How do you increase your efficiency in language learning? Is it even possible?

[LeifGoodwin]

@nfera

I agree with @GMelillo that efficiency (language acquisition rate per unit time probably being the most useful form to refer to at the moment) is a mere trifle to the ability for people to persist in the learning process.

We are in agreement here, that determination and hard work are the key to successful L2 acquisition.

@nfera

Perhaps the reputation of the respective school systems (bad rap in England and the U.S. vs. Germany, for instance) is merely based on the end results (basic competency or not) of which the largest determining factor is simply hours spent.

@ObstTorte and I discussed this a while back. I think he pointed out that Germans are exposed to a lot of English language content, especially films, books and music, and English is much more useful for a German. An English sales rep in China will speak English with the Chinese. A German sales rep in China will do likewise. Also English is probably fairly easy for a German, both are West Germanic languages, English grammar is simple, and both share similar phonetics with stress based timing and a love of diphthongs. An English speaker learning German has to deal with the delights of gender and a case system.

@nfera

If this is the case, as in not incredibly inefficient, why aren’t more of these Internet polyglots talking about classes and/or taking them? Is it a mere matter of convenience of studying at home, when and how they want, not necessarily efficiency?

I assume classes are not more popular due to cost and inconvenience. And the cynic would point out that many internet polyglots are pushing their product, either an app or their videos, and not classes.

@nfera

@GMelillo

Once your basic language acquisition method is pointed in the right direction (you are no longer doing obviously fruitless, time serving stuff), what would really make your efficiency go up in a noticeable manner is not tweaking the method to squeeze out tiny marginal gains, but magically increasing your IQ ten points.

@GMelillo The issue is ironing out the ‘basic language acquisition method’ to remove all the time-waste. How do we do this? How are we certain such activities are obviously fruitless? You’ve previously referred to using trial-and-error, adjusting your method based on evaluations every six or so months. Trial-and-error like this results in improvements to the method, but slowly, over the years. How do you judge that the latest adjustment to your technique was better than the previous implementation? Your children have the advantage that they can learn from your trial-and-error.

In my case, with French, it wasn’t too hard to work out a method that works. I started with apps such as Duolingo and Busuu but they weren’t taking me very far. I moved to LingQ in sentence mode, and doing the exercises, but it was not much better. Then I moved to far more listening, namely podcasts and videos for learners, and it was obvious that progress was much higher. It was daunting as I often understand no more than the gist of a podcast, but that gradually sorted itself out as my comprehension improved.

So in my opinion there are inefficient methods, and efficient ones, although I would rather use the term effective as I never really gained a feel for the language using Duolingo due to insufficient input.

I’m at an uncomfortable place with German, lower B1, and considering experimenting with new approaches.

@nfera

@GMelillo

The worst case scenario is that you pay money for something, try it for two weeks, decide it doesn’t work, fall in love with some new ideology that completely contradicts your first method, pay money for that, try it for two weeks, and then rinse and repeat, with lots of idle periods and wishful thinking in between. That is wasting time.

The inevitable inefficiencies of your first year or two of work are not time wasted if you use them to develop a learning process that not only works for your current domain, but builds skills and character traits that you apply to the next task you set yourself.

There are some people who try something for a few months, get bored, and move on. Some continue, using a new approach, but get bored. I’ve made progress in several sporting activities, depite starting in my mid fifites, and being “bad at sports”. I went down several rabbit holes, sometimes making little progress, or even regressing, and endured a lot of bullying. There is so much I could have done better to achieve more in the same time. I had a not dissimilar experience with French. How do we avoid rabbit holes and time wasted ? Or is that part of life ?