After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
Ojalaseaunplanasowe
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon May 30, 2022 11:27 pm
Languages: English native, learning Spanish
x 32

Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby Ojalaseaunplanasowe » Tue May 31, 2022 4:37 pm

Sounds like a good (and fun) idea. I think I'll do it. Actually I remember doing that in my native English. When I was in third grade I was reading at a much higher grade level (as probably many kids do), but I had access to huge stacks of books for 1rst and 2nd graders, and would read through my favorites repeatedly. Come to think of it, I got my English to a high level by repeatedly reading the same novels, sometimes dozens of times.
5 x

Ojalaseaunplanasowe
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon May 30, 2022 11:27 pm
Languages: English native, learning Spanish
x 32

Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby Ojalaseaunplanasowe » Sun Sep 18, 2022 4:14 pm

Just going to post an update to my question.

Still in Mexico. Still learning. Looks like I'm going to be here for the long haul. Still somewhat frustrated with my output ability. I have pronunciation problems with 'r's, dipthongs, and a few words that trip me up. I don't think I usually lack vocabulary. Grammar is my weak point.

Nothing I read online about language learning really matches my experiences. Maybe it's because I'm in the country, while many are back home, but am not living with a romantic partner with whom I speak L2. I don't know.

I'm from the US, and from what I can tell we're terrible at languages and overestimate our ability. I have friends from back home who are 'fluent in French,' for instance, but, as far as I know, never use the language. I think just lack of real experience lends itself to overestimating your ability. I still do it myself, but not as much as before. About 8 years ago, I can clearly remember thinking I could go on a date in only Spanish, when I was having trouble having basic conversations with my roommates. But I could say, "do you need anything from the store?" and they'd say something that I might understand, and I was listening to TV programs that I thought I understood, so I figured I could take pretty much fine.

With various levels of success, I've talked to mechanics, bought property, dated, met with lawyers, dealt with government bureaucracy, taken private lessons, chatted with plenty of people, etc., and I am, in my opinion, still very obviously lacking in my output ability. I THINK that it's not incredibly annoying for a native speaker to talk to me, but I could be wrong. I'm saying this because I don't normally have problems understanding, and can speak quickly and spontaneously. But if I want to say things that require more complicated grammar, I can get tripped up a bit. Very long conversations start to obviously drain me. Topics I'm passionate about are more difficult for me, since I want to say more complicated things.

8 years ago when I started, I would have been thrilled to be where I am now. BUT, now I realize that this is just the beginning. In the US, where we harshly judge English learners, someone at my level would be considered not very good in English. I think people are judged by their output. Being able to understand and to perform in a variety of situations is crucial for me, but it's not enough. People will have an hour long conversation with me, talking about whatever, and still conclude that I suck. And it's true!

I'm definitely NOT talented when it comes to languages, so maybe that's the big issue. I don't feel like I will ever get to the point where I can sit around with a couple other Mexicans in a casual conversation and: say as many things as they do, make no grammatical mistakes, and phrase things in a casual-level Mexican way, rather than an 'international' way. And I'm assuming I'd still speak with a gringo accent and probably still not pronounce my r's fully.

BUT! I'd like to see some of these youtube polyglot people in the same situation in Spanish! That'd sure be interesting.

From casual non-youtube idiots, I don't know how often I've heard "I'm fluent in Spanish, but they just talk to fast." Where's the humility? The gringos judge non-native speakers so harshly and can inflate their own abilities so great only because everyone else is so good at English.

Edit addition: The only studying I'm doing right now is listening to 100 Years of Solitude repeatedly. But that's mostly because I just really like the book.
Last edited by Ojalaseaunplanasowe on Mon Sep 19, 2022 3:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
10 x

User avatar
grayson
Yellow Belt
Posts: 59
Joined: Sat Sep 17, 2022 1:46 pm
Location: Netherlands
Languages: English (N)
Dutch (fluent)
Spanish (false beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18491
x 364
Contact:

Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby grayson » Mon Sep 19, 2022 7:24 am

Ojalaseaunplanasowe wrote:I don't feel like I will ever get to the point where I can sit around with a couple other Mexicans in a casual conversation and: say as many things as they do, make no grammatical mistakes, and phrase things in a casual-level Mexican way, rather than an 'international' way. And I'm assuming I'd still speak with a gringo accent and probably still not pronounce my r's fully.


Based on my experience (with Dutch), I can reassure you that someday you will absolutely hold rich conversations using local idioms and slang naturally without it breaking your brain. Eventually it will all come together and start feeling natural and normal to you, and locals will consider you an amazingly good speaker of their native language. Alas, you'll probably always make minor grammatical mistakes and have an accent. I think fixing both of those is within anyone's reach, with enough dedication, but for me that's been a two-percent-of-the-result-for-nine-hundred-thousand-percent-of-the-effort phase I have not been willing to engage in. Hang in there! It feels like tough going now, but you really are still making progress.

[My experience: I've spoken Dutch for 27 years, the last 20 of which I've lived in the Netherlands. My husband is Dutch, our family language is Dutch, and my children's native language is Dutch – they have a leg up in English, but they're definitely not native speakers. Most of my life for the past 20 years has been conducted in Dutch. I spent a lot of time studying grammar and expanding my vocabulary, even after we moved here. I was a professional translator from Dutch to US English for 17 years. All this to say, I am really truly absolutely fluent in Dutch. AND YET.... I still get het and de - the el and la of Dutch – wrong a few times every day, I still use the occasional weird phrasing, and within three minutes every native speaker asks me "Are you from England?" Except Belgians – the accent is so different that it generally takes them closer to twenty minutes to figure out there's something not quite Dutch about the way I speak. I love talking with Belgians :). ]
9 x

User avatar
anitarrc
Orange Belt
Posts: 174
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2022 10:10 am
Location: Luxembourg
Languages: Moved around... English + German + Spanish + Dutch + French + Portuguese
used daily
Catalá Russian Serbian: struggling but improving. Bahasa..needs refreshment
x 304
Contact:

Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby anitarrc » Mon Sep 19, 2022 11:46 am

Naturally I don't know your profession so I can't begin to guess which level of language it involves.
But your place of work is the best place to learn, day in and day out.
When I lived in Central America, I only spoke English to suppliers in Britain and a few gringo clients. But I had more french speaking clients than those so most of my English input was the odd film and workshop manuals.

I can safely say that my boss and my son ironed out my grammatical errors, two friends who are both retired teachers also helped.

Over the years most staff in our garage had learned french swear words though, because I was a bit afraid to blurt out H* de p* , I kept spanish attributed to huevón. You see I feared swearing was not generally approved for a woman so I chose some other language.

The bar or soda after some political event will brush up your political vocabulary. Participating in public muni sessions might also help.
Last but not least, participate in a forum about your hobbies. It will be easy because after 8 years you will already have a C1 vocabulary that just needs some activation. Don't be timid.

Really, just talk. Somebody will correct you if you make a mistake, it is not the end of the world.

Thank the person who corrected you. That encourages them to do it again.
2 x

User avatar
PeterMollenburg
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3229
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2015 11:54 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N), French (B2-certified), Dutch (High A2?), Spanish (~A1), German (long-forgotten 99%), Norwegian (false starts in 2020 & 2021)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18080
x 8029

Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Sep 19, 2022 12:09 pm

Ojalaseaunplanasowe wrote:...

An interesting read this thread. Intriguing to read about your situation from the comfort of my home.

And some good suggestions along the way.

I found grayson's story quite interesting
grayson wrote:...
and hopefully reassuring for you, Ojalaseaunplanasowe. As
Le Baron
said you've been doing well, so be rest-assured you've done a good job. Still, no harm trying to improve - as you are, or you wouldn't have created this thread. Could you have a more complex username, btw?

It seems you've got plenty of exposure, exposure that's only going to continue and help your listening skills via input along the way. It's a given, it seems provided you continue living in Mexico and using your Spanish regularly. Output is the problem, as you stated.

Both
Lawyer&Mom wrote:...
and
BeaP wrote:...
made good suggestions. That is, get a good coursebook and work through it. I'd add to this. Speak everything aloud throughout the coursebook(s) (not just the pronunciation segments), and find one with particular focus on pronunciation to iron out your issues with the pronunciation of "r" and the dipthongs, as you mentioned.

If you already have decent listening skills are speaking, but imperfectly, then you need to go back to the grammatical and pronunciation drawing boards and break it all down again. Analyse the grammar, the pronunciation in a slow methodical way and speed up where comfortable. Don't rush over the grammar, the pronunciation, the exercises. Do it all, thoroughly. And if you don't like this kind of thing, then impose a limit and/or reward system. Eg. I must do 60min/day of Coursebook (insert title) and then I can have/do/watch etc (fill in gap). Don't think about how fast you must complete the book/course. Think of this is a 30/45/60/90 (whatever you decide) minute/day thing and it's a long journey - it's just part of your routine and you'll be doing it for a good while, so don't consider an end date - I think you'll know when you've done enough.

I think if you rush to complete the work via a coursebook or two or how ever many, you're going to miss the point of focusing intensively on the way Spanish is constructed and working to construct it yourself (via workbook exercises for example) in a well thought-out intensive/methodical manner. But do speak out loud or you won't be getting the benifit of focusing on pronunciation (might as well work both angles, right?).

Perhaps this doesn't sit well with you, but from where I'm sitting and from my experience (lots of courses, speaking aloud, pronunciation work, intensive study), I feel I manage pretty well at speaking decent French (ie output) surrounded by an overwhelmingly monolingual environment, and I'm not a 'gringo' over-estimating my skills (I know exactly what you mean, as many of us here do).

It seems to me you need to deconstruct the language both grammatically and phonetically and reconstruct it through carefully thought out writing (exercises) and speaking (everything as you go aloud). Decent courses with text, audio and written exercises are ideal for this.
3 x

Ojalaseaunplanasowe
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon May 30, 2022 11:27 pm
Languages: English native, learning Spanish
x 32

Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby Ojalaseaunplanasowe » Mon Sep 19, 2022 3:35 pm

Just wanted to dip in and leave a quick reply before coming back later to address the very thoughtful and considerate responses you all left.

I got worried my post would be taken the wrong way. I meat it to be 'preaching to the choir' in the sense that I know you all have tons of experience language learning and are not overestimating your abilities, etc., I wasn't trying to aim any derisive comments at anyone here on this forum. Hope that was clear from the post, but sometimes things can get lost or misinterpreted through text.

Thanks for the replies! I'll swing by later when I have more time.
0 x

User avatar
lusan
Green Belt
Posts: 463
Joined: Sat Aug 15, 2015 1:25 pm
Location: Greensboro, NC, USA
Languages: Spanish(Native)
English (Naïve)
French(Intermediate)
Italian(Intermediate)
Polish(In Alcatraz)
x 985

Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby lusan » Sun Sep 25, 2022 1:47 am

A little story:
2 years ago I decided to learn Italian. After doing some course grammar courses/Assimil, etc, and watching 100's hours of dubbed TV shows, I thought that a way to improve speaking skill -noted till that time I have not spoken Italian with others at all-, might be to write 10 sentences/days and give them to an italki tutor for review, to find my grammar mistakes, etc. The idea was that by writing I would be able to identify the words and grammar structures that I am inclined to use in a real conversation and so make explicit my active vocabulary. Of course, completion of a grammar course would help a lot.

I did it for 1 year, resulting that now I can speak/write Italian without much trouble. Maybe you might want to consider some writing practice. It might help moving on. Currently I am thinking on doing the same with French -that I placed in pause while I work with Italian.
4 x
Italian, polish, and French dance
FSI Basic French Lessons : 10 / 24 17 of 24 goal

User avatar
tommus
Blue Belt
Posts: 957
Joined: Sat Jul 04, 2015 3:59 pm
Location: Kingston, ON, Canada
Languages: English (N), French (B2), Dutch (B2)
x 1937

Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby tommus » Sun Sep 25, 2022 1:11 pm

lusan wrote:might be to write 10 sentences/days and give them to an italki tutor for review, to find my grammar mistakes, etc.


A suggestion for a variation on that technique for language pairs that DeepL and Google Translate are very good with.

1. Write a sentence in your target language.
2. Then write it in your NL.
3. Put the NL sentence into DeepL or GT.
4. Compare the two TL sentences.
5. For those that don't seem quite right, maybe put them on italki.
6. With this method, you could do a lot more sentences quickly, and although the translated sentences may not be quite right, for good language pairs, they will usually be very good.

Another suggestion.
1. Use a microphone for speech-to-text input to Google Translate.
2. Think about how you would say something in your target language.
3. Speak it in your NL into GT and study the TL translation.
4. Try variations in your NL to see variations in your TL.
5. Do this for all the sentences and language islands that interest you.
6. You can get a lot done quickly.

I know that DeepL and GT preform amazingly well for this sort of thing for English <-> Dutch, and probably also for many other major language pairs.
3 x

User avatar
leosmith
Brown Belt
Posts: 1341
Joined: Thu Sep 29, 2016 10:06 pm
Location: Seattle
Languages: English (N)
Spanish (adv)
French (int)
German (int)
Japanese (int)
Korean (int)
Mandarin (int)
Portuguese (int)
Russian (int)
Swahili (int)
Tagalog (int)
Thai (int)
x 3098
Contact:

Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby leosmith » Sun Sep 25, 2022 2:22 pm

Ojalaseaunplanasowe wrote:Still somewhat frustrated with my output ability. I have pronunciation problems with 'r's, dipthongs, and a few words that trip me up. I don't think I usually lack vocabulary. Grammar is my weak point.

Your method is heavily input. Input is absolutely necessary, but without "learning" activities, there is no catalyst to get the chemical reactions in your brain firing. Here are my suggestions, to complement your current reading and listening:

1) Conversation, 1hr per day, with a tutor, Spanish only. During the conversation, every time you don't know a word/grammar point, whether it be speaking or listening, write it down. After the lesson, memorize them all and put them in an SRS. The next day do your reps before class. Continue this until you are speaking at the level you want to speak at.

2) Pronunciation. Shame on you for not learning it before anything else. It's fossilized now, but with intense effort, you can probably fix it in about a month. Get a resource that has all the phonemes with audio. Practice every single phoneme in the language until you are pronouncing them correctly. Then go after sentence level pronunciation. For a more detailed explanation of how to do this, please see the instructions on the for this Portuguese resource. The most important tip might be to keep after yourself. Forcing yourself to pronounce correctly is hard to do at first, and will knock your fluidity back a notch. But if you keep at it, it will return, and this time with good pronunciation.

3) Grammar. This is an easy one - just work your way through the Teach Yourself course. Do all the exercises and make sure you understand everything. Again, keep after yourself when you are conversing. Use the new grammar points, don't slip back into your (incorrect) comfort zone. (edit) I think only about 5 of the 16 verb forms are really common in colloquial speech. Master those, and let the rest slide for the time being. Let your tutor and actual conversation be the guide.
2 x
https://languagecrush.com/reading - try our free multi-language reading tool

munyag
Yellow Belt
Posts: 68
Joined: Tue Jul 09, 2019 4:22 pm
Languages: Shona (N), Spanish (Beginner), French (Beginner)
x 62

Re: After 8 years of studying, how do I keep improving?

Postby munyag » Fri Dec 01, 2023 12:10 am

Ojalaseaunplanasowe wrote:Just wanted to dip in and leave a quick reply before coming back later to address the very thoughtful and considerate responses you all left.

I got worried my post would be taken the wrong way. I meat it to be 'preaching to the choir' in the sense that I know you all have tons of experience language learning and are not overestimating your abilities, etc., I wasn't trying to aim any derisive comments at anyone here on this forum. Hope that was clear from the post, but sometimes things can get lost or misinterpreted through text.

Thanks for the replies! I'll swing by later when I have more time.


Hello Good Sir!

It's been nearly a year since you posted your last reply. Are there any methods suggested above that you have been able to implement? To me you seemed to have a pretty good grasp of what you struggle with so in some sense you knew the areas you needed to work on. I liked LeoSmith's advice about working with a tutor and using those sessions to work out areas where you struggle for example (grammar and pronunciation of certain phonemes and work on those effectively). You could work on improving one sound a week or every two weeks before moving to sentence level pronunciation. Perhaps you were or have already done that this past year so please let us know what worked and what did not work?
0 x


Return to “Practical Questions and Advice”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests