were for foreign service officers in the US diplomatic corps going through intensive language training before going out to their assignment. Needless to say, the standards to be included in such a group with extremely high responsibilities are very high and the US government has their choice on who they recruit (it's just like NASA asking for people to apply for astronaut training, they get 20,000 applicants and they only chose 50 candidates), and it's likely that many of the FSI candidates have master's or law degrees.

What I'm saying is, most FSI students are held to much higher standards and probably have much more education than just a normal person who wants to learn a language. The average FSI candidate may learn Spanish or French studying six hours a day everyday for six months. The average person learning a language probably won't do that.

Again, with a NASA analogy, it would be like NASA publishing the workout they make their astronauts do and how long it takes for them to get in shape. If I had to guess, most astronaut candidates skew towards military officers with flight experience, so many of them are already excellent physical specimens. Now imagine if people started saying that NASA has proven how to get in shape without the context of who the workout is for.
1 x

User avatar
jonathanrace
White Belt
Posts: 28
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 6:35 pm
Languages: English (N), Japanese (A2), Mandarin (A1)
x 23
Contact:

Re: List of habits from people who have mastered many languages

Postby jonathanrace » Sun Apr 14, 2019 4:56 pm

Again, I'm not stating language learning as a binary "not learned -> learned" switch. There are people who have spent a great deal of time with their language and while they feel there is always something to learn, their ability to use the language is more than proficient. (As a 29 year old native English speaker, one could argue that I haven't "mastered" the language as I am always learning new vocabulary etc.)

I don't want this to descend further into the definition of "mastery" or what "proficiency" and "fluency" means to various people. I chalk this direction of the thread up to my wording of the title and initial post. For that I apologize.

Maybe instead, the title should be something along the lines of "Habits of highly effective language learners" which is what I'm intending to title the article. :D
1 x
Level up your English!


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests