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Do you lack motivation? | ||
Tags: Motivation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| johndoe81 Newbie Australia Joined 4525 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 1 of 20 31 December 2011 at 12:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi all,
I enjoy foreign languages and like to think I have a natural aptitude for them. There are many languages that I would like to study on my own; however, the issue is motivation. I feel that studying a language when I am not living in a country that actively speaks it and have no contact with native speakers, is a little pointless. Does anyone share this feeling? How do you deal with low motivation? Edited by johndoe81 on 31 December 2011 at 12:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4659 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes  | Message 2 of 20 31 December 2011 at 1:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I do share this feeling, I try my hardest to find somebody to talk with but people are only willing to use some extremely basic vocabulary with endless abbreviations and chat about unimportant stuff, FOR 2 MINUTES, afterwards they all simply write/say nothing. I'm amused by this, because I've been trying to find ANYBODY to speak with, in 6 different languages, since 10 am and have failed to maintain a group conversation for a decent amount of time, I've tried Share Talk, Paltalk...I suppose it's just useless to try to talk when you are not in a country where the language is spoken.
What I'm going to do is read a text aloud and simply comment on every paragraph like if I were talking to somebody and afterwards write a comment down. I'm feeling so frustrated because I, supposedly, can talk with more than 2.5 billion people. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kyle Corrie Senior Member United States Joined 4641 days ago 175 posts - 464 votes | Message 3 of 20 31 December 2011 at 1:59am | IP Logged | ||
How does someone have a natural aptitude for languages? You either study and practice or you don't. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| johndoe81 Newbie Australia Joined 4525 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 4 of 20 31 December 2011 at 2:30am | IP Logged | ||
http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9215/language.htm Stay on topic, please. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5771 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 20 31 December 2011 at 2:51am | IP Logged | ||
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If you cannot find local native speakers to chat with, try an internet site to hook up with people who are learning your native language and natively speak what you are studying. Here are two sites that worked for me.
conversationexchange.com www.livemocha.com There are other sites as well. It may take a number of tries to find someone to work with long term. I also suggest screening people to increase the chances of finding a long term chat partner. There are a lot of people out there who seem to be more interested in finding a significant other. Other than that, I feel that motivation is rather individual, dependent on the person. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| yawn Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5238 days ago 141 posts - 209 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, FrenchC2, SpanishC2 Studies: GermanB1 | Message 6 of 20 31 December 2011 at 3:10am | IP Logged | ||
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As a current student of ancient languages, I can definitely understand this feeling. I'm currently self-studying Latin, for which there are no more living native speakers. :P But whenever I feel like I've run into a "wall", so to speak, I just remind myself of the reasons for which I even began this language in the first place - the culture, its subsequent influence on Western civilization, my desire as a believer to understand more about the history of the Christian church, and even little things such as being able to understand the mottos of various colleges and universities without having to look up their definitions! (e.g. "Veritas", meaning "Truth", at Harvard, "Lux et Veritas", meaning "Light and Truth", at Yale, and "Fiat Lux" - "Let There Be Light" - the motto of the University of California).
Sometimes, even the little things can help greatly in terms of motivation. :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6409 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 20 31 December 2011 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||
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i'm not very talkative so that's not a problem :P
try joining a forum/facebook group on a subject that interests you where the discussion is in the target language. try to find one where too many abbreviations and netspeak are discouraged. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5227 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 8 of 20 01 January 2012 at 3:30am | IP Logged | ||
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@ yawn:
I realize this is off-topic, but I think you might be my doppelgänger. I've used the username "yawn" on many forums, and if you hadn't already picked "yawn" before me, I'd surely have that username right now. Don't believe me? Just take a look at my username spelled backwards. Even more bizarrely, out of all the possible times both you and I could have registered, across a time span of multiple years, you registered a mere 11 days before me. I'm a little freaked out. Just thought you should know. Anyway, to stay on topic, I don't have lack of motivation, just lack of focus. I suppose you could frame it as such: I have difficulty being motivated to study any given language when there are a dozen more I could be studying instead. Lack of practicality isn't an issue for me—I have regular contact with speakers of all four of the languages I'm actively studying. In fact, I currently live with two Japanese speakers and three (four in a few days) Mandarin speakers, and I work with Spanish speakers five days a week. But despite all the practicality of these languages, I'm still tempted to learn other languages for which I have no contact with native speakers, so I don't think this issue affects my studies at all. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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