Struggles to choose and stick with languages

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
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Jean-Luc
Orange Belt
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Location: Europe
Languages: French (N), English & German (C), Italian & Spanish (B), Russian, Chinese, Croatian (A)
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Re: Struggles to choose and stick with languages

Postby Jean-Luc » Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:42 pm

You have got your answer in your post ;) "albeit declining progress lately due to boredom and a lack of motivation"

Motivation is the key! So don't look for a language but instead for a travel or a foreign friend (for example). Enthusiasm and passion should be there too! I am watching for instance a lot of films or "the voice" on the web (do you listen to Ankudinova or Dimash for Russian?) just to have pleasure with foreign languages (playing boardgames is great too). Forget about "learning" and dive into a playfield! At home Yabla or FluentU are great apps with many selected videos (with learning tools) to enjoy. When starting to get bored, I usually switch into the "fun" mode for a moment!

At a certain level/point you have to be in the (foreign) country to get trough a "plateau" in order to stop thinking "learning" instead of "living the language". In my case, curious of many languages, I am trying to focus on some languages I could use and put others in the discovery box (a month or two of study) like Korean for the dramas and K-pop or Hindi. Later, in case of an opportunity, I can then go further starting with a basic knowledge and understanding that will help.

Perfect? Who is perfect in his own native language? What is to be "perfect" for a native Chinese that can't read so many words due to the huge number and the language system? https://studycli.org/chinese-characters ... n-chinese/. So better forget about perfection and look for practice with mistakes...
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jimmy
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Re: Struggles to choose and stick with languages

Postby jimmy » Mon Oct 18, 2021 5:28 pm

hi,
I believe one must not work on multi languages at the same time especially if he/she is at beginner stage at,all of those languages he/she deals with.

even, (this may be specific to me or maybe I am exaggrating it), I believe concentration is very important and effective.
I generally do not do anything else when I do one thing. (E.g. I do not prefer to listen music when I eat)
when I study a thing, I just deal with that thing.

....
notations: this is based on my personal experiences, I realised that I had been unsuccesfful in general when I try to do multiple things at the same time.
so although you are free to select what to do, I do not recommend such things. But eventually this cannot be generalised imo, because I know such people trying to do multiple things at the same time and succeding.

...
jimmy
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Self Taught - Autodidactic


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