What I got from taking languages at school

Many years ago now, I attended Kaikorai Valley High School. It was a large school in those days (the early 70s). The roll stood at around 1300 students. Ten new third form classes started in my year (1970). Then, classes were streamed, and categorized as either Academic (2 of them) or General (8).

In both 3A1 and 3A2, French and Latin were compulsory, and I believe that some of the General-level classes had French too. I was obliged to take the two languages for two years, but was able to drop them in the 5th form by taking Art (Drawing & Design) as French and Latin were my worst subjects.

A year or two later, Japanese was offered at the school, and German thereafter. However, too late for me.

What I learned from the experience is that I am adverse to being schooled in a language. I'm allergic to the conventional, academic approach. 

I once read that only 1 in 20 English speakers who try to learn another language fail. If that's so, then it's not a good success rate.

If, for whatever reason, a person is resistant to something about a foreign language, or how it's presented, then he or she simply won't learn.

Boy kicks a stone

Let's say that you are the grandson of Pele, the famous football player, and that you wish to follow in his footsteps and become a professional player. In fact, you feel some pressure on you to succeed.

And so you enroll at the best football school in town, even though it's on the other side of town. And you make sure never to piss a day. Everyday you walk there, or even run so as to get there on time, whatever the weather.

You work your butt off at that school. You study the theory, you do the drills, you complete your homework, and you ace all of your exams.

But all that book study doesn't help you to become a champion. You become a pretty good club player, but that is all. Did you just not have the talent? Couldn't you have tried just a little harder?

Sadly, the fault is not yours. The fault is in the schooling system. You see, you weren't studying football there. You were learning about football, and that's not the same thing as learning football itself.

In fact, the only reason you became a reasonably competent player was that you'd kick a stone along as you hurried to reach school before the bell.

19 zeros then a 1

Last night I had a dream about language learning. Don’t know if the dream was in color, but it certainly had a binary feel. 

I saw 19 zeros in a row, followed by a one. And I knew what that meant. 

It takes on average 20 times before a language item sticks i.e. you forget it 10 times before you remember it long term.

These instances are regarded as failures by school. You got them wrong.

But THAT attitude is wrong. Each instance of forgetting is an improvement. Each zero is actually a ‘1’.

I'd go so far as to say each so-called 'zero' is real, rational and positive too! They graph upwards.

Now, you might think that this represents awfully slow progress. After all . . . forgetting something 19 times. How can that be efficient?

Here's how. 

You take a whole swag of language up that slope at once. You improve a thousand items at a time, which you can do with light, comprehensible and enjoyable input (ListenRead to a book). Twenty tries to internalize a thousand items. That's not bad at all. Work it out!

Something happened to me when I was 15

In my 16th year, at school, something happened to my brain. I learned to learn. 

It was only a small change, I admit, but it brought about a huge change. Within a term I leaped effortlessly to the head of the class in those subjects that dealt largely with concepts—Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and to a certain extent Mathematics.

I figured out that all I had to do was listen. I would listen to the teacher with the aim of understanding what he was talking about. I asked questions until I did. And then I sat back, satisfied, and relaxed. That’s all I had to do, and it worked.

I never did anything else. I didn’t memorize information. I didn’t complete the exercises. I hardly did homework. I didn’t study, although if I was interested I might do a little reading around the topic.

Since then, this approach has always succeeded. The only times I’ve ever done poorly with my academic work was when I strayed from those principles and tried to learn via conventional methods. If I treated the subject ‘seriously’ and formally, then it wouldn’t go well. I’d stress out. I’d fail. I’d quit.

Now then, what if I was to use this approach with learning a new language? (At school I’d dropped Latin and French the previous year . . .)

Instead of trying to memorize rules and vocabulary, I would just notice patterns and see how the language worked. I’d expose myself to it in a light, wide and shallow way. I wouldn’t analyze, study or try to learn in any way. I’d just express interest.

Therefore, I wouldn’t feel the slightest strain. I wouldn’t put any pressure on myself.  I’d avoid all stress. It would be fun. It would be easy.

And I'd go to the top of the class again, I’m absolutely certain.

Schools are for fish

I've nothing against school. 

I've even worked in them.

Nevertheless, I've come to the conclusion that languages don't belong at school. The teachers may be OK, and even inspirational, but the methods suck. 

Also, no one can teach you a language, so the whole rationale for language learning is up the creek.

I used to say that only you can teach yourself another language, but now I disbelieve even that. But at least you need to take charge.

You don't learn a language at school. You learn it in your head--or, more precisely, you get used to it in your head.

You don't learn a language; you acquire it.

Stepping stones

One day you're going to walk the length of the country (of course not in 1 day!) the way that A.H. Reed did. (Remember him? He came into your classroom to give us kids a talk when you were 11 and he was in his 90s.) What's more, you're going to do it barefoot. I'm not kidding.

It won't be easy, but you'll do it. It will hurt, but it'll be right up there among the best experiences of your life.

Along the way, you'll learn a hell of a lot about yourself, and about life.

For example, you'll understand the importance of focusing on one step at a time.

It's crazy to look at the endpoint of some l o n g project and decide to be satisfied only when you get there, because that will make you hate every step that you take except for the last one.

It's like: "not there yet, not there yet, not there yet, not there yet . . ." instead of  "great progress, great progress, great progress . . ." 

Learning a language is going to take time, irrespective of how you do it. May as well enjoy every bit of progress instead of beating yourself up.

And besides, there's no actual 'last step' in a language-learning journey.

Get a language, get a life

You're 15. To me, at 58, that's the youngest age at which you're approximately an adult. You're mature enough to think, in other words (even though you've been philosophically-minded for over a decade already).

This is the age at which I want to catch you. I think that you're ready. Listen to me; don't let this opportunity go by.

You're smart enough to understand what I'm saying. You're doing well at school and in the next few years you'll achieve a number of academic 'honors'. You won't let that go to your head, I'm happy to say. You'll realize that they're not worth much.

Instead, I want to get you thinking about languages.

Listen, Maths and Science are child's play for you. You handle English and History well. Heck, you'll even pass Art. But you've already had some problems with language.

Now, it's not that you haven't the experience of knowing a language other than English. After all, you grew up with anuda muvva tongue. You switched between Dutch and English according to which school you had to attend, and in which country you happened to be. (How many people can say they've sailed around the world via the Suez and Panama Canals under the age of eight?)

So you know what it feels like to know another language well, to the degree of slipping along from one into the other, rather than clumsily 'switching'. You know what another language is about. You remember activating one or the other by reading, always reading: fairy tales, comics, library books . . .

But then you got French and Latin.

'Cause when you started high school you were placed in the academic stream. You were made topmost of the top. 3A1 above 3A2 above 3G1, 3G2, 3G3, 3G4, 3G5, 3G6, 3G7 & 3G8, and God how horrible it would be to admit to being in 3G8! But it was almost as bad having to admit that you were in the highest class.

So anyway, you were duly served up French and Latin.

Short story: you had issues with French. The teachers were female. The language itself sounded feminine. The Latin teacher was a manly man. I imagined him as a Roman warrior. (He died years later in his 50s climbing mountains, I heard.) True, Latin was nicely Mathematical, but I couldn't see the point in memorizing and applying the rules on a language that was dead.

Now, tt the age of 15 you're about to throw languages out with the bathwater. With the benefit of hindsight, I've come here to urge you not to do that.

You see, you're going to spend several years living and working overseas. You're going to have two wives (not at the same time) whose first language isn't English. You're going to have four children all of whom will speak languages that you don't understand.

You're going to mingle with hundreds of people from dozens of other countries, helping them to master English. This will enrich your life to an incredible degree. In fact, you'll feel more at home with people from other lands than the country in which you were born (New Zealand).

Learning another language is easy if you do it right. However, very, very few people know how to do it right. I do, but it has taken me several decades to get to that point.

Let us short-circuit that process. Take a look at what I've got to give you. Trust me. Within a year or two (of being fifteen) you're going to be exposed to German, and you'll love it. You'll make good use of it when you go cycle-touring through Europe.

Get a language, get a life! 

That's the message of this blog.

As Johan Wolfgang von Goethe put it:

Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.

(He who doesn't know foreign languages knows nothing about his own.)