AllSubNoDub wrote:Dr. Paul Nation might disagree on a few points about progress not being quantifiable and therefore capable of being planned for.
Well I probably disagree with Dr. Paul Nation. And all people who believe one can learn languages by the abacus method.
AllSubNoDub wrote:No one's arguing that tracking and quantifying is required, but it is useful. On another thread someone used the analogy of using a hammer to drive a screw into a piece of wood - it works, but you'd be much better off using a screwdriver. Well, I prefer power tools myself, and I'll take every advantage I can get when it comes to language learning too. I prefer not tracking in words, pages, sentences, etc. (mainly because it's impractical and I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze), but I do prefer to track hours. Here's another guy who tracks hours who is literate in more languages than anyone in this thread
Is he? Says who? I don't think it's healthy the way people fawn over Arguelles. Or any polyglot actually. These people have found their groove that worked for them and then pass on useful tidbits, some not so useful. For anyone to then believe they can walk in the same wagon ruts and get the same outcome is like those people who buy the same poncho Clint Eastwood wore in the Dollars Trilogy and think they look equally cool.
It's good to find things that work for learning, I'm sure everyone believes that, I do too. Does anyone really serious use a hammer for screws though? They may well use the wrong screwdriver or use the right one wrongly, but these are part of the learning curve too. In any case people quickly find out that hammers don't drive-in screws.
That's what people come to forums like this for, to see what's on offer and what might suit their way of learning. Or stuff to try out and keep or discard. If people think counting up '10 million words' or whatever will lead them to reading fluency, okay do it. What it practically involves is opening a book, reading the words printed inside it, looking up some of them and a bit of grammar explanation, then re-reading and understanding. Then doing the same with further books. All the numbers stuff around it is window dressing. All the spreadsheet stuff just cracking a nut with a sledgehammer, because the fact is that no matter how much numerical quantification someone does the acquisition of languages isn't speeded up. There are good ways and techniques for learning and trimming away time-wasting stuff and known cul-de-sacs will help bring down the time factor, but the way languages are acquired has barely altered.
I factored goals into my original reply: small chapters, moving methodically from book to book etc. It makes little difference if one writes these down on a list or not. All of this 'By July next year'... 'by 2023..' etc it just projection nonsense. Folk can just read books and get on with it and enjoy what they're doing. Bad news for aspiring polyglots: a language isn't a "project" you can plan like a military exercise and "complete" in some rapid time slot. It's something you will struggle with, make progress with, sometimes not, in relatively slow way in relation to modern impatience. It is also something you have to
live, not constantly observe.