7 posts tagged “language learning”
If you go to my main blog you will see two articles on flow in Japanese and French.
I wonder if people consider it work or fun to learn English or other languages. I look forward to hearing your views..
You may find this post on language learning and play of interest.Anyway, let me know what you think.
Here is a podcast of this text.
“I want to learn to speak English better. I do not like to hear myself pronounce English. I have trouble writing English. I cannot remember my new English vocabulary. I need to improve my English grammar. I have trouble expressing my ideas in English. When I am with native speakers I do not understand much of what they say.”
These are some of the comments that often I hear from our new learners at The Linguist. I had these feelings when I started studying languages. So what is to be done?
My answer is simple. Make the language your friend. In particular, make the words your friends. Let the words be the focus of your learning. Learn to like the words of English. Put all your effort into words, how they sound, how they come together with other words, and all the different meanings they can have. Be patient as you get to know these words. They will be your friends for a long time. Make sure you take the time to meet them often in your listening and reading.
Do not judge or criticize yourself. Do not push yourself. When you feel like listening, listen. Choose content that you like. It may be old familiar content or new content. It may be easy content or difficult content. Make sure you like it enough to listen. Listen many times if you feel like it. Listen only once if you feel like it. Then choose something else. Just follow your interests.
Listen as much as possible to content read by someone whose voice and intonation you like. Imitate the voice and the intonation. Stop the recorder from time to time and replay short sections and imitate the tone and accent. The more you like the content and the voice, the easier it will be to imitate.
Read when you feel like reading. Look at the words and phrases. Notice them. Focus on the ones you have trouble using. Save them. Learn to admire how these letters come together to convey so much meaning. Enjoy the powerful feeling of making sense out of the words of a strange language. Sense the joy of exploring another culture. Try to feel that you are a part of that culture.
When you feel really energetic, try to review lists of words and phrases that you have come across in your listening and reading. You should do this, not in the hope that you will remember them, but because know it will help you to get to know them, gradually. When you get tired of reviewing words, you just go back to listening and reading. Or you can take a rest.
Do not let anything frustrate you. The happier you are, the more positive you feel about the language, the more easily you will be able to imitate the sounds of the language. The less stress you feel, the more easily you will figure out the meaning directly, without translating into your language. The more time you spend listening and reading, the sooner you will be able to express yourself in English in all situations. And your pronunciation will improve. Language learning really is that simple.
I know that this is true because I have done this for nine languages. I am doing it know in order to learn Russian.
Why do people improve their English at The Linguist?
Marketing experts say that if you want to sell a concept or service you need to have a short message that summarizes the benefits that you offer. This message should be so short that you could persuade someone during a short elevator ride. This is known as the "elevator statement".
So what is the elevator statement for The Linguist?
In my view our elevator statement would go something like this.
"Our members improve their English because The Linguist helps them to enjoy learning English. Since they enjoy learning English they put in enough time to improve. The system is flexible, inexpensive and efficient and therefore they get positive results that keep them going."
I would be interested to hear suggestions from others for an elevator statement for The Linguist.
Understanding your brain can help you learn English.
The last three days I was in Northern Alberta for the annual directors' meeting and Christmas Party of the sawmill in which I am a Director and shareholder, Manning Diversified Forest Products Ltd. of Manning Alberta.
It takes nine hours to get there. I fly out of Vancouver, and then have to transfer either in Calgary or Edmonton and then fly north to Grande Prairie.
Grande Prairie is quite far north. When my colleague and Igot to Grande Prairie it was 30 below zero. From Grande Prairie we had to drive 3 hours through vast wide open country of fields, forest and snow. We also have to be careful not to run into deer or moose on the road.
I will be posting some pictures of the area and of the mill Christmas Party in a few days.
I managed to read three books on this trip. Flying is great for catching up on reading. I read "A User's Guide to the Brain" by John Ratey, "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker and "Le Francais, historie d'un combat " by Claude Hagege. I read quickly and skip areas that are of little interest to me.
Pinker subscribes to the Chomsky view that we have an instinctive language grammar inside us. Most of his examples were from English and I felt they were unpersuasive. "A User's Guide to the Brain" is a sort of neuroscience book for amateurs. Certain observations really stuck with me.
One was the idea of neural Darwinism or Darwinism of the brain. Neurons travel freely in the brain, especially in the early stages of development. Our brain remains plastic or flexible through life, changing to cope with the environment we find ourselves in. We can learn new things. We can recover lost functions after brain injury. Neurons compete for space in the brain. The more we train certain functions the better established those connections become.
If a person has a weak eye and a strong eye, the treatment is to close the strong eye to give the weak eye a chance to catch up, or it will not catch up. The connections for neurons in the brain that control the strong eye are too strong to allow new neural connections for the weak eye.
To me this has application for language learning. We not only have to practice the new language we are learning, ( the weak eye) and strengthen those connections in the brain, we also have to try to suppress the neural connections that control our native language,(the strong eye) at least a little bit.
I want to look into the idea of doing overdose days as a technique for achieving a big step forward in language learning. If you want to make a big jump in your Engilsh, plan on spending one whole day where you will not use your native language at all! Listen, read, review words, watch movies, practice pronunciation, listen to songs, talk to yourself, but do it all in English. No native language at all!! Do it for 8-10 hours. Do it again th next day if you can. Do this from time to time.
The objective is not only to practice English and strengthen those neural connections, it also to suppress the connections for your native language in your brain. In the Darwinian brain, your native language connections are too strong and holding back your English neural connections.
I was off the Russian for the last month or so, concentrating on the languages of the countries I was visiting in Europe. I am back on to listening to and reading Russian now. I have essentially not spoken to anyone over the the last nine months of on and off listening to Russian, but feel that my Russian is now at the stage where I can speak comfortably. I just need to work on vocabulary more which I am starting to do with the new Linguist system.
One interesting phenomenon is the following. I have a few hours of Russian on my iPod shuffle. I have listened to it all many times. I shuffle the content. But when phrases are running around in my mind, they are not the phrases that I just finished listening to. They are phrases from content that I listened to very often 6 months ago!
Whatever you put into your mind by reading and listening, stays there. You just need to figure out how to trigger these items to reappear when you need them. You just need to train yourself to be able to retrieve the words and phrases you need.
I should add that I have avoided all explanations of Russian grammar!
I have spent the last two weeks in Spain and Portugal. In Spain I wanted to use my Spanish, but it was difficult to do so. I am traveling with my wife, staying in tourist locations where English is spoken by airline personnel, rental car personnel, and most people we come into contact with. The amount of Spanish I can use in restaurants and stores is quite limited. I did find a book sore operator in Salamanca who was a goldmine of information on his region and I spoke quite a lot with him. I kep on going back to visit! Mostly, though, I had little chance to use Spanish.
On the other hand I was able to immerse myself in listening and reading. Radio, TV, newspapers, a political book and comic CD that I listened to many times. Even in Spain, I was forced to spend most of my effort on input. And when I did speak to Spaniards, I was mostly trying to listen to their phrasing and how they said things. Still I enjoyed it an my Spanish certainly improved.
Portugal is different. I do not speak Portuguese. I can read it with little difficulty since it is so similar to Spanish. The Portuguese in the toursit areas of the Algarve in Southern Portugal speak English very well, better than the Spanish, on average. My theory is that people from smaller countries do better in language learning because they have less of a "language ego", but more on that later.
Here, in Portugal, I rely entirely on listening and reading. When I try to speak Portuguese, Spanish comes out. But I do not mind. I am happy listening and reading. I am gradually getting to used to the language. I bought a Portuguese audio book of Hans Christian Anderson stories, and one on Islam. That is all that was available. I bought The Little Prince by St.Exupery and a book by Paolo Coelho to read. I thought that the Little Prince would be easier, since it is a children's book and I already know the story. I found that the book by Coelho was easier to read because I was more interested to follow the story. Again, as i have said so often, interest, meaningful content is key to langauge learning.
It does not matter to me that I stumble every time I try to speak Portuguese. I enjoy listening and reading. If I stayed here for a few months listening and reading, I would gradually feel confident enough to speak. But I feel no pressure, no pressure to speak at all, let alone correctly. I know that it will eventually come.
In langauge learning it is important to enjoy the journey and not to set unrealistic time lines. If you live where it is not practical to speak, do what you can do, listen and read. Get as good as you can be in listening and reading. When you find yourself in situations where you need to speak, when it is meaningful to speak, you will start to do so, perhaps with many mistakes, at first, and then better and better.
