Job Discussion Forums

[PatS]

Certainly everyone approaches preparing their move to a foreign country differently, but I'm curious.

How much effort did you put into learning the language of the area you're working now? Did you run down to the local Barnes and Noble and buy language tapes in preparation of the big move? Take a course at the community college? Wait 'till you arrived and just learned by muddling through your day-to-day activities or traded private language lessons with a student?

Those of you who have experience in lots of countries, has your strategy changed? Do you do more or less advance preparation now?

[dmb]

When I first moved to turkey I made a big effort. I guess I didn't have much of a choice as I was the only foreigner in a village of 2000 people. so it was a sink or swim situation. I learned it.

When I came to the Gulf I thought about making an effort to learn Arabic. after 18 months I don't speak it. (i know lots of swear words which I picked up from students though) In Qatar Arabic is probably the third language. The lingua franca is English and number 2 is something like Punjabi. It would be more useful.

[nomadic]

I've only just committed myself to moving to China, so I'm far behind where I'd like to be in terms of learning the language, but that said, I'm determined to find a tutor over the summer (at least once a week), and may try to make it to a local class on Mandarin, but that's unlikely due to my job.

... So I self-study a lot. I recently bought some software ("The Rosetta Stone"), picked up a few books, and have started at the basics - flashcards of the characters. I found a site which listed them by frequency of use (in a certain context, of course), so I figure perhaps I can learn the 400-600 most frequently used characters in the next 15 weeks, and I'll be happy. On top of that, some basic dialogues through the tutor, pronunciation as best I can with the software and tutor, and ideally I'll be good-to-go.

Naturally, I kick myself for waiting so long to begin, but hey, that's part of the challenge!

Anybody else? I'm thinking maybe, in the country-based forums, we could do a textbook listing?

[Shaman]

I had done some preparation before going to Korea. A fat lotta good that did me. Three weeks later it was midnight run time.

I ended up in Japan with two words under my belt. After a year, I was quite functional in communicating (without gestures). I had also memorized hiragana and katakana. Kanji? Yeah... right.

In Paris, my high school french lessons came back to me rather quickly. Now that I'm in Quebec, I'm learning exactly how different joual and Parisian can be.

Shaman

[Atlas]

I've been in China now for what, eight months, and although I have the books and disks, I've yet to start a systematic learning. I've gotten by well enough with my vocabulary of around 100 words. Next week formal lessons begin! I've been speaking Spanish with my gf's family! I never thought that would work here... You just never know how useful something is!

I've spent this time working on a way to make learning language easier by making a system one can use as a cheat sheet with the 343 most useful words, 57 for each category of human motivation (there are 7 according to the psychologist Maslow). By putting all the words in the same order in all languages, if you learn the order you can use the numbers to your advantage (with beginner students or others), communicate immediately and thoroughly before knowing a single foreign word, as well as pick up new languages in a more efficient way than toting around a dictionary and hunting for one word. BTW, it's all for free.

The link is at the bottom of my post.

If you want to translate a language to help, welcome! The community seeks to put as many languages as possible into the system!

[ls650]

My school offered me 90 minutes of Indonesian lessons every week for the first few months.
I found the first 4 months were a real struggle and I learned next to nothing. The next 4 months my learning took off and I started to learn a fair bit.
About the 8th month my learning process started to plateau. At that point I decided I wasn't going to renew my contract and have no need to speak Indonesian, so I became lazy and haven't put much effort into learning more.

At this point my reading is pre-intermediate, which I think is actually not too bad considering the small effort I've put in. My listening is definitely only beginning, mainly because I find locals speak so quickly I have difficulty parsing out individual words. If they speak slowly and deliberately I can follow simple conversations, but when I respond verbally I struggle to recall vocab.

[FGT]

I'm probably being computer illiterate, but I couldn't get to this multi-lingual universe of which you speak. The link took me somewhere else. I'm interested, but...

[Atlas]

Here is the link, hope it helps:

http://seven3.modblog.com/

[denise]

I didn't know that I was coming to Japan until about two months before I got here, and I didn't do much prep. (Finishing my MA, having to deal with moving, other excuses, etc., etc.) I knew maybe 10 words/phrases, including "I don't eat meat" and "I am drunk."

Now, about 10 months later, I've made very little progress. I can read hiragana and katakana (very slowly!), although there are some that I still get confused, and I can recognize a very small handful of kanji. When I go to my weekly flower-arranging class I can bumble through a few awkward conversations, but I still can't communicate on a daily basis. I've got a private tutor (just one hour a week), and self-study, but I know I'm not applying myself nearly as much as I could.

d