
Habits of Successful Language Learners - sova
https://learnjapanese.best/2019/10/10/habits-of-successful-language-learners/
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hgibbs
I've taken this approach while learning polish, which is the first language of
my partner's parents. I started three years ago, and the first tactical
decision I made was to take classes - not for the sake of being taught, but
for the accountability that comes from having to regularly attend and do
homework for a class. I also decided to not obsess over my progress or speed,
and have been content taking a few years to learn what some people manage to
do in six months of hard study. I figure it takes children 5-6 years to get
any good, and they are effectively studying a language full time with
seemingly much higher stakes (e.g. the necessity of communicating that you
don't want broccoli for dinner).

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topmonk
I find that you need to study a lot of words rather than focusing on a few and
get the meaning/spelling exactly right. If you have a loose grasp on the
meaning of 200 words vs a perfect understanding of 50 words you are much more
likely to be able to read a piece if text.

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james_s_tayler
This is absolutely right on the money for autodidacts.

What surprises me is there are people who succeed at learning language in the
classroom that work entirely opposite to this.

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jamil7
One thing that programmers and other technical people have in their favour
when learning languages is the ability to defer deeper understanding of
concepts. While taking in the overview of new languages we need to accept that
we won't understand all the inner workings immediately. We do this everytime
we learn new technologies on the job, developing deeper knowledge once we have
some rough working knowledge. This can be really productive for languages
since you can get a rough working knowledge going earlier and begin the
positive feedback loop of listening, speaking and improving. I've seen a lot
of really smart people struggle in languages classes because they want to
fully grok a concept and really focus on it before moving on, which holds them
back.

