Should your level in a language be balanced?
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- Whenever people talk about their level in a certain language, you often hear things like "I have a B2 in..." or " I have an A1 in...", but do those people really have the same level in all the areas? E.g. do they have a B1 in listening, reading, writting and speaking? Or rather a B2 in listening, but only an A2 in all other areas, for instance?
I also use those levels to define where I am at in a specific language, but they are of course not always accurate. Do you think our levels should be balanced? Or what do you think about learning a language only for reading and ignoring all other areas?
I will be excited to read your opinion and experience about this.
00:00 - Today's topic
00:37 - How I feel about my German
01:07 - What about Swedish?
01:40 - A language you need for your job vs. as a hobby
02:58 - My experience with Latin
03:35 - How I would learn Japanese
04:37 - The trick I used to learn to write in Italian
05:50 - What do you think about it? What has been your experience?
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Perhaps the best thing is always being able to listen better. At least then you know what the other person is saying and you don't have to struggle to understand (or make a wrong reply because you misunderstood!). As long as you understand to a high level replies can be simpler and still effective. I'd say understanding level is probably always in front of speaking ability. Writing is generally always weakest for general learners, unless they are doing exams which might require it.
I totally agree, comprehension is always the main focus. Second main focus would be speaking, with reading and writing being the last things that you'd focus on. But, genuinely speaking it depends on what aspects of the language you're going to use most.
Yeah, that is what babies try to do first too hehe :)
If you do not understand well, how would you reply?
@@CouchPolyglot I don't know. Some babies seem to try to speak even before fully understanding. I can't be certain because no-one remembers what it was like being a baby!
Thank you for saying this. I'm learning German just to read books and watch videos and movies. If I ever had to speak with someone who didn't know English I could make myself understood but it's not a priority at all.
Thanks for sharing your experience, I think we all should focus on whatever we want and/or whatever we feel that is most useful to us 😄
I've realized that it's best to at least have good comprehension skills. I was just at a language exchange yesterday, and my speaking skills are terrible, but at least I was able to follow the conversation. Speaking can always be improved later, but if you can't understand then you really can't do much at all.
That makes sense! Unless you just want to be able to e.g. read in a language (and sometimes reading is a lot easier than listening, e.g. French), trying to focus on understanding what people say is what makes the most sense to me
I totally agree with you. It depends on what aspects of the language you're going to use a lot more. For me, I'm currently studying French, Spanish, and Japanese (postponed for now). The only language in which I'm actually putting in a lot more effort to write is Japanese as I will write in it a lot more. As for French and Spanish, I'm fine with having my writing skills as low as A1 because I'm mainly focusing on understanding and speaking these languages.
It makes sense 😊
I am learning Japanese, I have the same reason to study it: Speaking and understanding. I am not into writing Japanese. Although, if you read enough, you will end up being able to write. It is exactly the same with speaking, after a long time reading and listening comprehensible things, you will be able to speak gradually. As always, great video !!
Same here. I can stumble with speaking, but I can't read or write anything (except for a few Kanji- like Tokyo, entrance, exit, etc.)
Thanks a lot for sharing, I thought it was just me!
Спасибо, Лаура, Вы говорите об очень важных и полезных вещах, это очень поможет не тратить зря много времени, пытаясь добиться совершенства во всех изучаемых языках, так и с ума можно сойти. Важно, чтобы изучение языка доставляло удовольствие, и это -- все!
Да, ето правда ❤
Я рада что видео полезное 😊
Estoy de acuerdo contigo. Estoy aprendiendo español y creo que escuchar y hablar habilidades son más importantes. Pero me gusta leer en español porque es más fácil y más "comprehensible input" para practicar. Gracias!
Estoy. De acuerdo contigo completamente 100%
Muchas gracias, espero que te sirvan mis vídeos en español :)
I was thinking about that and wasn't sure what to think. Thanks for opinions
Great minds think alike 😁😝
Laura, you described how I feel exactly about my feelings regarding the balance of language proficiency. I know countless people who can speak and understand a language but have no idea how to read or write it. Many Spanish speakers in the U.S. have never heard of Don Quijote or do not know what a tilde is. Things that as a Spaniard, I know by heart. However, they are still proficient in the language. In terms of my own experience, I am in a strange position with French right now. I can read it to B2 based on my C2 mastery of English and Spanish, and my A2+ in Catalan. However, speaking is at B1, and writing and listening are at A2. I want to balance it because I plan to use French professionally in my career. For example, I can understand 80% of the text in the PAL French versions of games like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, games with word counts and lexicons comparable to young adult novels. However, I can barely understand an episode of a children's cartoon in French sometimes even with subtitles.
If you responded to this comment in French, I could understand 80% of it. However, I will need to use a tool to help me write back a comprehensible response. As for other languages that I primarily learn just for fun or travel like Finnish and Catalan, I am fine with just being able to speak and listen to high levels and be able to read and write to basic levels. It really depends on what one wants to use the language for. If it is for business or you plan to move to a country where the language is spoken, everything needs to be balanced. Which is what I need for French. However, if it is just for fun or for tourism, then it does not need to be balanced in all categories.
I feel like "non balanced" languages are more the standard than balanced ones for most people learning languages just for fun and that is ok :)
I totally agree, it depends on how you're gonna use the language or what your gonna use it for, and based on that you prioritize what you need the most, that being said, I like to have at least some basic knowledge of every aspect.
Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts on this!
Thanks Laura for your opinion.
I've got different opinion in Latin. Honestly I had never liked Latin. Surprisingly I found it useful but only in a case of reading texts on gravestones in old churches 😂 However I can use a translator in such a situation.
Pozdrawiam z Polski - Greetings from Poland
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, greetings from Switzerland :)
I’m learning Hebrew as a hobby right now as well as Spanish. I hit a plateau with Spanish but Italki makes learning fun again
That is interesting, wishing you lots of fun with your languages 😊
@@CouchPolyglotthanks Couch! 😂😂😂. Do you think you will be an Italki teacher in the future? I’m sure learning with you would be fun. I can speak some Spanish and Catalan already but I would like to try some different teachers to see who I learn with the best
Vamos, kom igen ;) You are absolutely right. Bra video.
Tack, muchas gracias 😊
I agree with the core of what you said. For me, Italian is most important as German seems to be for you, so I take pride in doing well in all facets.
I've learned Spanish in the past, but have never had a pragmatic use for it. I can certainly still understand and read a lot, but my active abilities have completely evaporated without practicing it. I do know I could get it back with sustained, focused effort.
For me, Greek is something I learn primarily for reading ability, so I'm not too fussed about being poor at speaking. Even still, I'll slowly gain the ability to speak it with time, while my reading ability is significantly ahead of it. And that's fine.
As for Japanese, I lean towards your way of seeing it if you have no interest in reading Japanese. At the same time, I'm also of the thought that reading in a language can only ever improve the rest of your abilities in the language, and it's the best way for things to 'sink into' your brain. Still, it's tempting to just say 'screw it' and only focus on the oratory aspects of Japanese. That'd eliminate tons of time studying, and only benefit one's travels in Japan.
Yeah, focussing on what is more important to you makes the most sense 👍👍👍
I hope I will learn Japanese one day and see how I actually end up learning it 😁 hehe
For me, learning a language is a personal thing. If a learner strives to be relatively better in some skill areas than others, well that's up to him or her.
Great attitude 👍👍👍
same. my german and english are somewhat balanced, italian for me was a spoken language (reading was ok, writing less so), romanian was/is only a hobby, i read, understand it ok-ish, but don't speak or write it often/well. a few more i understand/read ok, but don't speak at all. and the last group is read-only, but that's ok for me. german and english are for daily use, italian and romanian i love to listen to or read, because they are pretty / make me happy, the others are "special interest".... 💁♂️
It is great to see that I am not the only one who feels that way 😊
4:37 yea that is a good tip i used to be against doing this but it really takes a long time to write something in a language you are not fluent at .especially here on CZcams were my comments just randomly vanish half of the time and i have to do it all over again or the browser crashes just before i am done .and i am going to make a lot of mistakes regardless so i may as well use deepl or google translate at least it doesn't, make typos it just uses the wrong words often. but you do need to pay attention because sometimes they mess up hard .
It is interesting how we change our minds about such stuff. I used to think that "it was cheating", so I would not talk about it. And now I am like "if there is a tool that helps me in something that is not my focus, why not use it?" :)
I was just thinking about this recently as I am becoming more advanced in Italian, and am thinking about my next language. I am quite curious about German but I have heard from so many people that unless you become very very fluent, they will just answer you in English anyway. So I started wondering if it would be strange to learn to understand spoken German and be able to read German, but not put in all the extra time to produce the language. Your video was well-timed as I haven't really heard people talk about languages in this way (except that yes you need to be working hard to keep your languages balanced).
Glad it was helpful 🙂
Great video!!
I can stumble in spoken Japanese, but have very little knowledge of written Japanese. It just seems a bit overwhelming! On the other hand, I'm starting to learn Korean, and I actually am focusing a bit more on the writing. As far as my other foreign languages, Spanish and Russian, I focus much more on speaking and listening, although I can write in both of them.
Language learning is so personal, so yoi have to find out what you need in any given language and also what you enjoy.
Exactly 💯😌
I really hope we will meet one day at a PG because we seem to share several languages as well as opinions! Speaking reading and listening are my priorities but I often neglect writing (especially when it comes to French and Greek as these two have complicated spelling systems) and then when I sometimes have to/want to write sth, I use exactly the same strategy as you (but with Google Translate). Greetings from Poland!
It would be awesome to meet at the PG :)
I hope I can attend next year, this year is to crazy for me work wise... Greetings from Switzerland :D
Reading and listening are more important than writing or speaking when learning a language.
Writing and speaking requires skills that go beyond the language per se.
For example I am a terrible speaker or writer even in my own native language. So I have no hopes of being a good speaker or writer in a foreign language.
Writing and speaking may be good for memorization. In order to memorize Japanese kanji, for example, you should write kanji on a piece of paper as much as possible.
And speaking as much as possible as a beginner may help with memorization, even though I myself don't try to do that.
Thanks a lot for sharing your perspective :)
In response to your comments about learning Japanese without learning the symbols, my experience with Mandarin was that there were few resources for learning without the symbols. For example, the typical dictionary is "symbol to English", not "pinyin to english". Also, when watching a video, the subtitles are probably in symbols rather than in pinyin. Maybe there are more resources in Japanese.
Japanese uses 2 different phonetic writing system mixed with Chinese characters very strange .i can't think of any other language that does this you can tell even Japanese people struggle with it because sometimes they got little hiragana characters above the Chinese character so you know how to pronounce it
Interesting, thanks for sharing!
thanks for sharing that information!
My language is not balanced, I really often just listen to random stuff in English but I bearely speak. I don't have any fears about my level of speaking, in fact it always surprises me in a good way when I use it. I just have no one to talk to in real life. But I think if I could talk more, my progress would be more resultative.
Just in case you want to talk more, have you thought about a tandem? it is for free and it can be useful and fun :)
But if it is not balanced and it is ok for you, that is of course fine :D
Jag har exakt samma tankar. Håller på att försöka lära mig franska, och kan inte se mig i en situation där jag behöver skriva.
Tack för din kommentar :)
Man måste följa sin intuition tror jag
I study English, french and German, for me the only one I have to have a balance is English, french and German i just need to improve my listening and reading skills because I don't use them in my daily routine
That is a good approach, thanks for sharing :)
Estic dacord amb tu No crec que siguis perfecte en cada aspecte d'un idioma. Cada persona té els seus objectius
Exacte, 100% :)