How to learn a foreign language. Thoughts of a casual learner. Part 1.
Introduction.
If one day you decide to learn a foreign language, there is no problem to get some guidance. Your bookstore and the Internet a full of textbooks, articles and other material to help you. What common to most of those materials is that they are written by professionals. Teachers or linguists: it's their job to bring you the knowledge in the best form. However, if you look closer, you will notice that the advice is coming from another world. Of course they had to learn the language somehow and have this great teaching experience, so you WILL need it. But what you need too is the advice from someone who is on your side, someone who has more learning than teaching experience. This is why I decided to tell about my way of learning. I call it casual because most of what I know today was not learnt with any system. If you agree that those foreign language lessons we take in school are not really serious, and note that after the school (and university), I did not take any real language courses but preferred doing things myself, you may probably find interesting to hear how did I manage to have more or less acceptable knowledge of three foreign languages, English, French and German, being just a normal person with no exceptional results in my school years. I'm not an expert in any of those three (as you may see reading this in my English), but the whole process makes so much fun and brings so much interesting experience that I could not stop myself from sharing this with others. Thanks to the Internet, that can't be easier those days. And thanks to the Internet I see so many opportunities to learn that I am thinking sometimes about learning one more language.If you are reading this, you've probably already decided that you have to do something, learn this or that, so you don't need any help in setting the goals. But let's think again on why does all that start and try to answer the question of:
Why to learn a foreign language?
When we are told in our school that tomorrow we are going to start learning a foreign language, just few of us can't sleep being overexcited. For most of us it's a new uneasy task and often it makes no fun. I could count to ten in English at the age of seven after my mother taught me. But when three years later we started that at school, for some period my marks were shameful. I don't remember what happened - maybe I did not like something, but gradually I started to catch up. In a couple of years, my lazy schoolmates were asking me how do they do this of that. Obviously, that depends of the teacher. Some can wake everyone up, but others reach only part of the class. Years later my buddy was banging his head because of the time he lost by not learning the language in the school, for free. But he needed it then, and some private teacher needed money, and the deal was easy.That's why I am not writing this for kids - it would be too difficult to convince them if even a professional could not manage their interest. But if you are old enough to have a NEED to speak and to learn another language, maybe you can get some motivating ideas here. Look: your kids. After getting bad marks for foreign language they curse the teacher with words that are completely unknown to you. Enough to make you suspicious and wake a desire to learn at least the SAME words. And correct your kids when they spell THOSE words incorrectly. I always recall the pearl I've seen on a wall in my university that said something about "son of a beach". Oh, that was long ago, and the market for language schools was not so saturated as now, when they have probably switched to teaching pets to bark and miaow in foreign languages.
But let the kids do it on their own so that you can get back to planning your family budget. Oh, regarding the budget: Didn't you think how important is it, speaking some of those funny languages to improve your budget balance? Just imagine how much of your hard earned money will be saved on buying, let's say, your new family jet if you kick the middleman and go negotiate the purchase price right to the Airbus assembly plant in Toulouse, France? Yes, we know that they probably speak English in Toulouse, France, as good as in Toulouse, Kentucky, USA. But don't give them any chance to trick you. The right word, if you know it, unlike your neighbour of course, can save you thousands of hundreds of whatever you count in your bank!
You should also never forget that knowledge is indispensable when travelling, for business or on vacation. It's not about booking a hotel. Hotels can now afford installing those nice automated check-in machines that let you begin your relaxed evening by spending fifteen minutes just to select the language you want it to speak. (Yet another fifteen minutes later those machines normally spew your card by saying that they don't want it. In all twenty languages loaded into the machine.)
And if you ever get to some distant place where they don't have check-in machines, so that you are forced to speak to humans, you notice on your first attempt that centuries old advice of "speaking louder" to make them understand is not working anymore. The thing is, the guys living in those distant places are so tired now of the crowds of loud tourists, starting with Alexander the Great, Columbus and Darwin, that they employ another centuries old advice: cotton balls for their ears. So, unless you show signs of trying to speak their language, you'll look to them like this poor fish they caught to serve you tonight.
Seriously, it's lots lots of fun to talk to the locals in their language, especially if this works on your side. And it opens your eyes, not only your ears, to different cultures, for the language (apart from skin color and other racial attributes) is one of the main things that differ between you and them. Read on how to get it working and how to have fun.
What language to learn?
Most of us start learning some other language not later than school. Whether you are a student or you or your parents have simply (simply?) relocated to another country (I'm not going to ask my kids), you rarely have a choice of your first foreign language. So, while you can indefinitely master this first one, you may one day face a choice of starting with something else. What should it be? Apart from planning to spend a week or two in some remote location and therefore accepting the necessity to learn how to communicate with some cannibals' tribe just for fun of it, think about what can the knowledge give you. Want to understand the lyrics of your favourite song-of-the-day? (We'll cover this later). Reading your favourite authors without betting on translators? This one is good. This way, to my surprise, several years ago I have discovered many new episodes in Gerald Durrell's books, after having first read an "unabridged" translation.Another way to choose: Think about the potential satisfaction you'll likely to get when speaking the language with people that appreciate it. This emotional aspect will as well be covered later.
Don't get fooled by your fear of difficulties. Think about the feeling of getting to the top, be it some hill in a nearby park or "the real thing". That's it - once you get there, the reward is great. Several years ago something happened to my ear so that I could not hear anything for a couple of weeks. When it started to get back, I went out enjoying the wind flowing around me just like if it was some invisible nirvana inducing substance. I would say, when you start to understand something and start distinguishing words from that once incomprehensible stream, it feels goooood!
You can also be confused by some kind of imaginary difficulties that can even hide the real ones. It's always funny to see people believing the myth that the main hurdle in learning the languages like Russian or Greek is to get through those strange letters. Come on, do you really think that if you are used to Western (Latin) letters, if will help you to master, let's say, Polish? (With exception of letters, its structure and concepts are not that easier than those of Russian).
And how: The best ways to learn a foreign language, or "Pick your poison please!"
I believe that those days learning the language got much cheaper. It used to be expensive, but free market does its work. But as financing problem has become easier to solve, because of the same free market we are facing now with the difficulty of selecting the right handbooks or language training courses. How do we do that?While I think my English was good enough after finishing the school and then getting more of that in the university, I was proud of it until the day I had to start using it at work. Not reading those short phrases in technical documentation, written by someone who took an ESL course just a week before. I mean the real use, when you have to operate your tongue simultaneously thinking about the new word you've learnt last night when seeing some movie "Made in California" and trying not to let this word out. Before that I used to listen to foreign short wave radio stations (there was no WWW-dot thing at that time) and it went well, but looks like a joke now that I have learnt two more languages so that I can switch between them, unintentionally inside the same phrase. Forget to get what I'm saying exactly - it's incomprehensible. Fortunately for me, the other side easily filters those "inserts" just like a noise.
So came French and German after English. I attribute the first one equally to a good handbook and the emotional response from native speakers. And the second one - exclusively to the immersion, when you don't really have a choice but learn it. Out of four handbooks only one was a pleasant experience. That's why let's start cursing the books available on the free market, before you decide to invest your money in at least one of them.
There are two standard curricula existing for foreign language handbooks those days. Any "alternative" handbooks are normally rejected by the Governments of the respective countries and sometimes land on a black market, sold by used furniture dealers as a decoration for bookshelves.
Curriculum 1. It starts with showing you the A, B, C and the rest. The next page is full with pictures copied from books for three year olds, to save on graphic artists. Ends with a fundamental literary work for self-study, like "The Capital" from Karl Marx for German. We all know this curriculum because it reminds us our school days.
Curriculum 2. Unit 1. A suit-clad gentleman sitting in the business class of a commercial airliner, reading a foreign language handbook. Next to him, apparently due to overbooking, a handsome lady reading a tabloid in that foreign language... Unit 2. The foreign language handbook dumped into "old paper" bin, both are sipping drinks in the airport bar trying to understand each other. The last unit ends with a court scene, bad words, tears, followed by two pages of law-related terms.
Sounds familiar? I tried both, and the very rare intermediate variations too. I pay the greatest respect to the Curriculum 1. Old and tried. How do you think all those native speakers learn their own language? Definitely not with the airport bar scenes. The most important of all, those books teach you real things and nothing of that establishment junk. When learning French, my book was the "Course of the French language and civilization" of Gaston Mauger. It was printed from a restored copy from 50s. I never forget the moment I saw the fish sellers in Marseille, live, just as it was described and pictured in then 40 years old book! You won't get that excited by the lady with tabloid sitting in the business class.
Well, I have to admit that I did not mention the third kind of books, called "the brand new thing". Those are actually not only books; many other educational items fall into this category, like computer software, video or audio courses. The main characteristic is that the authors claim that they have somehow invented a brand new method of learning a foreign language, and this method can make even the most dumb person on the planet speak foreign language fluently in incredibly short period of time. The Web site where those courses are sold is typically enriched with customer testimonials that read like this:
Hi! My name is John! You are just one step away from getting yourself the best ever foreign language course! After having spent just one week with this brand new technology of learning French I was able to visit France and even return home safely, escorted by a flock of dancers from one Paris night club! You should get the course now, while supplies last (and that night club is still in business)!
Sounds very attractive. Because it has to! The main goal of the authors is to sell their stuff. Their goal does not account for different abilities or presence (or absence) of motivation. Listen: motivation is the key. Fun, practice and everything else will come later. There are no easy or magical solutions. Okay, there is one: physical force, like in "The money or your life!" If you feel you need this one to get you motivated, get yourself the most cheap foreign language textbook you find in your bookstore and give the rest to some butcher that will visit you regularly with his equipment to check your progress and warm himself up.
Now, assuming that you have decided what kind of curriculum you want, you have to choose between several books available. Any idea? One of the book I tried while climbing the cliffs of German was so proud of itself and the organization designing the courses (let's say, Lingopuke Ltd.), that the trademarked name was mentioned at least three times on each page:
In a bus:
- What's that man reading, a book, isn't it?
- Yes! A book! A Lingopuke book.
- And what are those little twins reading?
- I think, a Lingopuke book too.
- Do you see the driver reading a book as well?
- Sure. It HAS to be a Lingopuke book. This is the best book you can get!
- The driver? DRIVER?!
No need to say I dumped the book after several learning "units". At that time, I needed to get my driver license done and did not want any distractions. (Luckily, the written exam part could be taken in my native language.)
You may have noticed that I am a little bit obsessed with books. This is correct. Apart from rare attempts of collective learning at work (that didn't bring any good), I am a strong believer in self-teaching, and the books are an important element of that. Frankly speaking, I haven't finished any of those good or bad books completely, simply because I felt that it would be wiser to invest more time in self-paced practice, rather than sitting doing exercises. "Self-paced" is another important word. While I like some things to be organized, I hate the idea of learning the language in an organized manner. Not that I don't have enough time to visit the language school, but I think learning works best if it matches your mood. Therefore anyone who has some minimum of self-organizing skills doesn't need the additional help. After all, the courses fees can buy you all the best Lingopuke books on the planet. Also not to be undervaluated, the fun your family members get when you sit at home mumbling all those strange words, suspiciously similar to those painted in the nearby underground passage by teenagers!
Note to those who believe that after having paid the course (in advance), the money that are gone will be the best motivating factor. This is plain false. One day you can to some point when you will be ready to pay even more but to get out of the class.
Language practice done right.
The amount of knowledge you get with your textbook or with any teacher is just right for the kick-start. But even that won't stay longer if not helped by practice. Practice is equally important for both supporting the learning process and developing your language skills further. There are many many fun ways to practice a foreign language, you just have to select whatever you will like.When I was past the learning phase of English, which means, I was out of university and was at my first permanent job that by the way, required good knowledge of foreign languages (English or French), I made my first try of reading a book in English. That was actually a translation into English but by that time, finding a real English book was not easy for me. I did not mean to practice some particular skill, it was more for fun, though it was not easy. I decided to go the hard way and stop at each word I didn't know. You will see later that this contradicts with my advice of skipping insignificant to help the general understanding without losing the speed. This was not the case when I wanted a quick relief. Looking each unknown word in my dictionary was very slow, and I did not write the new words down, so it happened all the time that I had to look the same word up again and again, until it got imprinted, at least throughout the time I am reading the book. When I finished, I must say I felt much more confident in understanding the written English.
Well, written language is a relatively easy part, even if YOU have to write it. What about practicing spoken foreign language? You also have many choices, and recent years brought us even more. Let's learn just to understand what those guys are saying.
Getting practice with mass media and music.
My first big thing to do with English was reading the manual for our Hi-Fi system. That was in mid-80s, and most Hi-Fi systems were real devices with many many controls, not like today's junk, so the manual was a big epic book. I've just finished my third year of English classes at school, and when I was done with the manual I felt myself like a hero. As I said above, I did something similar again years later, while reading a book and stopping at EACH word unknown to me and looking it up in my dictionary. Well, back to Hi-Fi, when we get it working, the next thing we try is of course to understand what are those cryptic words we hear with the music in background. While it's not the most effective way, I believe that many will like it. It's very easy now as you can find just any lyrics on the Internet if they are not included with the CD. Before the Internet, you could still find other ways. At that time (eighties again), I remember the Voice of America (then mostly short wave service of US government targeting foreign listeners) offering English radio lessons, with some sessions being walkthroughs of currently popular songs. Those were songs known to everyone, like "I just called to say I love you" by Stevie Wonder. Lyrics themselves are not enough, and when radio hosts provide lots of explanations to what the thing is about and it runs for 15 minutes instead of four, it should be valuable and fun. I could not find anything similar those days on the Internet.Even with the Internet, radio is still alive however. You can get yourself a small pocket radio that works on short waves to take with you on vacation. It does wonders if you get used to the bad sound quality. You need to get used to that anyways because in most of situations you won't have a chance to eliminate background noise and ask your partner to speak clearly. Most of international broadcasters have language lessons. Internet helps greatly because you can download whole lessons to your computer (in MP3 or another format) and even get transcripts - whole foreign language lessons for free! The next version of this article will get a "recommended links section" for several languages. When I haven't heard about the Internet yet, and basic English lessons were not needed anymore, I have found VOA Special English to be especially great. They present latest news and then continue with general topics in a clearly spoken and slow and simple language. (Of course, this is not English, but American, but in this case it doesn't really matter).
Now, as we have filled our ears with radio, let's try to have them helped with out eyes. What can be quite appealing for many is watching movies in the language you are learning, accompanied with subtitles. While it's not my preferred way, because subtitles tend to distract me so that it affects both visual and verbal apprehension, I have recorded a couple of films I like so that I can watch them several times. There is one more catch: you simply can't place FULL subtitles on the TV screen, so they cut many things sometimes and it can be confusing. Of course, it doesn't happen if you are watching a special educational programme. One good example I know of is French language television, TV5, available from satellites and cable around the world. They often show "real" films or, if not, soap operas with subtitles.
Each university that has foreign language curricula had lots of foreign language videos since long time. You could get some in your library or buy your own of course, but in both cases the choice was quite limited. Until the DVDs came. Most of popular films you get on a DVD, especially in Europe, will have soundtrack in different languages, which you can switch up to your choice. Try watching a film in your native language, switch to foreign then. Works especially good if foreign language is the actual language of the film.
This all was a kind of "passive" foreign language practice. How can you start to communicate, beyond the classes? Unless you have a friend or a neighbour that is going to help you, you need help from strangers. Fortunately, the Internet breaks any hurdles for that. You can easily communicate and easily find people who want to communicate with the sole goal of learning the foreign language. This works especially good if you are doing a kind of "cultural exchange", you offering help in learning your native language and the other party doing you the favour of guiding you in their. This was possible since the 1990s but the market exploded when high-speed Internet became common and so many of us started using services like Skype. If you are still living in an old age, spend some time reading about Skype and Internet telephony. Using Skype in computer-to-computer mode is completely free, and what important is that since the popularisation of those services, finding someone to talk to is very easy. Just visit the Skype forum "Learning foreign languages", where you can browse through the messages of people seeking help or offering their help in learning some language. You can arrange how are you going to do that, perhaps one session in one language and then switching the next time. There is more. You don't even need to go to the forum and find someone. Just keep the Skype software running in the mode "Skype me" to let anyone call you. But of course, in this case you have to be prepared for some really strange calls from people who just want to chat without necessarily having a goal of learning a foreign language.
Thinking foreign languages.
You did writing and speaking practice. What about continuing them both just in your imagination? I find this a very important part of practicing the language. Many situations you will be in are actually predictable and you can, with your imagination, build their potential transcripts as a way to prepare yourself. If you are going to a meeting, or planning a shopping, looking up the possible words in a dictionary is very helpful but not enough. Build a live dialog, several of them, think in actual phrases, what are you going to say - all in your head. Not on paper - this limits you and takes much more time.When is the best time of doing this exercise? Obviously you don't dedicate any time exclusively for this. Whenever you are idle and don't need to pay much attention to the environment. The best examples are: waiting for something (in a line) or travelling with public transport. If you are having a meal alone, it will work too. You just have to relax and build a dialogue (or monologue).
Click for part two of "Foreign Language Learning, The Casual Way."