Adding a new language at this point of my program?
Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 12:54 pm
Hi all,
As some of you may know, I'm in Spain for the whole school year for an Erasmus and, while I was somewhere between B1-B2 when I got here in September, I'm now around C1 and wanted, at first, to get as far in the language as possible. My ultimate goal, rather than having X level, was to feel the language, just like I feel English.
For a couple of years, I've had problems with sticking to only one language for a long period of time to improve enough in the language, which is why I haven't improved that much in the various languages I've studied so far. That's why I wanted to focus on Spanish full time to improve it as best I could. Nevertheless, I also studied some Valenciano/Catalan this year, since I live in Valencia.
After 6 months of language immersion, I feel like a change. For a couple of days, I've been wanting to study Mandarin Chinese, a language I already studied in the past till A1-ish and had to leave afterwards. Mandarin Chinese is one of the few languages that I still cannot talk and really want to speak eventually, one of the few that are still on my priority list, and it's been on that list for a couple of years. Every now and again, I get to be in a situation where I would like to be able to speak some Chinese and each time I feel like I should really study it on a regular basis (like 30min a day) to speak it eventually.
So now the big question: should I stick to full-time Spanish (language tandem, reading books, watching movies-series-videos, put all my time into it for the remaining 2-3 months of my stay before going back to Belgium), or could I allow myself about 30-60 min of Chinese daily in my schedule (while knowing that I might be tempted to dedicate more time to Chinese than to Spanish)?
As some of you may know, I'm in Spain for the whole school year for an Erasmus and, while I was somewhere between B1-B2 when I got here in September, I'm now around C1 and wanted, at first, to get as far in the language as possible. My ultimate goal, rather than having X level, was to feel the language, just like I feel English.
For a couple of years, I've had problems with sticking to only one language for a long period of time to improve enough in the language, which is why I haven't improved that much in the various languages I've studied so far. That's why I wanted to focus on Spanish full time to improve it as best I could. Nevertheless, I also studied some Valenciano/Catalan this year, since I live in Valencia.
After 6 months of language immersion, I feel like a change. For a couple of days, I've been wanting to study Mandarin Chinese, a language I already studied in the past till A1-ish and had to leave afterwards. Mandarin Chinese is one of the few languages that I still cannot talk and really want to speak eventually, one of the few that are still on my priority list, and it's been on that list for a couple of years. Every now and again, I get to be in a situation where I would like to be able to speak some Chinese and each time I feel like I should really study it on a regular basis (like 30min a day) to speak it eventually.
So now the big question: should I stick to full-time Spanish (language tandem, reading books, watching movies-series-videos, put all my time into it for the remaining 2-3 months of my stay before going back to Belgium), or could I allow myself about 30-60 min of Chinese daily in my schedule (while knowing that I might be tempted to dedicate more time to Chinese than to Spanish)?