There seem to be two parts of learning languages that I enjoy - the first is simply the ability to communicate with others in a way that can at times feel more "personal". I think this is because of use of words, phrases or even full conversations in a language that the other person can speak as a way of experiencing a commonality between us, and the acknowledgment that this commonality is not universal for all people. The second reason I enjoy learning languages is due to the theoretical aspect - learning the rules and methods of conjugation, sentence structure etc. From doing the multiple intelligence survey and looking at the FIRE model, this second reason makes a lot of sense. I had verbal/linguistic and logical and as my top two "intelligences", which relates directly to the structural and methodical approach to learning grammatical rules. Though I felt that I associated with all four of the categories, I always associated strongly with boxes in any category that related to the enjoyment of learning as well as boxes regarding systematic, graphical, structural and logical thinking.
I have used this sort of approach every time I begin learning a new language. For me, to begin to feel confident in the language, I want to know the grammar rules very well, such as sentence structure and verb conjugation. However this approach has only proven successful for me to reach a very specific type of "proficiency" in any language, being that I can create/say basic sentences with extreme ease but cannot use the variety of linguistic abilities necessary to even mimic more nuanced ways of speaking in the language. For example, aside from English, I speak Spanish the best. I can have long conversations discussing many topics with minimal hesitation when forming sentences etc., but the way I form sentences do not necessarily mimic the way a native speaker word phrase the same thing - my phrasing is very rudimentary and rigid in structure - I will almost always use the exact same sentence structure for any phrase of the given tense I am using. Though I am happy that I am able to easily create basic sentences in most of the languages I can speak, I feel that this approach to language learning has limited the ability to speak more "naturally" (except for those cases where it is natural to use rudimentary sentence structures.) I think a way to improve upon this while accommodating for my learning style (reading/writing and audio) would be to make more of a conscious effort in not only understanding the logical meaning what a native speaker is saying/has written, but to make a conscious effort in analyzing how they said what they said, and become familiar with the different ways the same meaning can be expressed.
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