Learning A Foreign Language

Language is a human thing. Animals may communicate on some rudimentary level, but they haven’t mastered the past, present and future action of verbs or the relational function of prepositions. These things and more are second nature to humans; and being especially bright is not a prerequisite for language. As seen on TV. How many people do you know over the age of, say three, who have not mastered, with at least some minimal degree of success, a language? It is only the most sever mentally or emotionally handicapped who have not learned to communicate by means of language skills.

Most likely learning a second language will be a challenge for most of us, but I believe anyone, and I mean anyone almost regardless of IQ, with enough motivation, time and effort can do it. But, no matter what the advertisements tell you, unless you have exceptional language skills, you will have to put forth a lot of effort. Not being the sharpest tack in the box, that especially applies to me. You will have to memorize vocabulary, you will have to learn verb forms, most likely you will have to learn noun genders, you will have to learn new sentence structures, and more and more and more. It may take an inordinate amount of time, but if you already know one language, you have the capacity to learn another.

There are two basic approaches to learning a language; the technical approach, which most formal educators use in high school and college; and the listen and repeat approach, which all babies use to learn to communicate verbally with their mommies. Let’s see…I wonder which is the most effective? Actually, if you are a bit older than a baby and already have an understanding of grammar, the most effective method, I believe, is a combination of both, with a heavy emphasis on the listen and repeat method. If you hear the words spoken in a sentence by a native speaker over and over until they gradually assume a sense of real meaning in your brain they are less likely forgotten than if you try to memorize them from a list of vocabulary words or a table of verb tenses. On the other hand, there is something reassuring in knowing where the present indicative, third person plural of a verb fits in that table once you have learned the word. Visualizing where the verbs fit in the tables has helped me immeasurably. Without a good verb book, fully conjugated in all the tenses, I probably would not have stayed with this project.

There are some really good software applications out there that combine verbal and visual learning much better than listening to the words and looking them up in a verb book or dictionary as I did. The major objection that I have to software based learning is that you have to be in front of your computer to use it. I just did not have that kind of time. I knew that I would not take one to three hours of my day each and every day to sit in front of my computer to study a language.

Try to learn a language in your car, and you will be surprised at how much time you spend in your vehicle each day.* If it takes you ten minutes to get to the grocery store, the round trip gives you twenty minutes of study time, not to mention the time you spend in the store if you take your portable CD player or iPod with you. The temptation is strong to listen to a few Bee Gees cuts instead of the Spanish lesson, so you do have to have some will power. Also, you can study while you exercise, cook a meal, mow the grass, while you are waiting to see the doctor or for your wife to get dressed (lots of “dead time” there). You will be surprised at how much of you day can be devoted to learning a language without interfering with your daily responsibilities.

Of course, all initial, “formal” methods of learning a foreign language, regardless of whether they are class room, computer based, CD or other, must eventually be replaced with one-on-one every day conversation with those who can speak it fluently if you ever expect to speak it properly. For me, that’s a difficult transition. I have a tendency not to want to speak Spanish around fluent Spanish speakers because of a fear of not speaking the language properly and making mistakes. So, I’m going to Panama for a month to be surrounded by an environment where I have to use my Spanish skills in order to function on a daily basis regardless of the mistakes I make. Gulp! Here I go!

* If you click on the heading of this post it will take you to the Pimsleur Language Program web site which is the CD based method I used to learn Spanish. It has some weaknesses, but it gets the basic job done.