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Message board > Are you learning a foreign language?
Are you learning a foreign language?
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colibrita
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Are you learning a foreign language?
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Hi Everyone
My post yesterday http://www.eslprintables.com/forum/topic.asp?id=25823 made me wonder who among you are studying a foreign language. How �s it going? What do you think of your teacher? Or are you going it alone? I �d be interested to hear about your experiences... Are you a good student? Do you follow your own advice??!!
TGIF!
Hugs
Colibrita
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21 Jan 2011
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cheezels
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The bane of my life is my continual quest to become better at Swedish. I live in Sweden and I HAVE to have a Swedish language exam (The English equivalent of the last year of high school but in Swedish) so that I can actually get my qualifications recognised. I have been a QUALIFIED teacher for 14 years and am being paid at an unqualified rate which is not a great thing. So this exam means more than just being able to speak the lingo.
In NZ I never learned another language when I was younger and in my little school - next to no one did. Now students have a lot of choice but back then... not so much from my town.
I do believe that learning a language as an adult when you have never learned a foreign language before can be very difficult. My brain often just flat out rejects new information related to language!
I have studied in class (where the instructional language was Swedish) BUT the teaching was truly rubbish. No books, no structure no nothing. I would go home and try to study myself, often around 3 hours every day.
Still would not sink in. I even made myself flashcards, matching strips, vocabulary book and all other types of learning activities to try and get it to sink in.
I can understand a lot and read well, but my spoken and written Swedish is mediocre and full of mistakes.
In short:
Went to class = FAIL
Tried it alone = FAIL
Went again to the next level class a year and a half later ( did all the work and studied during the summer 4-5 hours every day!!! and still failed) = FAIL
Now have a private teacher who is picking up on my mistakes and helping me to understand WHY they are wrong and how to fix them. (Something NONE of my previous teachers from the state funded adult system ever did!) = Looking good and full of optimism that everything is now moving in the right direction.
Basically I am that student in your class that works really hard and tries so much but... it �s going to take nothing short of a miracle to reach the final destination. :-)
One positive is that when I am teaching Swedish students I completely understand what difficulties they face as often it is the exact same thing or concept but in the other language!
You mention in your other thread that you already speak other languages. I think you should go for it! You obviously have an "ear" for languages so what is one more to add to your belt :-) Choose one that interests you most or maybe the culture interests you as often learning material for beginners always has a lot about the language �s country and culture.
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21 Jan 2011
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colibrita
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Hi Cheezels, thanks so much for responding to my post. I had no idea you lived in Sweden. That sucks about not having your qualifications officially recognised yet. I so agree with you that having studied a language at school helps you later on with languages. Another thing that has helped me is my motivation, I �ve always been passionate about languages. They �ve opened the door to so many people and so many interesting things. However, I don �t have any natural talent for languages. I �ve lived in Spain for well over a decade and still have problems understanding some conversations, unless I �m totally absolutely focused (and even then, sometimes I struggle). As soon as people hear you speak their language fairly well it �s as if they forget you �re not a native speaker, and off they go at a hundred miles an hour!! Also, verb conjugations are far more varied in Spanish than they are in English, so I still find myself stumbling around sometimes. I should have worked harder on my grammar at the beginning! and perhaps taken far more classes. Anyway, I �m eager to start a new language, and I hope to avoid making the same mistakes. Having said that though, I can �t afford right now to go classes, so self-study it will be. Oh, and in case you �re curious, I �ve decided on.....Arabic!
All the best, my dear, and thanks again for writing. Hope your private classes continue to bear fruit and that you pass the exam soon
Hugs from a chilly (yes,chilly!) Barcelona
Colibrita
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23 Jan 2011
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