Good at focusing? You may be bilingual
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- Опубліковано 7 бер 2024
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#bilingual #language #languages #fluent #linguistics #bilingualism #attention #ADHD #focus
I’m bilingual in American English and Taiwanese Mandarin, but goodness I am terrible at focusing, so much so I think I might have undiagnosed ADD. Having said that though, I do find it easy to really dive into a task and stay in the zone…but only while I find it interesting, as I am easily bored. I will say I think I have very good contextual awareness, which I think would help me ace that information relevancy test.
I would say that I can focus so well because, while learning my other languages, enormous discipline was required.
That assumes I "narrate" everything I think of in a language; which I don't. When I see an orange there's nothing in my mind that blurts out it's name in any language; I just think about it visually or as an idea. Thinking about what it's called to say it out loud is a separate extra step, not something I do automatically or have to suppress.
Translating my thoughts to Norwegian (my native language) feels no different from translating my thoughts into English.
(Also my ability to hyper focus some times and other times have no focus is because of my ADHD and autism, not whatever languages I can translate my thoughts into)
ADHD has entered the chat
What type of bilingualism are we talking about? 2 implicitly acquired languages, or are the L2,3,4 and so on explicitly learned?
Exactly my question, what is bilingualism? It is speaking languages from very early childhood or acquiring languages at a later age?
@@BangkokZed As far as I remember from when I studied linguistics, it was mostly used for when someone grows up acquiring 2 languages. However this was years ago (so my memory is rusty) and I have since heard it used both ways. I know this didn't answer the question, but at least it is a step towards trying to.
No. From personal experience - no.
I was good at focusing before all that.
I think it mostly comes down to who raised you from ages 0 to 5 . They didn't start teaching me other languages until I was 7 - by then I was a focus machine. Only one language spoken at home. It was all the other stuff plus developmental games when I was a baby and adults who are chill+ nurturing + do trance practices themselves.
If anything multiple languages can introduce confusion and slow you down and make it more difficult to concentrate as you switch language tracks.
Never rely on weak side effects on awareness and focus ability - actually practice it directly
The way doctor tell old women to do resistance training to stop osteoporosis you have to practice awareness to have a decent task focus.