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Have you ever wanted to quit?


Gmac9100

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I remember when i first started studying Spanish. It seemed so fun, and exciting. After a couple weeks my brain was exhausted. Trying to study would give me a terrible headache. I have to admit at that point i almost quit. Today i am happy to say that i stayed the curse. I am so proud of self.  Do you guys have any stories similar to this?

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Yes I have ever gotten that feeling.I took French in high school.At one point I wasn't performing well at school and I was so frustrated I regretted taking the subject.But then I kept on and I finished and passed exceedingly.

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Yes, I can relate to that feeling of wanting to quit.  It can be difficult to carve out time to continue with studies and to keep persevering.  Learning the rules of grammar and increasing vocabulary are tasks that require a lot of concentration and mental energy.  It can be exhausting.  I think it's best to schedule in time for study and practice. 

I also believe that being immerse in the language can help in those times when it's difficult to stay motivated.  Listening to the music, watching a movie, even listening to the radio in that language can rekindle the original passion and enthusiasm.  At least this is what has worked for me!  :)

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It's not really quitting if you're already learned something. There are levels of mastery to languages between beginner and expert. I wouldn't discount the knowledge you've already acquired, and nothing's stopping you from picking it up again later in life.

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I believe that we only will want to quit when we're learning something we don't have enough interest in and the subject is uninteresting. If we are having fun and love what we learn, it'll never feel tedious and hard. As for me, I too felt the need to quit because at some point I lost the enthusiasm I had when I first started.

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It's not really quitting if you're already learned something. There are levels of mastery to languages between beginner and expert. I wouldn't discount the knowledge you've already acquired, and nothing's stopping you from picking it up again later in life.

You make a great point. i never really thought of that way. I always felt that if i didn't meet the goals i set for myself, i would be a failure. Your point of view is very interesting. It made me reevaluate myself.

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Yes! The same thing happened with me in Spanish. I took IB Spanish in high school and it was really tough. They basically squeezed in a 4 year programme into 2 so obviously the pace that we were going at was crazy. I had to spend an hour everyday so I wouldn't fall behind in class. I was so close to dropping out but I stuck it out because I thought about all the time I had invested. Thank god I made the right decision.

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There has never really been a question of 'quitting' or not for me. It's more of 'am I gonna continue to practice?' I started learning Japanese because I played a lot of obscure games and watched anime and read manga, and it was helpful for understanding them better. I still do those things, so my skills get used no matter what, but I haven't been serious about studying in a long while (although I am always learning more by default). Lately I've been practicing a lot more though. I may not ever use Japanese for any practical reason other than hobbies, but I really enjoy learning it, and not just because of my hobbies either.

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  • 1 month later...

I never really wanted to quit but I wanted to take a break for a while. I'm not a type of person that would quit anything if I made any progress or especially if I made far. Mosr of the time it's not that you can't do it, it's that you have try harder.

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Learning languages is really frustrating sometimes so yes, the idea of quiting crossed my mind, but then all the work I've done so far and the motivation behind learning it kept me going, if we don't put in the effort we will never make it.

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I think wanting to quit is something that happens to the best of us, I have reached that point before too. It is the love and desire for the language that pushes us to persevere to the end.

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I'm not specially proud of this or anything, but I have already given up on learning other languages that interested me in the past (Norwegian, old Norse, old English, Swedish, Finnish, etc). Mostly because I grew up and life started to get harder and harder, I had to get a job and make a living out of said work.  So yeh, I stopped being the naive dreamer I once was and became a more realistic and practical person.

Don't misunderstand me, I still love learning languages, but now I am way more practical... when I was young I was practically delusional, lol. Right now I'm learning dutch just because I need to, but dutch isn't my language of choice.  I actually dread it when I was young and never tried to learn it.  Funny how life can be so ironic.

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Yes, I've wanted to quit on learning a few languages a lot of times, but I eventually always decide against it because my want to learn a new language always outweighs my laziness or incompetence.  :grin: I'm currently learning French and thought of quitting because I just can't get many of the pronunciations right, but I thought to myself that I should just continue anyway and just worry about the proper pronunciations later on when I'm more used to the language as a whole.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I remembered before, I tried to learn Arabic and even bought an Arabic-English dictionary so I can familiarize myself with the different phrases and terms but after some time, I got bored and finally stopped studying it as I lose interest for unlike the English language, I don't get to use often the Arabic language. I also tried learning French but my schedule became hectic overtime that I didn't have time to continue learning it, plus I can't practice the language everyday.

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I quit just about every time I get started. I always go back, though. I'm currently studying Japanese. I think one helpful aspect is that even when I'm not studying Japanese, I will be watching anime. So, it at least I'm still hearing and seeing Japanese even when I'm not studying it myself.

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i have come to learn that this is generally what happens when you're learning a language. you will go through several cycles of wanting to quit and waking up the next morning feeling energetic and wanting to learn.

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I think that happens in anything you start doing that isn't your main thing in life at the time(meaning studies/work/child etc). It's like hitting a wall with the amount of information you can get in yourself, or the amount of training you can do or anything really. You have covered the basics and once you have, improvements start getting slower and harder to get to, while it becomes increasingly harder to find the time for all that. It's natural. And yes, happens to me with all languages I'm studying, all the time. In fact, I took breaks of each of them at times. I used to be very all or nothing, if I can't spend few hours weekly with the language I leave it completely. Now I wish I had learned 1 word a day from it, I would know 1000 words in Spanish by now probably. And those small changes are what can keep you going, if you trust yourself, because it will be 1 word today- and 3 months and some more later you can have 100 words more in your vocabulary. It sounds little, but little changes make big impact in a long run.

I think the first wall you hit in enthusiasm is because when you start you are building from 0- anything you learn is more than what you started from. But once you have the basics, you start expecting a lot more from yourself, times and times more. You want big changes and the small improvements don't feel so big anymore. 

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Quit learning a language? Yep, I've been tempted to do that many times simply because I couldn't master a part of the language quick enough. But I realized that it doesn't matter how "fast" I get to master the language, it's my being able to take it to the heart. Cheesy, yes, but for me that's what matters most now.

Then again, the same instance is happening with me and my learning Spanish (at least, the elementary difficulty because it's a requirement for school), hahaha

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