Intelligence and aptitude

Linguafile Linguafile at AOL.COM
Sat Jan 10 07:01:01 UTC 1998


<< Personally, I like to learn foreign languages (I am Brazilian and have a
reasonable degree of fluency in 5 to 8 languages, depending on how
strictly you define 'reasonable'), and one thing that always helped me was
a deep and almost intimate positive feeling for the languages in question.
The emotional reaction-- the feeling that 'the language is beautiful', or
that 'this specific word is cool', or that 'this structure is wonderful'--
is such a great motivation, that I wonder if other people get lower
results simply because structures, words, irregularities (the
'idiosyncratic stuff') doesn't have this effect on them. People who look
at a complicated inflectional system and say 'uh-oh' instead of 'yummy'
may be building 'negative-reinforcement-like' endless loops in their minds
that may dramatically reduce their efficiency at using their foreign
language learning capacity.
Sergio Meira
meira at ruf.rice.edu >>

You're so cool, Sergio!  :-)

Jacquelyn Pillsbury
Undergrad



More information about the Funknet mailing list