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.
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