How People Learn Languages
We learn languages to be able to communicate with people from other countries and cultures and our goal, clearly, is to be able to communicate fluently, spontaneously and accurately, in any situation.
There is no debate that learning a foreign language is not a straight line, not a predictable process: a multitude of factors affect the process. There is no single answer to the question, “How do adults learn languages and what is the best strategy?”
However, there is a lot that we DO know. Based on my own extensive experience and observations as both a teacher and learner of foreign languages, as well on some relevant literature, I will share my thoughts and convictions on what makes language learning successful.
Exposure and Input:
It’s clear that learners need exposure to the target language – you can’t learn a language if you never hear or see anything in that language. However, just hearing or reading the language will not be enough in itself to trigger learning. Unlike children who go through a lengthy silent period before starting to produce the sounds and words, adults usually want or need to start speaking the language straight away.
Intake and Language Practice
Speaking a language is a skill that is formed and improved through practicing: the more you practice, the better and more automatic it becomes.
There are no magic formulas, no exceptions, it just happens. You just need to practice, routinely, constantly, regularly, without worrying about the result. When your brain processes the change and adopts new schemes, it will take care of the rest and everything you have studied will fall into place.
That holds true provided you continue practicing! Fortunalely, language skills are relatively quick to be acquired (and this is utterly within your control!), the other side of the medal is that such skills are equally quick to go stale and be lost if you do not practice them ON A REGULAR BASIS.
Once again, it is in your hands, in your power, within your ability; and it is up to you to decide to which level you want to develop this skill. 😉
That said, let’s see what it actually takes. We know that practice IS very important, but it is quite a broad concept.
Very often, students get frustrated because they don’t feel any progress despite learning the language as hard as they presumably can.
Adam David Broughton, in his book How To English: 31 Days to be an Independent Learner suggests that
It’s not WHAT you learn that determins your progress; it’s HOW you learn. The reason for that is that all learning comes from within.
I agree with the author who believes that if a learner is starting from nothing, then the best thing they can do to get a solid foundation is to go to classes or get a teacher and take private lessons.
HAVING A SOLID FOUNDATION IS ESSENTIAL and in this case, “whatever the teacher feels necessary” is totally relevant, because the foundations of a language are the same for everybody.
However, “as they progress (from B1 onward), each learner’s individual needs start to differ and what the teacher teaches may become less relevant for each individual student.“ The learner then may start making progress more slowly, get stuck and lose motivation.
“This is where the student should start to TAKE CONTROL OF THEIR OWN LEARNING; the teacher and the learner should swap roles to maximise the learning. “
Typically, what learners want and need from a language class is “to practice communication”, “to learn more vocabulary”, “to become fluent”. There is a great selection of courses and teachers, teaching methods and styles, resourses, web sites and apps – and everything is easy to get and is out there waiting for you.
Still, fluency and conversation skills is a problem… Sounds familiar?
Here, I will outline some clues:
- Learning a language means that first and foremost, you need to get a solid foundation (A1-A2 level). The best effect is achieved by immersion (living in the country where this language is spoken). If this option is unavailable, a general course of the basic level is the most obvious thing to do. At this stage, you need to be guided (to get the right pronunciation, make out and practice correct grammar patterns, etc.) that is why it totally makes sense to get a teacher or attend a course. You should be constant and dedicated and make the most of every precious minute that you are exposed to the language. It is very important, especially if you cannot be in the immersion situation and your exposure to the language is limited to a few times a week.
- When you have a foundation and you can understand a lot (or everything) of what you read and hear without much difficulty, but you stumble in an effort to speak – that’s when the most interesting part starts.
You may wonder “How is it that I understand everything in this piece (it means that I do know all the words and all the grammar in it) but I can’t say it in my words, or just repeat it?” Some of my foreign students can write a richer and more beautiful essay in Russian than I would probably do myself (being a native speaker), but when it comes to reproducing it orally, even in simpler words, they feel like it’s an impossible task…
It is a very, very, VERY common situation and it is very easy to explain, too! If you do not practice SPEAKING, you cannot SPEAK, like if you do not practice driving, you cannot drive even if you know how to do it!
You should just start doing it, and it is easier than you think. If you do not have anybody to speak to, then speak to yourself!
- Make it a habit of RETELLING everything (or part of) what you read and hear. IT WILL MAKE A GREAT AND AMAZING DIFFERENCE, for a start.
- What if you make mistakes? Take notes of the parts you are unsure of and ask your teacher later. Likewise, you can learn a lot of vocabulary relevant to YOU – simply by focusing on the vocabulary you need and looking it up in a dictionary, or checking it with your teacher later.
What if you make mistakes you are totally unaware of? Well, if learners are experimenting with a new language, mistakes are inevitable. Mistakes are evidence of attempts to work out the system. They are part of the process of working out how to pronounce unfamiliar sounds, how to fit a new vocabulary item into a sentence, how to express a certain time frame using correct grammar.
If you have a teacher, your teacher will notice your typical mistakes, will correct you giving you the explanations and will suggest the activities that should be useful for you.
Anyway, making some mistakes is hundreds of times less frustrating than not being able to speak at all, or speaking too poorly in relation to the time and effort spent.
“Fluency is the connection between your brain and your mouth, it describes how easy it is for you to produce the language that you know. The more you practice speaking (and you don’t necessarily need a person in front of you to do it), the more you strenthen this connection and the easier it becomes to find the right words!”
Learner Strategies
As we have already noted, one of the most significant differences between children learning their first language and adults learning a foreign language is that children are immersed in the language for almost every waking hour of their day, while adults are likely to spend a few hours per week exposed to the language they are trying to learn. Some adults maximize this exposure, both inside and particularly outside class by using a range of strategies that help them intensify or increase their exposure to the language— their opportunities to hear, use and remember the language. They take control of their learning process. Other students don’t use the same strategies, and take much less control, perhaps because they are unaware of what they can do and are more used to being spoon fed during learning processes.
The saying,
“Give someone a fish, they’ll eat for a day – teach them to fish, they’ll eat forever” applies for language teaching as well. By helping students become aware of the strategies they can use to learn the language skills they need, and giving students more control of their own learning, we – teachers – can help them be more successful. 😉
