Language Learning Question

[Wiseborn]

I don't even bother with that. I'm just trying tio get conversational and I'm bullshytting on that.

 

[MidniteJay]

I have some experience with Japanese students who can write decent English, but their speaking ability is horrid!

Japanese (about to start it up again in about 2 weeks). I never learned Spanish, because I was raised with it.

I'm trying to learn Japanese too. Got a wanikani sub to get familiar with the necessary kanji.

Hardest part for me right now is being consistent with my immersion and grammar practice. It's a struggle...

 

[CopiousX]

I have some experience with Japanese students who can write decent English, but their speaking ability is horrid!

Exactly. I think immersion is the biggest detriment to doing this stuff. Its frustrating as hell to understand the grammar of a new language but have no place to apply it.


With writing, most languages have a huge library of written content so you can get used to that before getting the nuances of speech down.

I never really tried to learn a language seriously. I am currently on-again and off-again with Japanese (about to start it up again in about 2 weeks). I never learned Spanish, because I was raised with it. This is why I'm not good at accent marks.

Interesting. So it seems you may have the exact opposite immersion problem, where your engagement with text is not as good as you conversational skill.


Have you considered joining a spanish language book club? Simply seeing the written notation more often may be worth a shot

You seem to have a knack for learning languages.

Thanks. But not necessarily and it did not come naturally by any means. Here is a text from booksnrain's education thread that explains it....

Spoiler: Education Thread excerpt

I had a very similar story, except I didn’t receive positive reinforcement in the form of quarters from my moms.



Instead, I received negative reinforcement by punishment and elimination of distractions(tv, friend visits, outings, video games, etc) because I misbehaved quite a bit as a child. As a punishment, my parents created an environment where the only interesting, entertaining thing to do was read books.





When I finished all the fiction I we had, they put their old college txt books in front of me. I swear to god I was reading Macroeconomics 6th edition and Introduction to Logic 2nd edition in 4th grade. Soaked it up like a sponge too.




So very similar to you @ignorethis , I was reading at a "12th grade lvl" in 3rd grade. Weird method by my parents to get there, but it still worked. I say this to say that parents can have an incredible amount of control on child reading outcomes.

One of the random things we had in the house were old language tapes and foreign language dictionaries. I ended up treating them like any other books/entertainment content during the times i was grounded. This was the base of my language abilities.

Personally, i wish i picked up the chem and math books instead. But by that point, gradeschool peer pressure had already established to me that math and chemistry wernt cool. Still a huge regret as an adult.