Hey everyone, I'm researching how people struggle to have real conversations with others in a non-native language. I'd appreciate you taking 3 minutes to complete the survey. This will help us build something meaningful and give you the chance to be an early tester!
I've recently moved to a new country, and had been learning the language for some time before that (1 year roughly). I'm really finding it difficult to connect with people.
I mostly understand what people are saying in conversations and I try my best to get some words in but to a native speaker I don't sound natural, or have the flow of regular everyday conversation. The rejection is hitting my confidence hard and I don't know if i can keep doing it. But I know immersion is the best way to get the level I want. I know this will take time and I need to persevere, but damn it makes me feel horrible.
In my NL, if I wanted to connect with someone we would try find common interests, but that's the thing with learning languages, I'm stuck learning things without the context of things I like, such as science, space, history to name a few. Especially on these topics, the level is often too difficult and it is discouraging me. I’m not much of reader either which doesn’t help, but I feel there should be an easier way
Has anyone else experienced something like this? I'd like to think I'm not the only one :/
Everyone talks about the intermediate plateau. Nobody talks about this part.
At B1 in my (TL) the content problem is basically solved. I've got stuff I actually want to read, I understand enough to follow along, and I know what works for me.
What nobody warned me about is that studying from that content somehow requires four different apps and by the end of it you've completely lost the thread of why you were interested in the first place.
Open article → Google Translate for anything I don't know → manually copy words into Anki → practice speaking with a tutor on italki who asks me about my weekend.
I'm doing CI. I'm doing SRS. I'm doing output practice. All the right things. But reading, vocab review and speaking feel like three separate hobbies that happen to use the same language. The context that made those words worth learning in the first place is long gone by the time I get to use them.
Curious if anyone else has hit this wall or if it's just me. What does your routine actually look like?