Wednesday 27 January 2016

Make Mistakes Freely

Alan Watts talks about the freedom of making mistakes in this video:

Tuesday 26 January 2016

Institute a routine




If it takes, say, a thousand hours to learn your target language, then that’s at least a thousand times that you’ll need to decide to sit down and ‘do’ an hour. That’s a thousand times that you need to remember, and a thousand times that you’ll need to exert your will power.


Of which everyone has a limited daily ration.


Unless, of course, you get a habit going—a habit that goes under the name of a routine.


Now personally I have problems with routines. I’m good a designing them. I enjoy that part of the process. But I’m no good at following them. I resist them. I resent them.


The trick is to get it slowly into place piecemeal. You can’t afford to have it feel like am imposition or compulsion. You need to retain space to manoeuvre. It needs to be loose. It ought to leave room for doing things on impulse.


A routine that is integral to what you’d do anyway must work best. It needs to fit in with what you’d be likely to do anyway. So it ought to help you, not force you. It should remind you, not order you about. 

You don’t need another parental figure.

Monday 25 January 2016

Individualize what you do

The theme of individuality and individualization crops up often here. That's because it's so important with language-learning. One of the main reasons that a language should not be learned in a classroom is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to allow everyone to do their own thing in a confined space. Ask any teacher.

Your route and your methods must suit you. They need to be individually tailored. And the tailor must be you.

So you try something and see. You observe. You make an adjustment. In short, you tweak your way toward a system, or an approach, that works perfectly for you.

It must fit you like a glove.


It could take you as long as a decade or learn a language using a mass-produced approach.

It should take you only a year or two if you individualize what you do.

Use short-cuts to understand instantly what you read or hear

What you need is a quick way to understand what you read and hear in your second language. By that, I mean that you need a quick way, even a 'cheat's way', to understand that language. As instantaneous as you can make it.

You DON'T want to have to look up words in a dictionary. That slows you down too much, and you'll never get all the exposure that you need.

So here are some ideas:
  • Already be familiar with the content (Alice in Wonderland)
  • Have books in both languages side by side (Heinrich Schliemann)
  • Read on screen with a pop-up translating application running (perapera, maybe)
  • Have illustrative support (manga, anime, subtitles)
  • Read the whole book over
  • Read another book from the same series (Magic Tree House)
  • Read another book by the same author (same style)
  • Read the target language while listening to the story in English (experimental)



 

Sunday 24 January 2016

Identify (and avoid) your off-buttons

What do you personally dislike about learning a language? Work out what it is and avoid it.

Why do I suggest that?

The rationale for this is that there are countless way of acquiring another language. That being so, you may as well choose a method that doesn't rub your fur up the wrong way.

I mean, our goal is not to build moral fibre!

Avoid what you dislike. That way you are in less danger of quitting.

So if you have doing exercises, don't do them!
If grammar ain't your cup of tea, don't drink it!
If the thought of speaking to a native speaker makes you break out in a cold sweat, don't sweat it!
Just stay shtum.

Naturally, if you give into every impulse to flee, then you may need to be a little creative and inventive about filling in the gaps. But that's doable.

The main thing is to avoid those off-buttons.

There are always other ways and means.

Wednesday 20 January 2016

Help out others



The best way to learn anything is to teach it.

There are two ways to go about that that I can think of. One is to tutor people. The second is to write a book and/or design a course.


That’s right . . . you’re on to me!


I’ll say more about tutoring elsewhere (under the tag 'coaching'). But for now I’ll suggest that you do it on a level platform. That is to say, don’t imagine that you are some sort of teacher. You don’t know it all. And you don’t know others as well as they know themselves. So be a little humble and make your sessions a partnership. Be a team player.


As for writing a book, the challenge is to give advice that is universal for all individuals. I believe that this is possible, but “these things must be done delicately . . .”

Tuesday 19 January 2016

Heed the common principles




There must be as many language-learning methods, or methodologies, as there are people. They probably work for someone, somewhere—most likely the people who dreamed them up. If they actually tested them out on themselves, that is.


In other words, everyone has ideas on what you should do to learn another language. They have beliefs, assertions, myths, theories, hypotheses and what have you. Do it this way! Do it that way! Do it my way! Do it your way!  Seven billion and counting.


I think it’s important to sift through everything—well, not everything as that is obviously impossible—but it’s a good idea to keep an eye open for principles that are common to all popular methods. It’s important that whatever you try yourself is in accord with those principles. Otherwise you’ll most likely be barking up the wrong tree.


Some of those principles:

  • It’s going to take time, so you need to be patient
  • Eventually you are going to have to use the language automatically
  • There’s a lot to remember, but you’ll forget it many times
  • You can’t learn to speak just by reading
  • You first language will interfere with the second sometimes
  • Unless you remain interested, you are likely to give up
  • You are going to make mistakes—get used to it!


Monday 18 January 2016

Have fun with random words



Introduce a bit of frivolity into your life! Use a collection of vocabulary items and access them at random. Play games with them, as for Scrabble. Combine the words. Connect them in some way. Create faux-sentences (and accurate ones if you like).  
That way, they lose their power over you. Your awe of them diminishes. They intimidate less.


Really, playing games is good for you—gets you into a state of flow. The outcome of games isn’t a matter of life and death. In a game, you can afford to get really into it without ultimate risk. Your skill improves by playing games. In games, you can do a lot of useful work without it feeling like work.


To sum up, turn language learning into a ‘mind game’.

Connect words, connect the dots . . .



Words are not enough. Just knowing the words won’t make you able to use another language. And besides, going about the business of learning a language one word at a time is almost completely useless.


Witness Japanese where I know hundreds of words but cannot connect the dots. I may every separate part of a sentence but have no idea what the whole is about.


You see, there is a hell of a lot that you need to know about words in order to fit them together. And a single dictionary meaning doesn’t give you that. Therefore, from the word go, work with more than one word at a time.


Go for pairs of words, phrases, whole sentences at a gulp. Don’t always, or even usually, break them down into their components. That way you get a lot of extra associated input: grammar patterns, word co-locations, concordance, general usage etc.


Sit sentences from two languages side by side. Do it the way that Heinrich Schliemann did.