The post The NOT To Do List for Successful Language Learners appeared first on Language Mastery.
]]>Languages are acquired, not learned. And acquisition by its very definition happens subconsciously over time given proper input.Which leads us to number 2.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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.
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!
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.
If you don’t see the player below, you need to install Flash in your browser. If you are viewing this on an iOS device, just click the “Download” button below and the episode will stream on your device.
To download the show, right click (or control click for Mac) on the button below and select “Save As” or “Download Linked File”. If you just click the button, it will simply play the file in a new tab or window.
| Download |
Lastly, here is a presentation version of the list. Feel free to download and share the PDF.
| Download the PDF |
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.
| German Translation |
| Korean Translation |
| Polish Translation |
| Russian Translation |
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]]>Trying to maximize fun in language learning is only for lazy learners. Using free web tools like Skype, podcasts, and YouTube to practice foreign languages is only a fad. Using modern crowd-sourced tutoring services like Lang-8, RhinoSpike, LiveMocha, and LingQ are terrible because only those with a PhD are qualified to identify errors in your speaking or writing.
Sorry folks, but the only way to learn a language is attending expensive classes, taking standardized tests, studying complex grammar rules, and memorizing long lists of out-of-context vocabulary. Real language learners know that the process must be painful, tedious, expensive, and time consuming to be legitimate.
Oh, I almost forgot. April Fools!
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And here’s the trailer for The 4-Hour Chef:
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]]>The post Input vs. Output: John’s 2¢ on the Debate appeared first on Language Mastery.
]]>I have sat quietly on the sidelines for some time now, politely listening to both sides of the argument. But it’s time to blow my referee whistle because both teams are “offsides” (Okay John, enough sports analogies already!)
The problem with the whole argument is that input and output are not mutually exclusive components of language learning. You need both. The key is order and balance.
When just starting out in a language, it is important to get as much listening input as possible. Just like when you learned your first language, your brain needs time to get used to the patterns and phonology of the language. But unlike little babies, adults can also rely on reading input to back up what we listen to. This difference (along with the fact we already have fully developed brains and don’t have to wear diapers) gives adults a major leg up on babies learning their first language. For more on the many advantages adult learners have over children, read this excellent article by Benny the Irish Polyglot.
Once you have filled your teapot up with enough listening input, language will naturally want to start pouring out. That’s when it’s time to start speaking; and speaking a lot. But be careful with the “I’ll wait until I’m ready” approach, especially if you are a shy perfectionist. If you fall into this category, years or even decades may pass before you feel “ready”. Depending on your temperament and how many hours you spend a day with the language, a few months, weeks, or even days should arm you with enough exposure to start communicating.
And by all means, if you want to start speaking day one, go for it! Just don’t feel obligated to do so, and don’t let yourself be forced by a tutor or teacher as this often leads to a fear of speaking later on and negative feelings toward the very language you aim to learn.
To get started in a language, try to find short, simple dialogues of actual native speakers with transcripts. Then listen and read, listen and read, and listen and read again as many times as your schedule and sanity allow. Read the dialogues out loud if you want to get your mouth used to the sounds, but keep in mind that you will be mispronouncing things for a while until both your ears and mouth get used to the language.
And I suggest avoiding textbook companion CDs as they tend to offer overly stilted, monotonous dialogues that aim to teach a particular grammar point at the expense of natural communication.
Once you have gone through a few days, weeks, or months of listening and reading this way, start mixing in equal amount of output activities (speaking with friends or tutors, writing a blog post in the foreign language, etc.). It may be nerdy, but it’s a good idea to literally use the stop-watch feature on your iPod touch or phone to time your input and output activities each day. As Peter Drucker says, “What gets measured gets managed.”
If you follow the above regimen, your foreign language skills will progress quickly, efficiently, and most importantly, enjoyably. However, if you follow the advice of the extremists on either side of the input-output debate, you are in for heaps of problems and a world of pain. Here’s why:
Proponents of the “Output is awesome; input is lame” philosophy suggest that learners just “get out there and start communicating with native speakers”. This approach, while certainly sexier than what I prescribe above, has a number of problems:
Bad pronunciation habits develop when you pronounce things how you think they should be pronounced based on your overly limited listening exposure to the language, and your logical, but nonetheless incorrect, assumptions based on how words are spelled but not pronounced.
Because you have a limited vocabulary and only understand little of what is said to you, you will likely attempt to control conversations by keeping them on topics you are familiar with, using phrases and vocabulary you have memorized. All but the most patient interlocutors will get bored or annoyed by such one-sided conversations. Don’t be that guy. But by the same token, don’t miss chances to speak with natives speakers out of fear you won’t be able to communicate. You’d be amazed how much you can communicate with a few words, body language, drawings on a napkin and animated gesticulation…
Many would-be language learners give up because they simply don’t enjoy the process. Much of the angst, tedium and phobias stem from having to speak before one has a chance of performing in the language (and yes, language is a performance). Language teachers are the worst perpetrators, presenting you with new words or phrases one minute, and then expecting you to actually use them the next. Well-meaning friends or language partners are no better, trying to “teach” you new words and phrases and expecting that you can actually use them right away. Assimilation takes time and repetition, so don’t beat yourself up if it takes a few times (or a few hundred times) of hearing or reading a new word or phrase before you can actually use it.
If, however, you spend months and months diligently listening to your iPod and reading online newspapers, but never actually speaking with native speakers (by design or chance), you will understand quite a bit of what goes on around you but will struggle to actually verbalize your thoughts well or have natural exchanges with native speakers. This happens because:
You can’t think your way through pronunciation (believe me, most introverts have tried and failed!). Good pronunciation requires that your ears first get used to the new language (i.e. through getting lots and lots of listening input), and then also getting your lips, tongue and larynx used to new sounds not found in your native tongue, which of course takes lots and lots of talkin’ the talk.
Until you actually try to say or write something, you won’t know what you really know. While you may passively recognize certain words, phrases, idioms or Chinese characters, you may still struggle to say or write them. This is even true for your native language (as I found out when I first started teaching English and was confronted with such conundrums up at the white board as “Wait a second…How in the hell do you spell “misspelled”?)
The more you speak and write, the more you know where the “holes” are in your language cheese, and the easier it will be to fill them with focused study and review.
So as in all things, the extremists tend to be just that: extreme. They tend to get more attention, but the efficacy of their advice tends to be an inverse proportion to their popularity…
To become fluent in a language, just consume a balanced diet, rich in listening and speaking, with plenty of reading and writing sprinkled in for flavor.
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]]>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.”
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