How to study: Start by actually doing it. I see people spend more time on study planning than on actually learning. Others spend hours trying to determine what will or won't be tested rather than just learning the material. See Arnold Rimmer.
Not sure if this helps, but I grew up in a bad place and had some unpleasant jobs. For me, the thinking was always straightforward. Studying is free, moves me forward professionally, and can therefore keep me from falling backwards to those times. I have always had horrendous sleep problems so studying is just physically tough. But it beats the shit out of being poor or harassed by idiot bosses.
Retired now, but his has helped me for all 40+ years of my programming & business careers.
Sure - but imagine someone doesn't have your drive or experiences of studying being an opportunity climb upwards. IMO, individuals that are lacking your desire + intentionality would benefit from this.
Sometimes, the lack of drive is because it's not something you really want to do.
Caveat: while not super common, in my case the "not having the drive despite being x/y/z good traits" just turned out to be undiagnosed ADHD. Dopamine is strongly linked with willingness to do tasks and is affected in ADHD. Of course this isn't the case for everybody, but if you/someone is chronically late/procrastinates, is very unorganized/messy, struggles to finish tasks etc - it's worth googling executive dysfunction at the very least, and then perhaps talking with your doctor.
Good point. And agree that it’s insufficient. We must understand the why behind it and also learn how to create a supportive environment.
For instance, remove all the bad food from sight and replace with good ones. Put on shoes and active wear before even deciding to do some exercise. And many many other tricks..
It's a really common problem with language learners. They'll spend so much time deciding what is the "right" language, what are the "best" resources, and how to plan out their study to learn as quickly as possible. And they learn so much less than the people who just get started.
There's nothing wrong with a little bit of "learning to learn," but you have to be on guard against using it to do the hard work.
I used to teach a 300-level class that had many ESL students. They asked me how best to learn proper english. I told them to watch BBC comedies. Not antiques roadshow but Blackadder, Blacks Books and The Thick of It. Or anything with Attenborough. Listening to Rowen Atkinson tell a joke would improve their language skills far faster than coming up with mnemonics to better-memorize the Queen's order of adjectives.
It’s funny that I took the parent comment as referring to programming languages, but it totally works for people learning spoken/written languages as well. It really is a universal thing.
i think it only makes sense for referring to programming languages. someone who wants to get a job in the usa, understand their favorite anime, study the buddhist scriptures, or write a new translation of the odyssey isn't going to 'spend so much time deciding what is the "right" language'; the right language is almost uniquely determined by the application area, being respectively english, japanese, pali, and homeric greek in those cases. it's only programming languages where we dither about whether to learn c, scheme, javascript, or rust, because we can do the same things in all of them
Funny enough, I was referring to natural languages. You're right that in some cases it's very clear that you should learn English, Japanese, etc. but for many others they're actually attracted to a few languages. (e.g.,I like both Italian and Spanish, which one to learn first? Should I learn ancient Greek or Biblical Hebrew first? Would learning modern Hebrew first help me with Biblical Hebrew?) They don't realize that whatever they choose is going to be hard, so it's better just to choose one instead of dabbling.
it makes some sense to spend some time investigating the potential benefits of different languages, maybe learning a bit of each, before moving to italy or whatever, but certainly it's true that choosing a language to devote time will produce valuable results, while evaluating different languages will not
with respect to those particular questions:
many more people speak spanish than italian due to colonial-age history, and portuguese is almost a spanish dialect. for us residents with culinary aspirations, it may be worthwhile to know that spanish is required for most us restaurant kitchens. but italian isn't that far from spanish either; learning either spanish or italian will make it much easier to learn the other
ancient greek or biblical hebrew depends on which books you want to read. the torah is in biblical hebrew; platon, the hellenistic scientists, and the new testament are in classical to koine greek. modern hebrew will help you a lot with biblical hebrew, because it sort of skipped 1800 years of the sort of linguistic mutation that transformed classical latin into spanish and italian, and it is of course mandatory for living in israel. it may be helpful for flirting with israeli backpackers too
This resonates with me. I feel this pretty strongly whenever I see people criticizing Duolingo. I've had so many people tell me it's not the best way to learn a language (and honestly they're right I'm sure) but on the other hand a few years of doing Duolingo for like 5 min a day has given me functional enough spanish to get around mexico on my last trip. I don't really care if it's not the best way because it's something that's easy to get started on and do every day consistently.
I agree with you. I'm now fully fluent in French and applying for French citizenship, and I didn't get there because of Duolingo, but I never would have gotten started without it.
