David1917 wrote:PeterMollenburg wrote:David1917 wrote:PeterMollenburg wrote:Still, I'm not trying to disregard the important anecdotal evidence in his claims, as I have suspected a similar concept - that multiple languages in the earlier stages is fine, but how does one push them all simultaneously past the intermediate plateau onto more advanced levels? It seems your quote enzelne of Arguelles holds the answer: you can't, or if we assume you can if you stick at it long enough, then we have an answer with regards to efficiency: it's terribly inefficient.
So, can we potentially conclude the it might be more efficient to study three languages simultaneously at the beginning levels, but as our comprehension grows and we continue along this path towards 'advanced', we need more and more time with the language to advance further. Yeah?
Additionally, we might as well then start off focusing on one language from the beginning as we are only going to have to drop two at some point if we want to reach C1 or beyond. So it seems again to be more efficient to focus on one language at a time if we aim to reach C1 or beyond.
If I recall he did have to focus on each one with more daily hours to push past an intermediate plateau. Russian is the example I'm the most familiar with, but after going through the Assimil Russisch ohne mühe a few times as well as whatever other workbooks up to the point that he was doing bilingual literature readings, he would spend most of the day focused on Russian. This was also especially in preparation for a month-long homestay in St. Petersburg.
He talks a lot about the difference between passive & active as well. You can gain probably a quite impressive passive reading knowledge of several languages over the course of time with short daily bursts of activity. To make that active though you must spend more time doing so and actually live in a place or speak with people. Of the three "exotic" languages he was focused on in Korea (Persian, Arabic, Hindi/Urdu), he felt Arabic was at the bottom of the heap until he moved to Lebanon. Very quickly it moved to the top, and it took that level of exposure to bring all that passive knowledge to life (& probably get it to stick better in the long run).
This also relates to what I think most would agree on, which is that the "B" range of CEFR is the most one can hope for with isolated self-study. If we are talking about C1 and beyond, then that does require a more significant amount of work. As for Prof Arguelles as far as I can tell he can do English, French, German, Korean, & Arabic at that level. I chose these because he has lived and worked in them for extended periods of time, meaning they can be activated at a high level rather instantaneously. He can read a novel in Faroese but has probably never spoken it with anyone, and certainly wouldn't necessarily be able to hop in to a conversation with educated native speakers on some advanced topic as with those first five. He bought a car in Lebanon using only Portuguese as the manner of conversation, and seemed to be satisfied with the purchase months after the fact, but again would probably not hope to have an advanced conversation on demand.
I think what he suggests is that maybe spending a week in the Faroe Islands or Brazil could prepare him for a discussion at an academic conference or something, but has never tried it, and that is a difference. Those languages are also related to ones he knows very well (and consistently calls dialects of each other). I would assume that it would take something on the order of weeks or months in Iran or India to get those languages to an appropriate level. I also think that if, now being in America, he stopped reading Arabic literature or listening to Arabic broadcasts or corresponding with Arab colleagues for an extended period of time, it might take days or weeks to return to that level (but probably not months).
I've quoted you David1917, but I've bolded a particularly interesting line and further underlined what most caught my attention within that sentence. Given you seem to feel that with isolated self-study one might very well struggle to reach the C-levels, this leads me to the question then, what is isolated self-study in your opinion? Do you mean someone studying for a few hours or more every single day, but isolated because they are not in the country in which the language is spoken or by isolated did you mean 'sporadic'?
Good catch. By "isolated" I meant as a solo endeavor without speaking to other people in the language. They don't have to be in-country, but if you're doing textbooks and even reading literature but alone and not having conversations (in-person or online) then there's sort of a brick wall there.
Thanks for clarifying. After my long-winded fully understandable multi-lingual justified approach, I've come full circle and decided to continue with French only in an attempt to join those elusive ones who do reach C2 outside the country where the language is spoken.