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For you audiophiles (or non-native speakers of English wanting to practice your listening skills), here is an audio version of the not to do list.

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Here is a transcript of the above audio, though I accidentally made a few minor changes while reading out the list.

1. Do NOT spend more than 5% of your study time on grammar, translation, vocabulary lists or any other overt information about the language.

Languages are acquired, not learned. And acquisition by its very definition happens subconsciously over time given proper input.Which leads us to number 2.

2. Do NOT spend time on materials that are too difficult or don’t interest you.

Motivation is one of the greatest keys to success in foreign language learning, and motivation’s favorite fuel is interest. There is a wealth of free language learning content available today; you need simply look.

3. Do NOT study in long, infrequent sessions.

Behind motivation, consistency is the most important factor in language learning. If you are strapped for time (and who isn’t?), it is far better to study a little bit everyday than doing marathon study sessions a few times a month. For example, if you only have 2 hours free per week to commit to language studies, it is far better to do 20 minutes per day, 6 days a week than doing the whole 2 hours on one day.

4. Do NOT worry about speaking too soon.

Although oral fluency is certainly the goal of most language learners, it takes the brain some time to assimilate enough input to be able to produce meaningful output. Babies listen actively to the language around them for up to 2 years before uttering a single meaningful word. Adults can get to the output stage much earlier if they follow the advice on this site, but they should not force themselves (or let themselves be forced) to speak before they are ready. This is perhaps the single greatest problem with formal language instruction: students are expected to speak long before they are ready, creating a great deal of anxiety and diminishing the student’s motivation and interest.

5. Do NOT memorize vocabulary out of context.

To have any chance of retaining or using new words, they must be heard or read (preferably the former) many, many times within a meaningful situation. “Narrow reading” is a good way to increase the repetition of key words in a meaningful way.

6. Do NOT try to learn new words, alphabets, ideographic characters or spelling using “rote”memory.

We have 5 senses at our disposal: use them! Integrate taste, touch, smell, sound and movement as much as possible. Use “imaginative memory” to visualize connections, stories, objects, etc. The crazier the story, the easier it will be to imprint in long term memory.

7. Do NOT overly rely on the written word.

Whenever possible, try to listen to a piece first before reading it. This trains you to rely on your ears first, and better follows the natural order of acquisition (remember: you learned to speak your first language long before you learned to read it!)

8. Do NOT look up words before making at least one full pass through each reading or listening material (or each section for longer pieces.)

Only once you have gone through once or even twice, then go back and look up words you don’t know. When you don’t interrupt the “semantic flow”, it’s easier to get a feel for the big picture. And this prevents us word-nerds from getting lost in unrelated vocabulary and new linguistic connections.

9. Do NOT let the “affective filter” put a damper on your language learning.

The affective filter is a fancy word for a simple and intuitive concept: your emotions and psychological state significantly affect your performance in a foreign language (or any skill-based act for that matter.) If you are nervous, angry, hungry, tired, or preoccupied with the fight you had last night with your significant other, your ability to speak well in a foreign language will go down faster than the current stock market. On the other hand, I am sure you have noticed that a few brewskies can significantly improve your ability to converse in a foreign tongue. Why? Because booze (like meditation, exercise, and experience) helps lower inhibitions and boost social skills like verbal communication. If your teacher makes you feel nervous or stupid, fire their ass. If your language partner does not see the logic in your incorrect, but nevertheless intelligent errors, replace them. You will never make any real progress if you are afraid to speak and are not free to make all the wonderfully logical, albeit incorrect, utterances that define both infant and adult language acquisition.

10. Do NOT forget to have some fun!

Language learning takes time, but it needn’t be difficult. If you follow the tips listed above and throughout the site, and approach language learning with a smile instead of a grimace, you too WILL succeed!

Translations

Some very kind Foreign Language Mastery readers have taken the trouble to translate the list into their native language. If you would like to translate the list into an additional language, please let me know and I will post the link here.

1) Why most learners fail to learn foreign languages depsite years of effort.
2) Tips on fostering the right attitude for successful language learning.
3) Advice on what materials to use for maximum efficacy and efficiency.

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However, language schools can also be a major impediment to the very goal you go there to achieve: learning a foreign language as quickly and efficiently as possible. This may come as a shock to those who have been conditioned to believe that classrooms are the only place, or at least the best place, to learn a language.

Here are the top ten disadvantages of formal, classroom-based language learning (at least in my view):

1. You don’t need a teacher or school to learn a foreign language

There is an important distinction to be made between learning and schooling. Those who believe they need formal training in a language are making the false assumption that the two are one and the same. To reach fluency in a language, you need to acquire a great deal of tacit knowledge, that special kind of internalized, experience-based information that you may not be conscious of. The sad truth is that most teachers focus on explicit knowledge (e.g. facts about the language such as grammar rules), which has very little to do with one’s ability to speak a language. Explicit knowledge is easier to teach and test, however, which probably explains why it makes up the bulk of school curricula.

2. You don’t need to learn grammar rules

At some point in history, the education establishment convinced society that they needed to be “taught” languages. This was quite an amazing feat considering that all human beings are endowed by evolution (or God if you prefer) with the ability to automatically acquire any language they hear in adequate quantities. The problem for most learners (and the reason they buy into the “I need more schooling!” mentality) is that they never get an adequate quantity of language input. The irony is that this input deficiency is often caused by the very classes that are supposed to provide it. With a focus on memorizing grammar rules, most learners end up spending the vast majority of their time learning about a language instead of actually learning the language itself.

3. Tests and grades do more harm than good

Ideally, formalized testing and grading systems motivate students by providing competition and objective feedback. In reality, however, most grading is far from objective (teachers tend to reward students they like and penalize those they don’t), and tests do little more than demonstrate one’s ability to memorize facts. Feedback is important, but it needn’t be in the form of traditional testing or grades. Ask your teachers to evaluate your performance by giving specific examples of things you said right or wrong, not with multiple choice tests.

4. Classes go as fast as the slowest person

The bigger the class, the wider the range of abilities, and the slower the class will have to go. Schools know that students are more likely to stick with something too easy but will quickly throw in the towel if something is too difficult. And despite placement tests and numerous class levels, it can be very difficult to appropriately group students by their actual skill in the language. With finite time slots mutually convenient for all students in a given group, some students will inevitably be placed in classes that are above or below their actual ability level. Also, placement tests come with the same problems mentioned in # 3: they test one’s memory and knowledge (especially of the written word).

5. Reading out loud does not improve your pronunciation or speaking ability

Teachers often have students read out loud to allegedly “practice pronunciation.” The truth is that your pronunciation improves only from massive amounts of listening input and speaking output. Reading aloud does little more than show what words you are unfamiliar with and often reinforces mispronunciations instead of fixing them. While some teachers genuinely believe in the read aloud method, others just use it as a zero prep activity to count down the clock.

6. Oral drills do not help you learn how to speak; they only demonstrate your ability to do so

Just as reading aloud does not improve your pronunciation or reading skills, oral drills do little for your speaking fluency. We improve our speaking ability through increasing the quantity and quality of listening input (e.g. podcasts about your favorite topics), and then applying what we have heard in natural, contextualized conversations.

7. You will be encouraged to move up to the next level even if you aren’t ready

This is all about business. Schools make more money when you buy new books, take level tests and re-enroll in more classes.

8. Your progress reports are meaningless

Teachers hate writing progress reports. They are usually an exercise in creative writing, not meaningful feedback on your actual performance and progress in the language. Not knowing what to say (and not wanting to waste time on a task they don’t get paid for!), many teachers will just cut and paste canned comments, or come up with general, vague statements and overly technical descriptions of your grammar and pronunciation problems.

9. You should be the one who chooses the material

Despite being widely used, standardized textbooks are bad tools for a number of reasons. They build on the myth that schooling equals learning, as discussed in # 1 above. They lull students into a false sense of accomplishment, where completion of chapters is confused with actual internalization of the content. And with content written not to entertain but to avoid offending anyone, they are typically boring and sterile. Interest in the material is essential for effective language learning, so make sure to choose schools or teachers that allow you to choose materials that float your boat.

10. It doesn’t take years to learn a foreign language well if you do it right

If you like the language you are learning, believe you can learn it, and get as much listening and reading input as possible, you will learn the language well enough to communicate in a matter of 6 months to a year. Most students, however, end up paying tuition for years and years despite a lack of progress. Students blame themselves (backed up by the bogus comments found in their progress reports), not realizing that the problem lies not in them, but with their school’s materials and methodologies.

The trick to learning a language is to actually learn the language.

This may sound obvious, but it points to the fundamental (and so often under-appreciated) reason why most adults fail to learn a foreign language no matter how many years they sit in a classroom or live where the language is spoken:

Most adult learners spend nearly all of their study time reading and learning about their target language, with very little time truly listening to or reading in the language.

If you doubt this, you need only look at a typical foreign language classroom, textbook, audio CD or podcast intended for native English speakers: with a few exceptions, nearly all of them present 75 to 90% of the course in English, not the target language. The same is true across the globe, though is perhaps most pronounced in Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea where materials intended for English learners are nearly all in Japanese, Mandarin and Korean respectively.

This approach is certainly more comfortable for adult learners (and therefore allows publishers and schools to sell more courses), but it is a recipe for failure. Just look at how few people emerge from years or even decades of formal language study unable to say more than “My name is…” or “One beer, please.”

You can study grammar rules and memorize vocabulary until you are blue in the face, but this will do little for your ability to actually speak the language. Researchers like Victor S. Ferreira (Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego) have shown that this is due to a significant difference in memory types: most formal language study focuses almost entirely on “declarative memory” (e.g. information and facts), while the ability to actually form grammatical sentences off-the-cuff is determined by “procedural memory”, the same mechanism that allows you to drive a manual transmission or swing a golf club without “thinking” about it. (See How Does the Brain Form Sentences?  in the April 2009 edition of Mind Magazine and don’t miss my interview with Dr. Ferreira, available as a free bonus to Master Japanese readers). If you are terrible at a foreign language (or golf for that matter…), it’s not because you are stupid or uncoordinated, it’s simply because you haven’t practiced enough yet to develop the necessary procedural memories.

Or as Khatzumoto of All Japanese All the Time so eloquently puts it:

“You don’t suck at the language; you’re just not used to it yet.”

More and more, it is becoming extremely beneficial to know a foreign language in today’s tough job market. Any kind of edge helps now more than ever in this economy, and one of the most sought-after and respected skills that can give you the upper hand is knowing a foreign language. Having expertise in another language only opens up more doors and opportunities — and offers more perks at those jobs.

If you need more convincing, read on for these reasons why a second language will positively impact your career.

Foreign languages are in demand.

The world is becoming a smaller place, and as such, it is important for companies to be able to communicate with clients or constituents in their native languages. For people looking into business-oriented endeavors, Chinese and Japanese are highly sought after, and for those working in social services, being able to speak Spanish will give them a huge leg up.

It shows ambition and aptitude.

Even if you are not applying for a position that will require you to use your language skills, it still looks excellent on a resume. It proves you had the ambition to undertake such an intense, time-consuming endeavor, and have the aptitude to learn something that is so difficult for many people. Plus, there is still the beneficial stigma that people who speak foreign languages are more intellectual and better educated than those who do not, so that certainly won’t hurt either.

Face less competition.

In a tough economy, successfully finding work is often all about having skills others don’t and being able to fill niches others can’t because of a lack of skill and experience. With a foreign language under your belt, you’l be able to fill niches the majority of jobseekers will not, and so will have less competition to face and better chances at landing a position as a translator, teacher, copywriter, or any other of a multitude of jobs that require expertise in a given language.

Open up new doors.

Conversely, just as the competition will thin out, the number of positions you will be able to fill will only grow exponentially as you will be able to apply for the positions you did not have the required language skills for previously. When looking for work, it is essential not to limit your opportunities so as to give yourself the best chance to find enjoyable (and good paying) work. Broaden your horizons and your career opportunites by learning a new language.

Be an essential team member.

While working as part of any team within your new position, you will be an integral and respected member as your language skills will be necessary to success. Relish being a key player at work and having an essential helping hand in all projects you are involved in.

Increase travel opportunities.

If your company needs to send someone to meet with clients in a foreign country but no one speaks the language well except you, who do you think they are going to send? With a foreign language under your belt, particularly one in high demand areas like Spanish, Chinese, or Japanese, you will increase your chances of having your company pay for you to visit the places you have always dreamed of visiting. Hopefully you’ll be able to sneak away a minute or two to see the sights and practice your language skills with the locals.

Joseph Gustav is a guest blogger for Pounding the Pavement and a writer on call center management for Guide to Career Education.