Learning styles were such a thing when we were pupils!! I remember a teacher giving us a test where most people ended up being "visual learners".
I learn by doing and manipulating concepts, but so do most people, it seems.
I can't really tell if I have specific abilities, I think tolerance to imperfection / to not understanding is very important. It definitely builds up with time! 😊
You make a fantastic point about how being okay with not understanding everything is CRUCIAL. There's so much to go off with that statement! a) by accepting its okay to not understand everything and make mistakes, the learning process becomes more enjoyable because we don't put that much pressure on ourselves, b) it releases us from fear of judgement and failure because we'll be more open to try new things and not have our ego in the way, c) our goals and expectations become more realistic, and d) having tolerance to imperfection encourages a growth mindset because we we'll see challenges as opportunities to improve. I wish I had this ability, I'm trying! So much to learn from you! :)
I added it to my brain dump list of things to write about! Thanks for the suggestion. Honestly, after posting it, I was a bit worried that I had too much golden retriever energy over it but it is what it is 😅
Learning styles, like personality tests get so popular that everyone thinks they are the only way to talk about people and their abitilies. You did a great job sharing why focusing on learning styles can hinder a person's language lerning journey. As you said, thinking about varfious abilities may be more accurate and useful in language learing.
In terms of my abilities, I think my phonetic awareness is pretty good. I'm able to recognize different sounds without being able to explain why or how I know a sound is correct. I noticed this the most when I did phonetic exercises in French on TV5MONDE. Every time the phonetic exercise came up I would get nervous, listen to the audio recordings and "guess" what I thought was the correct answer. My results were always surprising to me because they were often mostly or completely right. Clearly I had a feeling/understanding for what was right and wasn't actually guessing like I thought I was. I'm sure phonetic awareness also helped when I was first learning Mandarin & Cantonese. I also think I have good cognitive flexibility as I see myself noticing patterns in Icelandic even with my limited knowledge of the language.
Thanks for providing a list of researchers/resources. I'll check them out in the future!
I always appreciate your thoughtfulness and encouragement, Victoria! Do you think that since Mandarin and Cantonese are tone based languages, they honed your phonetic awareness skills, thus making French and Icelandic easier? I feel like you’ve developed cognitive and learning skills through them that it increased your awareness in your newer languages since your brain is already trained and prepped for adapting and strategizing!
That could be the case as well! It wasn't until recently that I learned that my heritage language, which I can understand but not speak, is tonal! Maybe that's what subconsiously drew me to other tonal languages and what has helped me notice sounds in languages. It's weird how you don't realize things until you start connecting the dots later in life!
Learning styles were such a thing when we were pupils!! I remember a teacher giving us a test where most people ended up being "visual learners".
I learn by doing and manipulating concepts, but so do most people, it seems.
I can't really tell if I have specific abilities, I think tolerance to imperfection / to not understanding is very important. It definitely builds up with time! 😊
You make a fantastic point about how being okay with not understanding everything is CRUCIAL. There's so much to go off with that statement! a) by accepting its okay to not understand everything and make mistakes, the learning process becomes more enjoyable because we don't put that much pressure on ourselves, b) it releases us from fear of judgement and failure because we'll be more open to try new things and not have our ego in the way, c) our goals and expectations become more realistic, and d) having tolerance to imperfection encourages a growth mindset because we we'll see challenges as opportunities to improve. I wish I had this ability, I'm trying! So much to learn from you! :)
Your passion is pouring through your comments! You basically answered with a whole new article, and now i want to read more about it 😊
It's a topic I hold very dear: what learning languages teaches us (other than... Well, the language)
I added it to my brain dump list of things to write about! Thanks for the suggestion. Honestly, after posting it, I was a bit worried that I had too much golden retriever energy over it but it is what it is 😅
Learning styles, like personality tests get so popular that everyone thinks they are the only way to talk about people and their abitilies. You did a great job sharing why focusing on learning styles can hinder a person's language lerning journey. As you said, thinking about varfious abilities may be more accurate and useful in language learing.
In terms of my abilities, I think my phonetic awareness is pretty good. I'm able to recognize different sounds without being able to explain why or how I know a sound is correct. I noticed this the most when I did phonetic exercises in French on TV5MONDE. Every time the phonetic exercise came up I would get nervous, listen to the audio recordings and "guess" what I thought was the correct answer. My results were always surprising to me because they were often mostly or completely right. Clearly I had a feeling/understanding for what was right and wasn't actually guessing like I thought I was. I'm sure phonetic awareness also helped when I was first learning Mandarin & Cantonese. I also think I have good cognitive flexibility as I see myself noticing patterns in Icelandic even with my limited knowledge of the language.
Thanks for providing a list of researchers/resources. I'll check them out in the future!
I always appreciate your thoughtfulness and encouragement, Victoria! Do you think that since Mandarin and Cantonese are tone based languages, they honed your phonetic awareness skills, thus making French and Icelandic easier? I feel like you’ve developed cognitive and learning skills through them that it increased your awareness in your newer languages since your brain is already trained and prepped for adapting and strategizing!
That could be the case as well! It wasn't until recently that I learned that my heritage language, which I can understand but not speak, is tonal! Maybe that's what subconsiously drew me to other tonal languages and what has helped me notice sounds in languages. It's weird how you don't realize things until you start connecting the dots later in life!