How To Best Learn A Langauge

Good language learners are fabricated, not born. Anyone can become a good linguistic communication learner, or a better language learner. Our ability to learn a language is influenced by our mental attitude and the time we put in, but what separates good linguistic communication learners from less successful ones is the way nosotros discover different aspects of a new language.

Let's outset by reviewing the three keys to language learningrand.

You have to be motivated, to similar the linguistic communication and to recollect yous tin can succeed. Without a positive mental attitude towards the language, the process and your ain ability to succeed, yous probably won't succeed. If yous are positive, you are more probable to put in the time needed to succeed. Y'all volition besides eagerly take in the linguistic communication without resisting it.

You accept to put in at to the lowest degree an hour a day. For me this consists mostly of listening to mp3 files when I have the time, while doing other tasks, and so information technology is really quite piece of cake to fit in. I also read and focus on words and phrases in my reading for another 30 minutes or then most days.

Information technology can be done. No excuses. You also take to accept that information technology will take months and peradventure years to become fluent, depending on how much time you put in every day. You have to be realistic. It is a long road, so settle in and be prepared to relish it.

To learn a language nosotros need to notice what is happening in the language. We tin can't learn what nosotros don't observe. Yet, to find phenomena we need to feel them, over and over. What we don't notice at start, we will eventually observe, nether the correct circumstances.

As the Sufi saying goes, "y'all can only acquire what you already know". You demand to experience a language through lots of exposure before y'all can hope to learn it. At one time I idea that noticing was a skill that needed to be developed. I no longer believe that. Noticing is something we do naturally, if we get plenty exposure and if we want to observe.

Starting To Notice

All languages have their unique difficulties with regard to pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. It takes a while to get the gender of nouns correct in the Romance languages, the cases in German or Slavic languages, the tones in Chinese, or the apply of articles in English. English language spelling doesn't always reflect how words are pronounced. In many languages like Russian, French, English or European Portuguese, vowel sounds modify or disappear depending on the stress within a word or phrase.

When we offset in a new language, we don't notice much. Even if aspects of the pronunciation or grammer are explained to u.s.a., we don't notice these very clearly when we first listen and read. So, slowly, some of the more obvious things start to concenter our attention.

It might exist pronunciation, how the writing system differs from our own language, gender, the mode certain words change or word order. If we notice these things, we get a trivial curious nearly them. Nosotros may even go to a grammer source for an explanation. We start to get used to seeing them and hearing them as we read and listen. Once nosotros are used to certain things, nosotros showtime to notice other things.

Nosotros don't remember consciously noticing much when nosotros caused our first linguistic communication. Nosotros had so much exposure that our brains just naturally picked upwardly the patterns from our surroundings. The noticing procedure is a footling more conscious in acquiring a second linguistic communication, only because nosotros are more deliberate about it. We acquired our beginning linguistic communication without really wanting to. It only happened.

Comprehensible Input

Noticing happens when we go a lot of exposure to a language. It tin't help but happen. The brain is programmed to notice things and create patterns, every bit Manfred Spitzer points out in his book Learning: The Homo Brain and the School of Life . Spitzer as well makes it clear that we learn best when nosotros have repetition and novelty.

Let'south see how this works. Imagine a forest with many paths and different kinds of trees and plants. The commencement time y'all walk through the forest yous are just concerned almost not getting lost and don't notice the different trees and plants very conspicuously. The more than you walk in the woods, the more than comfortable yous are there, the more than things you notice. If you have different entries to the forest, and walk the paths in dissimilar directions, y'all volition notice more different plants and trees.

Now imagine someone explained to you beforehand what you were going to see in the forest, what kind of copse and plants. Would you remember much of that on your kickoff walk? Unlikely. Would these explanations be more useful later on you had spent a few hours in the woods? Almost certainly. Would it help if you were actually trying to notice the woods instead of but worrying nearly finding your manner out of the forest. Certainly.

However, yous take to want to visit the woods, and you lot have to want to bask the trees and plants in the forest. The experience of walking through the woods needs to exist meaningful. Information technology is the same way with our exposure to linguistic communication. It needs to exist in a meaningful context. Meaningful means that the content is of interest and somewhat comprehensible. Equally Stephen Krashen has pointed out, language learning takes place when we receive messages that are meaningful to us.

Repetition

Ideally we start with content that is easy to understand, where vocabulary is introduced gradually, and hopefully in short segments. It takes a lot of repeated exposure for united states of america to find things. We can walk past a small flower tens of times and simply non meet information technology. Eventually though, as we go more than familiar with other things in the forest, we may discover the little blossom, or nosotros may never. Just the more often we walk by it, the more likely nosotros are to notice it.

In learning a language it is the aforementioned way. Nosotros demand to comprehend the same vocabulary and grammatical patterns over and over. And we need new stories or nosotros volition only take repetition, without novelty, and we volition get bored. About linguistic communication books do not provide plenty repetition. The writers of these books assume that explanations and exercises are more than important than repeated exposure. Even so, in my experience, it is the repetition that enables us to learn. Information technology is through repetition that we detect.

That was my feel in learning Greek, using primarily the new mini-stories that nosotros now take in our library at LingQ. I have never learned a language every bit fast every bit Greek, fifty-fifty though Greek is quite dissimilar from any linguistic communication I already know.

T hese stories are constructive for two reasons. First, they are quite interesting and deal with daily life. 2nd, the stories include two parallel and however slightly dissimilar versions of the same story. The stories are then followed by easy to respond questions, which we don't have to reply. Nosotros tin can simply listen or read the answer.

Each story is 3-5 minutes long, consists of sound and text and is fabricated up of three sections, with the vocabulary and patterns repeated in each section. I don't stay on 1 story until I master it. I move on to the adjacent story, which I am actually curious to read and listen to. I am getting repetition and novelty.

With this combination of repetition and novelty, I detect myself noticing things and then forgetting them and noticing them once again. I mostly heed while doing other tasks. I needn't be focused the whole fourth dimension. I just option up things, different things, as my focus waxes and wanes. I essentially know the stories when I listen for the tenth fourth dimension, but I notice enjoyment in noticing words and patterns that I hadn't noticed before, or which I had already forgotten. Through learning and forgetting, we learn equally Robert Bjork teaches united states of america.

Information technology is satisfying to observe that I empathise what I am reading or listening to. I sympathise content that was incomprehensible, or at least very unclear to me, just weeks earlier.

Enhancing Our Ability to Notice

Our brains are conditioned to find and to find patterns in what we meet and hear. The most important task is to proceed feeding comprehensible, or near comprehensible input, to our brain for processing, via listening and reading. This cannot be overstated. For this the iii office mini-story is ideal. There are, however, things nosotros can do to increase our power to notice. We are in a little more of a bustle than the child learning his or her first linguistic communication. Nosotros too are non getting quite as much exposure as the kid gets.

What I do is save words and phrases when I read these mini-stories in LingQ. And so I review these immediately afterwards reading and listening, using LingQ's random review activities. In that location are four different activities that come at the learner randomly: flashcards, dictation, multiple choice, and fill in the blanks. The random nature of these review activities makes them entertaining, about fun, to exercise. We are getting repetition with novelty.

When I save a discussion or phrase from the text, I am noticing information technology. When I am confronted with the aforementioned terms in the review activities, I notice them again. I may then forget them, but more than likely, when I listen or read again, I will notice some of these terms again. It may not be the adjacent time I listen or read, but eventually I will notice them.

I observe it useful to change the words and phrases that I want to review. Equally I read these stories over and over, I move some words and phrases to "known" in our LingQ organisation, and then save new phrases. These new phrases incorporate patterns that I am yet non comfortable with, that still seem strange to me. I then become another risk to review them, as part of my repeated exposure to these stories.

Whenever I save a discussion or phrase in LingQ I hear the text to speech pronunciation. I tin turn this off if I don't want to disturb people around me. However, when I have it on, my ability to find, particularly the sounds of phrases, is enhanced.

Noticing is non a once action. Nosotros notice certain aspects of a language and and then forget that we ever noticed them. And then nosotros notice them again. It is the reinforcement of the same words and patterns in these stories, the hazard to notice them again, that finally moves them into the area of acquired language.

Noticing Our Gaps

Some things we merely detect naturally through exposure. Other things may escape our attention unless we are interested in noticing. We have to desire to discover wildflowers in the woods, or we just laissez passer them buy. We have to bask the linguistic communication, and be interested in discovering more than and more about how the language works.

Sometimes nosotros need assist to discover. That is where frequent reference to grammar resources tin can help. The more exposure we take to a new language, the more meaningful and useful grammar explanations become. I observe it useful to have a pocket-size grammar book, or to find some useful grammar resources online. These tin can give u.s.a. an initial overview, which is quickly forgotten. Information technology is, still, useful to review aspects of grammar when you are curious about patterns in the language that continue to give you difficulty. I regularly review grammar rules, not in the promise that I will remember or be able to apply the rules, but because information technology helps me to notice things when I mind and read.

A teacher or conversation partner tin can help you detect things that you might otherwise not find. The mere human activity of speaking or writing in the linguistic communication helps you to notice where your gaps are, the words you are missing or the patterns you tin't utilise correctly.

Speaking and writing are valuable activities that help us detect, regardless of whether we are corrected or not. More than corrections, it is the act of speaking or writing that help us notice, in my feel. Corrections tin can also help united states of america notice, but they are non necessary. I find that corrections while speaking are apace forgotten, and are just a lark from the conversation. If I have an online discussion with a tutor, I do savour getting a report with a list of the words and phrases that I had trouble with. I import this into LingQ equally part of my ongoing efforts at noticing more and more of the language.

Authentic Content and Noticing

To become fluent in the linguistic communication requires a large vocabulary. In the early on stages, we have to read and listen to the same content many times in order to ingrain new habits, and to go a feel for the patterns of the new linguistic communication. We try to stay with content that doesn't have likewise many new words. Withal, in order to accomplish fluency we demand to acquire a vocabulary large enough and so that we can read books, paper manufactures, understand movies and appoint in meaningful conversations with the speakers.

This means that nosotros have to appoint with authentic content. We demand to read and listen to lots of such content, and that means we no longer have the luxury of repetitive listening and reading. At least we do it less and less, as we are driven more by our interest in the content, than a witting effort to acquire new words and phrases. We end up acquiring them just the same, but we learn them well-nigh incidentally.

I attempt to appoint with accurate content as soon as possible, using LingQ of grade. I am able to import newspaper articles, songs, even books, into LingQ and apply the vocabulary learning tools there to work through these texts, which at first are very difficult. LingQ also offers a newsfeed, so that if I don't want to search online for these sources to import, they are delivered to me daily at my LingQ business relationship.

When I purchase ebooks, I look for the companion audiobook. Some magazines offer audio likewise texts of their articles. There are subscription services for audio and text material in a diversity of languages. All of this interesting textile at present becomes my main linguistic communication learning cloth. I start to leave the learner material backside, or nearly.

I don't just abandon easier content, like the mini-stories. Variety is of import. I also find that going back to the mini-stories helps to secure my grasp of basic patterns and helps me ameliorate my speaking and writing skills.

Ordinarily, as I continue to relish authentic content, at that place are fewer and fewer unknown words. I can bask reading more away from my iPad or calculator, or watching movies without subtitles. Nevertheless, I am so used to creating LingQs and seeing highlighted words and phrases in my reading, I now take the urge to mark up books and newspapers when reading away from the computer. Even if I do this with my finger, and don't marking upwards the text, the action of focusing on words, phrases, word endings, etc. helps me notice. I try also to focus on certain words or patterns when listening to any content in the target linguistic communication.

In that location will ever be patterns or words that we don't apply correctly, so it is useful to maintain this habit of noticing, regardless of our level in the new language. With enough noticing, the encephalon forms new patterns and our power to use the language improves, naturally, about without us noticing information technology.

Beyond all of this, yet, call up that the most important thing in learning a new language is to outset!