Learning for Necessity, Learning for Curiosity

On this site, I've written more than once about motivation. Over at AspiringPolyglot, Kelly has been coming to grips with Dutch, because she lives in the Netherlands now. If one wished to learn a language, it would be perfect: immersion in the environment, some time to settle in, resources available all over the place in the language. But what if you aren't excited by the language?

Working in a language school, I meet lots of people who are learning English because their boss sent them here or they're here with their spouses. People can sometimes demonstrate amazing resourcefulness in finding ways to survive without learning the local language. But it's not energy very well spent.

It is therefore heartening to see the AspiringPolyglot starting Dutch in earnest. You can read about how it's going and what's new for learning Dutch at, logically enough, LearningDutch.