Why The Best Language Learners Focus On More Than Just Language

Totally! Have you any pointers on how to get immensed eventhough you dont live in your home country and dont meet people in everyday life who’s mother tongue is the one you learn..?

Shoot..you live in your home country and learn foraign language:)

I’ve only lived in the USA and Canada, but I agree that adapting to a new culture is important and helpful when learning a language. I’ve known people who have lived in the USA for many years and never learn more than the most basic English words and phrases and I can’t imagine how they can be satisfied with having to rely on friends and family members to act as translator/interpreters all the time.

Hi Donovan,

I’ve been living in Korea and learning the language for the past four years, and I agree about the expat community here. To me, the sad part is that most of these people are ESL teachers. It never made sense to me how someone could expect to teach people how to learn a language when they’ve never had the experience of learning a language themselves.

Anyway, I just stumbled on your website the other day, and I think it’s really cool that you happen to be learning Korean. I’m really looking forward to your video updates! I’m curious to see how much progress can be made in just a few months by someone who really sets their mind to learning the language.

If you happen to visit Seoul, shoot me an email if you want to meet up for a cup of coffee or a beer.

You make some excellent points here regarding those living abroad, I would have expected the chance to learn about a country’s culture would be a motivating factor in moving somewhere.

It would be great if more people adopted an attitude like yours.

Right on the money about expats’ poor attitudes. (To be fair, it can be hard for English speakers not to get sucked into speaking English to benefit others’ education rather than one’s own.)____Similarly, your comments on adopting the persona of a speaker of a language rings entirely true to me. I think that’s the best way of expressing it.____On a practical point, I’m rather sceptical about launching into attempting to speak a very different language (from the ones you’re used to) without getting plenty of opportunity to listen to it first (and absorb both the cultural cues and the sounds). Do you have a view on that?

Oh, and could you explain the title, please? It’s rather tantalising to leave it there with no explanation.

Thanks very much.

I completely agree with you. Lots of listening should always come first as it’s impossible to have any meaningful conversation without plenty of input to draw from. Speaking immediately is nonsense - you need to have a long period where input is the main focus.

One thing a lot of people don’t realize is that pronunciation is primarily learned before we say anything.

The title of the blog or post? :)

”Having that as a short-term goal should increase my productivity and give me something serious to work toward over the next few months.”

This is one of the problems I’m trying to deal with. I’m been learning languages for a little while (about two months) and I’m happy with my schedule and whatnot. My problem is measuring progress. In other things I do I can easily have a quantifiable goal and a time frame to reach it in, but I’m finding that hard to do with languages. Do you have any suggestions for goals like this?

I looked at taking CEFR grading tests but the next one is February 2nd and I’m not too keen on turning my language learning into studying for an exam. I also have no idea what level I’ll be by then to know what to take.

Good point. If your language learning becomes ‘studying for an exam’ it’s going to be really detrimental.

I’ve been asked this question quite a lot actually. Here’s my last response which should help you:

Write out a plan using *themes/topics* as a focus every week for 3 months. E.g. Week 1 will be all about jobs and careers. All you do for that entire week is learn how to talk about various jobs (your own job particularly), terms and expressions about work, etc. Week 2, relationships, Week 3, politics, and so on. Come up with topics that are relevant to you or things you feel passionate about discussing. Focus only on expanding that particular vocabulary and practice talking about those specific things each week.

The reason why this helps is that you’ll be able to look back in 3 months and see a whole range of topics that you previously couldn’t talk about and now can.

It’s a great way to measure progress and set small goals for yourself that are fun and relevant.

I really appreciate this post. I haven’t been an expat yet, but I’ve traveled in Argentina 3 times in the past 3 years and hope to live there someday (I’m too old to do the backpacking circuit and too young to retire). I’m doing as much as I can to learn about Argentine culture while living in the US, and most of my friends here think I’m a little crazy, but it’s really helped my Spanish-language skills, and the Argentine friends I have here seem to appreciate that I know a lot about their country.

I watch a lot of junky programs on blogs and on Argentine public TV on the web. It’s not great art, but after 200 episodes of sitcoms and telenovelas, I noticed that my listening skills were far more advanced than those of my classmates who never watched Spanish-language programming. Now I’m at a level at which I can appreciate “higher art,” such as theater and concerts, on the fairly rare occasions when artists visit our college town. And I find it incredibly fun to learn the slang peculiar to one country or region!

I wrote a few language learning tips on my blog:
http://springbyker.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/a-few...

Hey Donovan,

I’m really honoured to be mentioned here, and much more so that you’ve received some degree of inspiration from my efforts in learning Korean. I wish you the best of luck as you continue learning a language that is near and dear to my heart :)

Cheers,
Alex Ristich

(By the way, I actually work at LingQ!)

Hey Alex!

Wow, great to hear from you. Sorry I wasn’t sure if you worked at LingQ or not but now I know. It’s a great platform.

Would love to meet up next time you’re in Korea.

Thanks a lot for the well wishes!

”Here’s a pet peeve of mine.

The amount of expats who have been living here in Korea literally for years and still don’t speak much or any Korean is frankly shameful.”

ㅋㅋㅋ I know what you mean.. I imagine having co-workers such as J, J and M must have been offputting in that aspect... though they have not been in Korea for years. I wonder if any of them gave you a hard time for wanting to learn 한국말, maybe telling you that you don’t even need it to survive in Korea..

”There’s a real tendency here (and I’ve had issues with the same thing in Egypt and Georgia) for Westerners to live a totally parallel existence to the host society. They work with the locals sure but they spend all their downtime with foreigners and quite often bitch to each other about the host society and culture that welcomed them.”

So true... 사람이 그렇게 할때 나는 진짜 짜증나요..

도노반님 이 한국어 배우라고 노력 해서 행복해요! 노력 잘하고 능력 착실히 쌓이고 있으세요!

혹시 한국어 하는 친구 한 명 더 필요 하면 저 하고 나 하지요.. ㅋㅋ

This is so true. When I lived in Dublin I knew a group of Spanish people who just would not learn English. They even celebrated NYE an hour early on Spanish time! I don’t know how you could waste such a perfect learning opportunity like that.

They probably did not have any intention to. It happens in my country too. But to me the most exciting part is learning about the cultural aspect.

Yeah it’s a shame.

I just think it’s rude and hypocritical because if a group of English speakers moved into their neighbourhood in Spain and did that they probably wouldn’t be happy about it.

How do you go about making friends who are willing to speak the language with you? Do the friends you are making want to speak English with you or are they willing to converse in Korean most of the time?

Some of the Koreans I meet up with on the weekends are English students so I do offer help with their English at times but most of the time we just speak Korean.

It’s quite easy over here actually to find people to practice with.

”Last week we covered all the vocabulary and expressions related to hairdressing (styles, length, etc.) and then I went and got my haircut shortly after which gave me a chance to activate everything we covered by putting it to use straight away (plus make a few new hairdresser friends as well :) ).”

I love this. Was that intentional? That is, did you decide to study things related to hairdressing specifically because you knew you had an appointment to get your hair cut afterwards and would therefore be able to immediately apply what you’d just learned while it was fresh in your mind thereby really cementing it in? Because, if so, that was brilliant, precisely what I would’ve done (or wished I’d done later upon thinking about it, ha!).

Cheers,
Andrew

I agree about the expats who never even bother to learn the local language being shameful. I live in Taiwan and I guess about its no more than 1/10 expats who bother to learn any more language than basic pleasantries and food items they want to order.

However do you find it a struggle to immerse yourself in the local TV and music when none of it is rarely to your taste? I’m pretty picky with the TV I watch and the music I watch in English. Although I have managed to find movies and music I find cool in Chinese it is few and far between. Do you just grit your teeth through some of the bad pop and poorly acted soap operas? Or do you actually enjoy it after watching it for a while?

Enjoyment is key.

If you find watching something to be boring or ‘not to your taste’, it’s not going to benefit you much.

I actually hate most of the crap that’s on television these days. However when I watch cheesy soap operas and so on in another language I tend to forget about how lame it is and enjoy it for its language content.