Your strengths and do you take advantage of them

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Lawyer&Mom
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Re: Your strengths and do you take advantage of them

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Sat Jul 07, 2018 2:41 pm

Huge tolerance for jumping in and not understanding. I’ll watch the TV series where I get 25%. I’ll read the book and not look anything up. (I’m also lazy.) A lot of this born from experience. I’ve learned a language before. I know understanding will come. And some of it is being Autistic. That series I don’t understand? I’m not bored, I’m carefully studying the wallpaper in the living room, and how it matches the trim in the study... Set design is fascinating!
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Re: Your strengths and do you take advantage of them

Postby tarvos » Sat Jul 07, 2018 3:02 pm

Probably. I mean, if I hadn't, that list on the left would be a damn sight shorter, that's for certain.

But my main strengths are probably my insight into grammar, my memory and my wicked ability when it comes to pronunciation and prosody. I tend to have very good accents and speak with more fluidity than common amongst foreigners so I suppose I can rely on that while working on other parts, as it just costs me less time to get into the flow of speech.
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Re: Your strengths and do you take advantage of them

Postby Decidida » Sat Jul 07, 2018 5:46 pm

I can understand complex grammar explanations.

I can study and focus for long stretches of time. I can stick to a long term independent study routine.

I know how to identify and find the resources that are needed at each stage of learning.

I know what my weaknesses are, and how to find ways to support them. And I have a lot of weaknesses.

I need to use more resources than the average language learner, and I need to put in more effort and move ahead more slowly. I look for a wide variety of resources, including resources designed for children. As mentioned above, flashcards with audio are much better than those without audio, for me, too. I used a TON of resources to learn my native language. It will take a ton of resources to learn any target languages that I choose to learn.

Another thing I know about myself is that periods of my life have been spent in more isolation that the average person, and I sometimes retreat to the familiar, instead of fully embracing every opportunity I might have in the present. I am going to progress more quickly with languages that can be learned and used without interacting with other humans. When I feel the need to pull back and hide, it is the perfect time for a study project or a foreign language TV show marathon.
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Re: Your strengths and do you take advantage of them

Postby Cavesa » Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:39 pm

Thanks for this thread!

I originally wrote an inappropriately long post which helped me remember I actually had some strengths I could use even now, at the bottom of the studying pit. It is saved as only a draft now, as it would be inappropriate in several ways. But it gave me more hope and encouragement, than I've been finding anywhere else lately.

To answer very briefly: The most important one: I am unusually stubborn. The others: high IQ, love for books, a deep desire to understand stuff and people as much as possible, the ability to learn a lot from context, to improvise, to learn a lot of stuff in a really short time, and to transfer the theoretical knowledge into useful practical skills without much of a problem.

Yes, I am taking advantage of all of that. These things compensate for my numerous weaknesses. I may never be able to reach my original potential due to those weaknesses, but I am still doing much better than expected and than people with my disadvantages and personal flaws usually do. :-)
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Re: Your strengths and do you take advantage of them

Postby Dylan95 » Sun Jul 08, 2018 1:04 pm

I don't think I have a crazy good memory or exceptional pronunciation abilities, but I like learning languages, and I think my intrinsic desire to study and use my target languages makes me very consistent with my progress.
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Re: Your strengths and do you take advantage of them

Postby garyb » Mon Jul 09, 2018 9:58 am

Great idea for a topic after the weaknesses one!

I'm an analytical thinker, so I pick up grammar relatively easily and find it pleasant to learn. This means that "structure-first" methods like Michel Thomas work well for me, and good grammar always impresses native speakers - especially things that many of them get wrong yet I find fairly easy, like the Italian subjunctive or French orthography. Impressing people obviously isn't a goal in itself, but being able to demonstrate one's competence is crucial in order to be taken seriously and avoid switching. My accent will never do it, so I need another way!

I don't find listening comprehension too hard, so I can usually follow most conversations between natives as long as I pay enough attention and (maybe due to analytical thinking again) "join the dots" to compensate for the bits I miss. Getting to this level doesn't take me too long - I'd estimate that my listening has always been one or two CEFR levels above my speaking - and this is where related languages help the most. Joining in is much harder, but at least I have that starting point and can mostly understand the replies when I do speak.

Natives often compliment my vocabulary knowledge, especially informal language ("Wow, you even know slang!"). The slang thing puzzles me since common slang is such high-frequency language that it seems difficult not to learn it, but I do have a decent memory and unlike standard classroom learners I get lots of input from modern native materials and I try to interact with speakers of my languages. No special talent required, but again I won't complain about an easy way to demonstrate competence.

Plus the usual interest and perseverance.
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Re: Your strengths and do you take advantage of them

Postby Hank » Mon Jul 09, 2018 6:42 pm

I had to think about this for a while but it was fun trying to come up with a response.

I guess if I have a strength it would just be determination. When I set my mind to something I tend to obsess over it and plow through any obstacles and frustration.
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Re: Your strengths and do you take advantage of them

Postby Expugnator » Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:46 pm

My writing skills tend to be good in my native language, and I believe it is a skill I could work on and develop in my TLs. I don't take advantage of that, though.

I can develop habits easily as long as the task is simple and can be divided into smaller parts. That's why I can stick to a routine of going to the gym and to a language-learning schedule consisting of several short snippets, mostly input.

I learned to develop a tolerance to ambiguity which eclipsed an earlier perfectionism. That helped me keeping plugging along and improving my reading and listening skills in my TLs. I try to avoid material way above my level, but as I learn several less-common languages, I don't expect my options to be all neatly distributed through a n+1 scale, so this tolerance to ambiguity and my usage of some cheat and consolidating strategies help me tackle native materials much earlier, already alongside with upper begginer textbook stuff.
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Re: Your strengths and do you take advantage of them

Postby Iversen » Tue Jul 10, 2018 10:37 pm

I have been thinking about this, and my conclusion is that it is hard to define things if you just consider strengths OR weaknesses.

For instance my attention span for things I don't really care about must be measured in milliseconds - and because of that I suck at small talk and polititical speeches, and and I get physical nausea from listening to people who read texts aloud (and actors and clergy and politicians and world reformators). If I have to deal with such things they have to be formulated in a concise and levelheaded way with no bullshit. On the other hand I can sit for hours doing wordlists or systematizing grammar. So just speaking about a low attention span would be wrong. I have a low attention span whenever other persons dictate the speed and/or I don't find the subject totally captivating. So the cure is obviously mainly to do intensive study on written texts and only use podcasts and video and TV extensively - and only about relevant topics.

My memory is lousy. I can look a word up in a dictionary and close the dictionary, and then I have forgotten the word. But then I have my wordlist method, and it solves the problem with acquisition of new vocabulary. And I have a good memory for some things, namely systems which I have understood, road maps and my own personal activities. So obviously I study grammar by thinking through the rules and tables (with input from more than one source) and then I devise my own minigrammars and write them down on green paper for later reference.

When I have answered forms about personality or learner type, I'm always asked whether I prefer details or bird's eye views. That's silly: I work with details, but always with a bird's eye view in my head so that I can recognize and classify the details according to the system OR revise the system if the details consistently are at odds with it. When I still worked my collegues and superiors had some problems understanding this - when I had irritated them enough they sometimes blabbered something about getting lost in details, but I was never lost in details - I just took them seriously. In my opinion people who only think in big lofty plans are as dangerous for society as psychopaths.

And finally: I don't like to limit myself to doing one thing, and I could have ended up as a hoarder or victim of perpetual Wanderlust. But the cure is to divide the world into things you do at a serious level, things you just dabble in .. and all the rest. Football and bicycling and politics and overzealous busybodies and their lame effusions belong into the last category. And Chinese ideograms ...
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Re: Your strengths and do you take advantage of them

Postby zKing » Wed Jul 11, 2018 10:38 pm

Thank you, smallwhite, for starting this topic! After I started the Weaknesses thread, I appreciate the more positive follow up. :)
I've been meaning to write an answer for a while now, but I keep getting distracted...

My Strengths
  • I genuinely enjoy the process of learning languages. I also REALLY enjoy reading and thinking about the process. (Wait, I'm not sure that part is always a strength...)
  • I'm relatively organized and a very logical, step-by-step thinker...almost to a fault.
  • I often become nearly obsessed with one of my hobbies and do mountains of effort for weeks at a time. The bad news is that I get tired of it after a while and switch to something else, but the good news is that my list of hobbies is finite and I always come back to each one for another go.
  • While I have a perfectionist streak, this is tempered by my laziness and so I'm quite willing to say "good enough" and just move on. :)
  • My technical skills mean I have the ability to process audio, muck with video formats, write software, extract and format content that may be in inconvenient forms, etc.
  • I have an OK musical ear and seem to have a bit of ability to mimic.
  • My threshold for embarrassment is fairly high.

It took some time to find my 'process', but I believe I take advantage my strengths by channeling my obsessive nature when it strikes and organizing myself into doing simple, effective tasks. I avoid burn out by letting myself go when I can feel boredom or irritation with a task start to creep up. For myself, I feel that being effective when I feel inspired is more important than trying to push too hard when I'm not in the mood. And frankly, there are so many ways to interact with a language to continue to learn, it is easy to change things up when I feel tired of something I'm doing. It is more important to avoid a hard core burn out crash that will put me off for months than it is to finish some silly XXX reps in YYY days goal I set for myself. And if I completely abandon my goals for this year which I put in my log, I will not feel the least bit of angst... as long as I continue to learn Cantonese in the long term. Heck, almost every week I've changed those goals in one way or another. The real point is to keep at it this year... and beyond.

On the technical front, I've got a fairly nice set of tools between Anki, Google Sheets/Docs, iTalki, Lang-8, WorkAudioBook, Audacity, Dropbox, etc. And I've got my content in easy (for me) to use formats: i.e. my DVD's are ripped into raw VOB format so I can play them on my computer with any subtitle tracks I want on the fly, I processed my Glossika sentences into Google Sheets (easily importable to Anki, if I want). Most of my learning dialog texts are scanned in from the books, audio has all extraneous crap cut from it, and they are even "subtitled" via WorkAudioBook. Almost all of this is accessible from my phone, home computer and work computer.

In short, I've made it very easy for me to get high value language study in at a moment's notice and I always know the next 2-4 things I can do, without having to think about it (although I always do think about it... funny thing.)
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