This is too easy!

I easily spent time on 3 languages this morning. It may prove almost too easy to learn a number of them quickly. It takes almost no effort to follow along as I listen. I hardly have to concentrate. I'm not required to remember anything. I don't need to study, look up words or do exercises. And yet I feel that I'm learning very quickly.

But let me spell out what my intentions are.

I want to get used to hearing and reading various languages. I'm talking about input. If I could achieve just the ability to listen and to read, I'd be happy. To actually speak or write languages is not my immediate goal. Output would comes after. My 'immediate' goal is to be able to understand my target languages.

At present I've only tackled Japanese, Dutch and German. You could call them my 'cheat' languages since I've already put in time with them. But I can predict that a whole bunch of others will come almost as easily. French, Spanish, Italian, and a Scandinavian language for fun. 

Their alphabets are more or less familiar to me. So are at least a hundred or more words. I'm convinced that with such a foundation my ListenRead techniques will work like a dream.

I suspect that the only difficulty may consist of mixing similar languages up e.g. Spanish and Portugese; Swedish, Danish and Norwegian; Russian, Czech and Polish.

But as long as each language has a distinctive 'flavor' (e.g. having its own alphabet) then I don't anticipate any problem.

Still, I'd happily admit that it's still early days.

I spy with my little i+1

It’s a wee bit mathematical. It’s nifty It’s neat. Some people hate it. Some people love it. I'm talking about the i+1 meme.

It was coined by Stephen Krashen (the font from which so many good things flow).

The idea is to expose yourself to another language in the right manner. Think of it not as a pot of soup in which you are uncomfortably simmering - because of the heat - but as a bath you're happy to soak in. You’ve got to remain in a comfortable language bath for a good while for for the language to ‘get in’, right? That's what  Krashen means by 'exposure'.

If the conditions in that soup are too extreme, then you won’t be able to tolerate it. Not too hot, too salty, to acidic, too noisy (noisy?), not too spicy, not too lumpy, not being stirred around too much, or be left to stick to the bottom.

Personally, I prefer a modified version: i+1/2 

I feel that it is better to have soup whose consistency provides an i+1/2 environment. The language learner needs to be exposed to text that provides a slight and pleasant stretch. That means that  the soup consists mostly of familiar language, but to also contain something slightly unfamiliar. Not something totally new. Just something that the learner is ready to improve their understanding of.

That's what I mean by the ‘half’ part (of the i+1/2 term).

If that extra fraction was completely unknown, it would unduly stress the learner. That wouldn't be optimal. Rather, one needs to be allowed to nicely age/pickle/marinate/mature/cook without rush.

Get an audiobook

It was only a decade or so ago that I listened to an audiobook for the first time. I don't know why it took me so long. I've been reading books all of my life.

So why did I start? It may have been that this particular Lee Child book wasn't available except in the audio format. I was impatient to read it, so I listened to it instead.

Initially I was impatient as I listened! As a rule, listening is slower that reading. But then I caught onto the trick of listening through headphones or ear attachments(?) as I did other things.

Walk to and from work, for example. Walking to work in the dark while listening to a spooky story! Now that's an adventure!

As regards learning another language, audiobooks are invaluable. Now they help to process the language more quickly than you read. Thereby, you learn to guess things, skip things, ignore things, and generally not be so anal about needing to look everything up. In short, you learn to relax more in another language.

Oh, and one more thing: you learn to listen! 

Seek input that you can understand

Comprehensible input. You've been there, done that.

When you needed to learn Dutch, you read ‘Ot en Sien’ and ‘Kruimeltje’. Later, when you needed to learn English, you read Superman comics, the Famous Five and Myths and Legends from Many Lands.

You got yourself comprehensible input in the language that you had to learn. 

You chose interesting material at your level.

It’s possible to expand the difficulty limit of the material if you have a way to making it understandable. (Cheating is allowed.)

If you already know the story, that’s good (unless you are disinclined to re-read books or watch movies again and again). But you could get around that by seeking more by the same author, or continue in that genre.

If your listening is at a level where it supplements your understanding, then listen to the audiobook at the same time as you follow along on paper or the screen.

And if you read on screen, you might use an application that gives you the meaning of words when you scroll over them.

  There are means and ways.

Optimum exposure

What is exposure? What do we expose ourselves to? Why is exposure important to learning a language?

Those are useful questions to ask, but I’ll start with another: How does anyone learn a language? The answer is that you get used to it. Simply that. You don’t need a degree. You don’t need any form of education. You don’t need to be an adult, or even a child!

You get used to it, because it is all around you. You are exposed to it. Gradually you pick out more and more meaning. 

Language appears to be a meaningful thing, so that is why you pay attention to it. It gets you what you want: company, milk, a toy, your wet clothes changed, and if you are lucky a ride on someone’s shoulders.

It’s a long-term this, getting used to it through exposure. It makes no sense to rush it, because you can’t. That doesn’t work. So you don’t over expose yourself. You take naps. You switch off when you need to.

So, just as a little UV is good, you don’t overdo it with vitamin D. You go for a walk in the mountains, but you wear your woolens. You protect your ears when you mow the lawn. You put on safety glasses in the lab. You don’t sleep in the room where you broke the thermometer. You slap on sunscreen.

To learn a language you expose yourself by listening and reading to material that you enjoy and that is not too difficult. Go for low intensity  and a maximum of hours.

Remember the comics you were into? Do you recall those first few episodes of Sesame Street? Tunes and rhymes and ditties and puns. Jokes that you copied down to retell. Picture books that you valued and treasured and kept. Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson. Early Disney cartoons.

All of it magic!