What ONE thing could help me learn the most.

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Re: What ONE thing could help me learn the most.

Postby rdearman » Wed Mar 17, 2021 7:17 pm

smallwhite wrote:
rdearman wrote:What one thing could help me the most to improve?

Locate weakness, work on weakness.
rdearman wrote:Or go into the advanced level.

To do = advanced level - current level

So what you're saying is:

Code: Select all

while (advanced != TRUE && weakness == TRUE)
{
   weakness = checkWeakness();
   advanced = workOnWeakness();
}


:geek: :geek:
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Re: What ONE thing could help me learn the most.

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Wed Mar 17, 2021 9:06 pm

rdearman wrote:What was the single most important thing that helped you get from intermediate to advanced?


No idea. I also want to know the answer to this question...

Seriously, though, it's a combination of things - not only skills, but mixing content and methods, the Don't give up! element... Personally, I can't do "anything I want" in any other languages than Swedish and English. I started learning English in the early 1980s, and exactly when I began to feel comfortable using it, I cannot say. Definitely not by the end of that decade, maybe (a BIG maybe) in the mid 1990s, a little more around 1998... and then a bit more in the mid 2000s. It's only during the past four-five years that I've been using English on a daily basis. Sometimes I have problems finding the right words (usually in speech), although not as often as before. I still learn words by reading WITHOUT consulting a dictionary. I can't really say when I've made the most progress, nor when I've levelled up. Sometimes I feel when it happens, sometimes I just realize that I (all of a sudden) can do more than I could before.

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Re: What ONE thing could help me learn the most.

Postby einzelne » Wed Mar 17, 2021 9:45 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:I started learning English in the early 1980s, and exactly when I began to feel comfortable using it, I cannot say. Definitely not by the end of that decade, maybe (a BIG maybe) in the mid 1990s, a little more around 1998... and then a bit more in the mid 2000s.


Here's a relevant article. The opening paragraph:

It is common knowledge that it takes a long time to reach near-native proficiency. How long? Other than general time-on-task research that shows the longer one spends on task, the better one gets, little data has been gathered on this aspect of language learning at the higher proficiency levels. In 2002, an American colleague, Sabine Atwell, and I conducted an extensive set of interviews, supported by a comprehensive 36-page survey of 66 American users of various foreign languages who had been tested at the near-native levels (Level 4 and higher on the ILR scale) (Leaver & Atwell, 2002). Later, Dr. Rajai Al-Khanji at the University of Jordan, Dr. Amal Jasser at the Jordan University of Science and Technology, and I surveyed 68 students considered to be at the near-native level in English-language writing (Al-Khanji, Jasser, & Leaver, 2005). That number was reduced to 43 once they were tested, and we were able to compare the responses of those who were close but had not made it all the way to near-native proficiency with the responses of those who had. In all cases, we asked about length of study. In the first instance, the average length of study from rank beginner to near-native language user was 17 years; in the second instance, 12 years. I would point out that the individuals in the first study were older and considered themselves still learning. In some cases, they had to estimate when they had reached the level at which they had tested, which likely explains the difference in average years.


These findings are limited, of course, because they cover the pre-Internet era, but I think they are still relevant.
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Re: What ONE thing could help me learn the most.

Postby IronMike » Thu Mar 18, 2021 1:35 am

Read, read, read. Then when you're done, read some more.
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Re: What ONE thing could help me learn the most.

Postby lusan » Thu Mar 18, 2021 1:42 am

IronMike wrote:Read, read, read. Then when you're done, read some more.

What about listen, listen, read, then repeat ?

I would give a little more weight to the listening practice because it takes longer to develop that skill.
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Re: What ONE thing could help me learn the most.

Postby kanewai » Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:04 am

rdearman wrote:
kanewai wrote:Italian: Grammatica pratica della lingua italiana

I have that one too. :)
Let me know how it goes!

I've pondered my first response, though, and I think I'd amend it to something even more simple: the one thing we should do to "level up" from intermediate to advanced is to dedicate the same amount of time & energy to it that we did when moving from beginner to intermediate.

For instance, ILA France estimates that it takes 200 hours of class time or of guided study hours to advance from B2 to C1. I know for myself that once I hit the intermediate levels of a language, where I can read and listen and speak at a decent level, I enter cruise-mode. I'll study here and there, but never with the same intensity. And while I still make progress, it's slow. I suspect that I would need to put other things aside and focus for a year if I truly want to move up to the mythical (to me) advanced C-Level in any language.
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Re: What ONE thing could help me learn the most.

Postby IronMike » Fri Mar 19, 2021 1:04 am

My response (read, read, read) was a paraphrase of my Turbo-Serbo instructor back in 1997. When we complained that we weren't getting enough lab time (listening), he told us to read more. I thought he was just blowing us off and excusing the school's crappy language lab scheduling, but sure as anything, I read the hell outta BCS and got a 2+ after only 16 weeks.

But he asked for ONE thing, so I chose read. Not read, read, listen, read. ONE thing.
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Re: What ONE thing could help me learn the most.

Postby kelvin921019 » Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:05 am

Enroll for an exam.
Some people perform the best when there's a clear deadline.
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Re: What ONE thing could help me learn the most.

Postby DaveAgain » Fri Mar 19, 2021 2:28 pm

rdearman wrote: I cannot remember the last time I came across an English word I didn't know.
I have a candidate! sedulously.
...and especially to Germany, whose trade with China has been sedulously and successfully cultivated for the last two decades,
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Re: What ONE thing could help me learn the most.

Postby jacquemarie » Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:54 pm

I think what you choose to focus on is very dependent on what your goal for the language is and how close the sounds are to your native language.

If you have no plans to go to the country and are just learning to fun, I focus on reading. If you plan on going to the country to be able to talk with native speakers, I focus on speaking.

With Hindi, I am focusing a LOT on listening because there are many different sounds that I have to learn how to make and I need to be able to hear that. There are also different words like "sunna" and "sunana" which can sound the same if you miss that "ah" sound you might not know which word they're saying.

If I'm just choosing one that I think helps me the most with any language it is reading.
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