Trust/faith when you're learning

[Guest realmayo]

Sorry in advance if this comes across as a meaningless or self-indulgent post but:

I've been learning Chinese on and off for a few years, quite a long time, so it's hard to remember what it was like starting out.

Or, it was hard to remember, but for the last couple of month's I've been trying to learn some Korean. It's the first time I've seriously started a new language since Chinese.

I'd forgotten just how hard it is to plunge into the unknown! More to the point, with Chinese I've got a broad idea of how I want to study and what parts of the language I need to work on most and so on: there are, as the phrase goes, plenty of 'known unknowns' and so I'm happy to tackle them in my own time, confident that what I'm doing is worthwhile.

But with a new language you've really got no idea if what you're learning at the moment is worthwhile or not. If you've got a teacher then fine, you do what you're told. But if you're on your own and have a few textbooks to hand it's easy to wonder what the point is of learning, say, a certain piece of vocab at this early stage -- you've no idea if the textbook teaches it because you need it for the dialogue in the next chapter, or if it's a surprisingly important word (or part of a word) in basic everyday use.

You've also got no idea if the cumulative work you're doing is paying off in any way, because the language is so new that it hasn't had a chance to 'bed down' in your brain: you hope that the repetition and increased familiarity with the sounds and basic grammar are all adding up, but you won't know for weeks if there has been any benefit to your listening/repeating all those sentences for the third time instead of turning on the TV or participating some hopeless online argument about Irish polyfluency.

I suppose if you've learned a few foreign languages then you will have some faith in your methods. But otherwise it seems you've just got to hope you're doing the right thing, and trust your textbooks! I don't mind cycling even on busy roads because I have some semblance of control about how safe I am, but I don't much like flying because once you're up there there's nothing you can do but trust the pilot, mechanics and physics (all of whom however are no doubt better at what they do than I am at riding a bike safely).

I wonder if one attraction of these forums is that it gives people, especially those who are largely self-studying, confidence under these circumstances. But I wonder also if there could be some way for someone at the early stages of a language to find some kind of 'proof' that the work they are doing is taking them in the right direction?

[querido]

Early in my study of Chinese, questions about methodology and curriculum provided an interesting challenge in themselves. Certainly, I spent too much time on this and ended up taking a non-ideal road anyway; I even studied Linux and Python with an eye toward Chinese study! Well, what I learned during this time was certainly not a waste, was certainly so near the foundation that I needed to learn it all anyway, just maybe in a different order. For example, from my children's books I learned names of plants and animals which I do want to know. I'll certainly want to pull that material back into my routine, maybe next year.

"I wonder if one attraction of these forums is that it gives people, especially those who are largely self-studying, confidence under these circumstances."

I wanted to try to make up my own mind about these questions, as I would then be confident, naturally. I could look for a consensus here among those who seemed credible, but even then I had to follow my own mind; I trust a teacher or book only after I decide they're good. That's a virtue and a problem.

There's a price to pay for following one's own judgement, and a price to pay for trusting others. When I make my own mistake there is a type of pain, but when I let myself trust someone else and repeat their mistake there is a different kind of pain. Of course we have known both kinds of pain but I prefer the former.

Using hindsight, I can now decide who here I should have trusted. But I could still be wrong; I still can't decide whether flashcarding is essential or near-worthless.

[abcdefg]

You asked a good question.

As a beginner I did some things right and some things wrong; some things I would do again the same way if I were tackling a new language and other things I would do differently. It wasn't necessarily due to bad advice or bad instruction; most of my errors were errors of stubbornness; they were errors of my own making.

I felt a strong urgency to be able to converse in practical daily life situations above all else. I placed little importance on reading and writing. I should have had more trust and faith in my teachers and advisers on that point. I now wish I had started those elements early on.

As to specifics, such as vocabulary and grammar, I had absolutely no trust in the garbage the textbooks wanted to shove into my brain as being top priority. There was tons of useless stuff they wanted me to master before teaching me things that I needed in an immediate way and could actually use before the sun set that very day.

[yialanliu]

I learn Chinese beacause I need it for work. I know for a fact that staying in China, knowing Chinese is not a handicap and that's all I require to continue. I think the problem however is not whether or not it's beneficial. It's just most people don't want to spend the cost (time/money) to study the language. There's definitely benefits, but does it outweigh the cost.

At the same time, I think a lot of people on this forum aren't using it as a tool to study the language though. Visa issues is very active here for instance. Same with making decisions on working/studying in China. Not necessarily a supplement to studying Chinese. I personally have yet to ask a question about a grammar/word issue for instance.