So at the age of 33 I decided I was going to learn Mandarin, I have put in consistent effort and test out about HsK 1-2 after about 10 months of duolingo as well as Hanbook exercises, and lately some media based intake. I am not that special just obsessive to a fault, however it was brought to my attention that I most likely had not bad language learning aptitude.
As I realized I missed out on the critical period for my Mandarin learning, I came up with a crazy idea in my head. I took one semester of Spanish in middle school, and I remember getting a lot out of it. What if I could unearth whatever fossilized neural pathways that I could and see if I could use them to leverage new language associations to Mandarin! The way I do it is simple, right before I do my Mandarin duolingo, I do a Spanish lesson. I try to match the lessons' themes across the two languages.
I was sort of concerned that my mastery in Mandarin would be actually adversely affected from Interlanguage effects. This hasn't happened, but it has warped my skill trajectory it seems.
My skill in Spanish whether the exposure or similar nature of it to English, compared to Mandarin is a rocketship (it is somewhat depressing). The biggest difference is the speed in terms of cognition speed. It feels like duolingo is too slow at times with text prompts!
In Mandarin, I am making slightly more mistakes now but my speed is picking up gradually. The mistakes are of impulsive nature, but overall the progress consistent. If any gains have been had it is in circumstances where I can tie in the two languages (like muy and tai with muay tai, and they both mean much). My speed gains are what I believe to be me having better ability to pick out lexical chunks.
I was in the U part of my development anyways so it's hard to attribute this to the Spanish practice entirely, but I wonder my neurological rhetoric is at all valid?
[link] [comments]
from Language Learning https://ift.tt/cyYUzTO
via Learn Online English Speaking
Comments
Post a Comment