How many low level languages at a time?

General discussion about learning languages

If ur goal = B2+ as eff. as pos. in all your langs, how many A2 and lwr shld u study at once?

1
25
53%
more than 1
10
21%
I am not interested in efficiency.
9
19%
other
3
6%
 
Total votes: 47

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Re: How many low level languages at a time?

Postby leosmith » Tue Aug 16, 2022 2:57 am

Cavesa wrote:Let's imagine they can put in 250 hours of learning per year.
That is a constraint I didn't know about. A lot of people fit into this category - very little time. Hats off to them, because I'm sure I would not even be able to learn one language with these hours. I think lack of progress would kill my motivation, and I would forget too much from lack of adequate review. It is also very impressive that they are not stopped by issues with interference; that's another one of my weaknesses.

How about the other extreme - a Czech person who has no problem studying three hours per day, or let's round it off to 1000 hours per year. Would you still use the same three scenarios?
Why: because most of them are English natives, most of them have no clue what it really means to need foreign languages.
If this was aimed at me, the English part is true but the rest isn't.
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Re: How many low level languages at a time?

Postby Cavesa » Tue Aug 16, 2022 7:19 am

leosmith wrote:
Cavesa wrote:Let's imagine they can put in 250 hours of learning per year.
That is a constraint I didn't know about. A lot of people fit into this category - very little time. Hats off to them, because I'm sure I would not even be able to learn one language with these hours. I think lack of progress would kill my motivation, and I would forget too much from lack of adequate review. It is also very impressive that they are not stopped by issues with interference; that's another one of my weaknesses.

How about the other extreme - a Czech person who has no problem studying three hours per day, or let's round it off to 1000 hours per year. Would you still use the same three scenarios?

-I picked 250 because it is an easy number to count with, for my illustration. But it could have been 200 or 300. Vast majority of the standard language learners puts in like 150 hours a year, if we assume they just sit in class, and reach B1 in 4 years of that. A normally motivated "standard learner" puts in perhaps 300. That's a realistic estimate.

Your example of a learner with 1000 language study hours a year is definitely a different example, and I would agree in such a case. It would be a short period of time, that wouldn't let you miss out on much stuff in the second language. But I know extremely few people doing this. So few, that I really think the 250 hour idea is more relevant to the general question, whether people should learn more than one language.

Even among the more motivated learners that we see around us on the internet, we rarely see a person capable of putting in 1000 hours a year.

The path from 0 to B2 most commonly (and that's even the successful learners) takes between 4-10 years. That's simply too much life passing by, with too many possible opportunities missed out on.


Why: because most of them are English natives, most of them have no clue what it really means to need foreign languages.
If this was aimed at me, the English part is true but the rest isn't.


No! It wasn't on you! My apologies, if it sounded like that.

But in most of these discussions, the privileged (=mostly anglophones) prevailing, and judging the people trying to deal with the lack of the privilege are really a bit annoying. Especially after I've seen the same pattern a million times.

The only issue I see with your take on the question is not putting apart the situation "2 languages at once" and "many many languages at once". I think it skews the results, because many people will automatically imagine a typical youtube polyglot and just click on "1 language at a time" option, even if they would normally be for 2.
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Re: How many low level languages at a time?

Postby PeterMollenburg » Tue Aug 16, 2022 11:41 pm

leosmith wrote:
Cavesa wrote:Let's imagine they can put in 250 hours of learning per year.
That is a constraint I didn't know about.


Nor did I. 250 hours scratches the surface of one language, so with 250 hours available in one year or even per year, I would absolutely advise on strictly one language at a time.
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Re: How many low level languages at a time?

Postby einzelne » Wed Aug 17, 2022 1:36 am

leosmith wrote:I think lack of progress would kill my motivation, and I would forget too much from lack of adequate review.


This is precisely what happens to me all the time when I decide to dabble with a language. All right, say I to myself, just do you Latin (or X language) 15-30 min a day and then in five years or so you would be able to work with actual texts. I end up loosing my motivation after a couple of months. Moreover, you still dedicate more that allotted 30 min because 30 min is really nothing. This happens to me every single time. Every. Single. Time.

PS. I also believe that if you aim at B2+ in all 4 skills, even 1000h is nothing. Although, judging from my own experience, you can only understand this once you got to the advanced stage. Novice learners really don't have a slightest idea about the required time investment.
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Re: How many low level languages at a time?

Postby Le Baron » Wed Aug 17, 2022 3:01 am

einzelne wrote:Novice learners really don't have a slightest idea about the required time investment.

It might be too much of a shock, especially for those with a weak heart. If I'd known years ago what kind of time investment language learning requires I'd have taken up something easier like ski jumping. However, once bitten, forever smitten.
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Re: How many low level languages at a time?

Postby leosmith » Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:14 am

Cavesa wrote:The only issue I see with your take on the question is not putting apart the situation "2 languages at once" and "many many languages at once". I think it skews the results, because many people will automatically imagine a typical youtube polyglot and just click on "1 language at a time" option, even if they would normally be for 2.
I disagree. I think that if I added the 2 language option you might see some of the "more than 1 language" voters vote for 2 instead, but 1 at a time would still win handily. But prove me wrong - create another poll and I promise to participate.
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Re: How many low level languages at a time?

Postby einzelne » Wed Aug 17, 2022 3:05 pm

Le Baron wrote:If I'd known years ago what kind of time investment language learning requires I'd have taken up something easier like ski jumping. However, once bitten, forever smitten.


Same. Ignorance is bliss.
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Re: How many low level languages at a time?

Postby Le Baron » Wed Aug 17, 2022 4:26 pm

On the question of time the same old curse is at play. Same as with everything: when you're a child you have loads of time, but unless you're being directed you'd rather play. It remains the best time to learn a language. When you're a bit older you have more control over yourself, more money to pursue things, but a lot less time. When you're retired you have more time, like in youth, but often fewer contacts and it's not quite as easy to learn a language unless you've built-up a language-learning habit...and even then.

In an interview I heard with Ingrid Bergman the interviewer Jacques Chancel asked her the obligatory question: 'how many languages do you speak...' and she enumerated them. All at varying levels of competence, yet all in-use and understood, and he said "ah! vous avez la chance!". She was quick to correct him that it wasn't 'luck', but that she'd put-in loads of effort to learn. and I thought then about how much other work this woman must have had, since she talked about how for up-and-coming actors the days of filming were very long and there were all the scripts to be learned; then there's personal concerns. Very admirable.

It then gets hard to untangle the factors. Is it discipline? Motivation? Talent/aptitude? Time? Method? All of the above in some measure and they all need to be present to some degree? The variables being so uncontrollable and the outcomes so varied. The question in this thread is specific: how many low level languages at a time? Yet I can't see any possible definitive answer. Certainly no number can be given like that highly-questionable 'number of languages an educated person should know'. It doesn't matter what you want, it matters what you can do. So it doesn't rest on whether you want to be trilingual in French/Japanese/German. If you are working pretty hard at just German and on a fairly considerable learning curve, you need all the time and effort you can put towards it. If you're sailing through German, do you get to work on it and put all the effort to getting it operational rapidly? Or run other languages alongside because the pressure on German alone isn't high? That's just a choice.

Anyone who works on task-based work knows that if you start lots of tasks at the same time you end up pretty snowed-under. If the tasks are long-term (and languages are VERY long-term) you need to be sure about quite a few things. Time-management, ability, goal-setting, reasons, plans of action, projected results over time... Is 'efficiency' starting and finishing jobs in quick succession? Or running lots of things concurrently? The concept of time doesn't change, so it's a matter of some planning, but some of it is out of your control.
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Re: How many low level languages at a time?

Postby daegga » Wed Aug 17, 2022 4:53 pm

In some situations, I think it is more efficient to work on receptive skills first instead of trying to progress all skills equally. This can lead to working on receptive skills for language B before starting to work on active skills for language A.
I agree with the sentiment that you should achieve at least B1 before adding another language (ie. poll option 1), but only per skill.
Hence I voted for more than 1 A2 language (option 2), since you can easily be B1 or higher in receptive skills while being A2 or lower overall.
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Re: How many low level languages at a time?

Postby Le Baron » Wed Aug 17, 2022 5:25 pm

daegga wrote:In some situations, I think it is more efficient to work on receptive skills first instead of trying to progress all skills equally. This can lead to working on receptive skills for language B before starting to work on active skills for language A.
I agree with the sentiment that you should achieve at least B1 before adding another language (ie. poll option 1), but only per skill.
Hence I voted for more than 1 A2 language (option 2), since you can easily be B1 or higher in receptive skills while being A2 or lower overall.

This would generate the question of what a person wants from a language. Also there is a general assumption that receptive skills are 'the base' (the whole bulk in fact) and active skills flow from this with less or little effort. I position I consider to be flawed.

If someone was working on receptive skills (which takes quite some time and effort) and gets them up to speed, e.g. B1, shouldn't time and effort now be given over to developing active skills? Unless we assume they develop of themselves. Rather than setting up another half-learned thing? If the answer is 'no, because I really only need passive/receptive skills', the question is answered. That position is legitimate; but if the aim is to develop all four skills, or at least three, then I see no argument that time has somehow been considerably freed up enough to allow the inclusion of something that previously was done as a single activity because it is hard and takes time!

The 'low-level' component is an assumption that this/these A1-A2 language levels will take up little head-space, but actually getting to A2 in a new language isn't that easy. I know about all those geniuses who say they already know Italian and therefore only have to watch some films in French and read the ingredients list on packets and the language is 'absorbed', but I think we all really know that this is not the truth in general. It's just what people on the internet say.
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