How to boost your ability to learn a foreign language
Introduction
Welcome to this short, but potent, guide to learning foreign languages. It will show you what amazing things you can achieve when you simply apply your mind to language-learning effectively: something no language course will teach you, no matter how well it's written. Learning a new language is partly about using the right materials, partly about perseverance and partly about studying effectively. In a nutshell, if you don't know how to go about learning a language, you'll find it far more hard-going than it ever needs to be. The tools I am going to give you here will greatly improve your capacity for learning foreign languages. I'll show you how to understand yourself as a post-infancy language-learner; I'll reveal to you simple techniques that will instantly improve your ability to pronounce a new language, to learn its vocabulary and to increase your conversational fluency at a greatly accelerated rate, even if you're learning on your own. It is my sincere hope that you find plenty of nuggets of wisdom in this little book, and that it helps you to achieve your goal of learning Italian faster and easier. There is one catch, however: The concepts themselves are very powerful, but you do need to apply them to see the results. That said, let's get started!
Part One
How we learn, and how we can learn better As a language teacher myself, I shouldn’t really be saying this ‘on the record’, but the way languages are traditionally taught at school is unsuitable for most students, for the simple fact that people learn at different rates, and in different ways. You could say the same about almost anything really, but if you are learning a foreign language in school, and you don’t learn at the same rate at which the teacher conducts the class, you’re going to get left behind. The further behind you get, the more confidence you will lose, and learning the language will soon seem an impossibility, which is a great shame. This may be one reason why learning a language at school has earned such a bad reputation. On the flip-side, many people possess an idealistic view of language learning as a process that is instantaneous, magical and painless in our early years, and hanker after those long, lost days of innocent youth, wishing they could return to that ‘effortless’ state of language learning in adulthood. The fact is, though, that those days of ‘effortless’ learning are gone for good, and – get this - they weren’t anywhere near as effortless as you might imagine now, looking back from your adult perspective. Learning for us as adults must take a different path. While we may have lost the idealistic learning power of the infant, we do possess other vital skills an infant does not possess. Those skills, correctly applied, can supercharge your ability to learn a foreign language considerably. It is these skills that are the subject of this short guide.
When we learn something, according to learning psychologist, W.C. Howell, we go through 4 distinct stages of competence that ultimately end up with our acquiring the skill we desire. The four stages of learning are classified as follows: (a) unconscious incompetence (b) conscious incompetence (c) conscious competence (d) unconscious competence Put in more readily understandable terms, (a) means that you don’t know how to do something, and you don’t care that you don’t know; (b) means that there is something you want to be able to do, but you are aware that you don’t know how to do it; (c) means that you can now do the thing you wanted to learn, but you still need to apply some conscious thought or effort to do it, and (d) what you have learned has now become second nature and requires no effort on your part. If you drive a car, think in terms of driving: do you consciously have to think about how to drive the car? Unless you’re a complete learner, of course not!
Once you've gone through the shaky first stages to the point where the skill has become second nature, you just get in turn the key and press the peddles and get where you need to go, without any conscious thought. That is the result of completed learning – the stage of unconscious competence. ‘Unconscious competence’ is what we’re aiming for in learning a language, too, and it is achievable, as it undoubtedly has been for many other skills in your life so far. You weren’t born with an ability to ride a bike, or even to walk, for that matter, but you managed to learn those complex tasks and can now carry them out as thought you'd always been able to do them. Understandably, people want to go straight to a level of unconscious competence right away, which trips a lot of learners up, causing them to believe that they are not able to learn, or that they are suffering from some sort of learning deficiency, when they try it and fail.
Competitive marketing for language learning products plays on your desire to get there fast (and do they!), but the 'fast, easy and like a child learns' doesn’t represent the facts regarding how you really go about learning a language as an adult. If you’re more realistic, and accept whatever happens in your pursuit of language learning, the good times and the bad, you will put yourself in a stronger and far more flexible position as a learner, which will, ultimately, help you to achieve your goal on a far surer footing, if not a far faster one. From the 4-stage learning model shown above, stages (c) and (d) are what interest us as learners of a foreign language, and the same rules will apply whether you are learning vocabulary, grammar or improving your pronunciation or fluency. Trying to jump straight to stage (d) will result in disappointment and dissatisfaction, and could easily lead to your applying a false label to yourself – one that you are just ‘not good at languages and will never learn one’. This is nonsense, of course! But this state of mind can easily become a place of refuge for a bruised ego seeking to explain away your ‘failure’, when really, you were, in all probability, approaching language-learning from a the hyped-up perspective advertising experts have instilled in you.
On the flip-side, accepting that there are two stages your learning needs to go through, and being patient enough to go through them will aid you much more than trying to run before you can walk, which is what a lot of language learning systems try and get you to do, often with disastrous results, I might add! When people learn a foreign language, they usually rely on repetition, which is a somewhat forced way of learning. If you keep on repeating, at some point you will remember the information, but you’ll notice that, on the occasions when you learn this way, and the learning isn’t complete. In other words, when you ‘forget’, you have no way to trace back to that learning because you haven’t created a ‘scaffold’ at stage (c), that of conscious competence. This idea of a scaffold will become clear as we work through the techniques in this guide, so don't worry if the concept seems unclear at the moment.
The techniques we are going to be looking at here will help you coast through the conscious competence stage, speeding up the learning process by solidifying learnings, long before you would have been able to, with traditional repetitive learning. You may not be a baby learning ‘effortlessly’ any more, but you do possess a valuable learning tool, no new-born yet has access to, that will make a huge difference in your ability to learn quickly, easily and even enjoyably…if you know how to use it, that is. This ability is rooted in the huge variety of experiences you have had in life, up to this point; experiences you can use to create meaningful learning opportunities. And virtually no school, anywhere in the world, teach you how to use this skill. Why on earth not, when it can make it all so much more simple? When you understand something; when it means something tangible to you, it immediately becomes far more learnable because it makes sense to your mind, in the way it has been wired through your life experience. In other words, it creates meaningful associations.
As language-learners, we have a lot to learn, most of which is completely new, so the more we can use association to what we already know, the faster and easier we will move through the conscious competence stage of learning: that coveted unconscious competence stage that heralds the dawn of true fluency in the foreign language. Taking the learning through to unconscious competence: This is achieved partly through active use of the language, and partly through ‘maturation’ of the learnings in your mind. Your subconscious mind works on anything you are learning actively, while you’re sleeping and doing other things. So, in fact, the learnings are being mulled over all the time, providing you keep studying and inputting information. The catch is, that you do have to work at learning the language. Your subconscious doesn’t work in your down-time anywhere near as effectively without the conscious hard work you need to put in to the actual learning, because you’re not continuously reinforcing the learning goal you wish to achieve.
Contrary to what modern advertising and bar-room mythology would have you believe, you don’t get a language for free, even if you move to a country where the language is spoken! You have to work at it, especially at the beginning, but in the pages that follow, I’m going to reveal techniques that will help you to learn by using your mind far more effectively than you may ever have done before. Read on, because this is going to be an exciting journey! Some suggestions for beginning language learners:
(1) This is going to sound strange, but I recommend you don’t tell anyone that you’re starting to learn a language, or that you are currently learning one! Why? Because as soon as you tell people you are starting to learn a new tongue, you are going to be bombarded by a whole host of opinions on how you should go about it – get this! – by people who have never learned any language successfully themselves! These opinions can pull you in all sorts of different directions, and most of them are total nonsense. This is unhelpful, to say the least, but in the extreme, you could become so wound up about whether you are going about it the right way, you may never even start. So, learn in secret to start with so you know for yourself how you can best learn your chosen language. Of course, if you do meet someone who has successfully conquered the language you want to learn, take any advice he or she offers you, but then again, make sure they walk their talk. Even a little of a foreign language, badly pronounced and barely understandable can sound very impressive to the listener, not yet intimately acquainted with that language. Don’t be too easily impressed by someone who can order a coffee fluently, but cannot express what he’s going to do tomorrow evening with any accuracy.
(2) Learning a language usually manifests itself in what some linguists call ‘plateaus’, over time. What this means, is that rather than learning following a smooth, straight line, progress tends to come in stages, where you reach a level and seem to stop making progress. These plateaus are a somewhat dangerous time in your learning, because when you’re not making progress, it’s only human nature to become bored and disheartened, even if you are fully aware of this unwelcome aspect of language learning. To carry on to the next level, you need to keep studying and learning through those times when learning seems to have ground to a halt, even though it might be much more tempting simply to put language-learning to one side for a while and go and do something else more immediately satisfying. Admittedly, you may feel the need to distance yourself from language-learning for a while, and this can even be a positive thing, as your unconscious mind will still be working on what you learn. But the real killer here is to put it to one side for too long, which could lead to your never starting again, and that’s what we have to avoid, if we really want to learn a new language well. Note: When you start out learning any new language, you will probably find that you seem to learn a lot very easily, at first. Then, typically, the learning slows down and you face your first miniplateau. I put this down to the surge of excitement your mind experiences when you start to do something new; your brain thrives on novelty. The first words you learn make such an impression on your mind that you remember them effortlessly, but a couple of lessons into your course, learning slows down, and things suddenly seem a lot more difficult to learn. If this happens to you, know that it’s natural, and that it will pass. You just need to keep going and the learning pace will pick up again. It can be very helpful, at times like these, to go over what you have already studied, and simply input it again: listen to the same recordings you are using.
(3) Locate within yourself, and tap, an overflowing source of motivation. Yes, you were motivated enough to buy a language course and get this guide, and no doubt you’ll be motivated to get started in your learning, but what’s going to keep that motivation up when the going gets tough, and the chances are that it will? ‘Motivation’, ‘interest’ and ‘desire’ are weak words to use to describe what I am telling you to go and find in yourself. Go out there are find an obsession and a passion for learning your chosen language! Find this and it will see you through any difficulty and keep you pressing on throughout. Ah! But where do you access this overflowing source of boundless desire? From whence flows this river of passion? Ask yourself why you’re learning the language – I am sure the reasons will be good ones as you’re here reading this now – and intensify that desire by looking at other benefits that support it. For example, maybe you’re learning a certain because you went to a country where it is spoken, and would love to be able to talk with the friendly locals in their own language. Perfect! Now what else could that lead to – the love affair of your life, a new job in a beautiful place you’d never even considered before…Keep on going and write down all the reasons you come up with. Write it out in your best hand, or type it and put it on the wall near your study area where you can refer to it. Embellish it with pictures of the country, or things that embody your particular desires. So when you start to feel less than positive about the current state of your learning, you can go back to the reasons and relive your passion, in full. Just in case you’re wondering, the most powerful motivator you can have for learning a language is a passionate love for the language itself. I hope that you develop such a love through your adventure in learning your new language!
(4) Organize you study so you are getting regular practice of the language, every day if possible. Try to study at the same time each day, because your mind will start to expect it and will be easier and easier to settle into learning mode if you make the time of your study a regular habit. Just as you tend to wake up at he same time every day, even if you don’t set your alarm clock, with consistency, you will come to associate a certain time of day with learning your language, and you’ll find your mind is more prone to effective learning at that time, once the habit is formed. Study for as long as you feel comfortable to start with, preferably taking a short break every 20 minutes. Learning experts say that material we encounter at the beginning of a learning session, and right at the end, is most memorable. They also say that 20 minutes is about as long as the average learner can sustain concentration for, before his or her mind begins to wander, so 20 minute-sessions captialise upon our natural tendencies.
(5) Review, review, review! I can’t stress this enough, even though I’ve written it three times and underlined it! Failing to review will leave gaps in your learning, as you move through your course. Review doesn’t take anywhere near as long as the initial learning, but the positive effects it has long-term, far outweighs the little extra effort it takes to review lesson material. A language is a skill that you need to develop and keep on developing, with each new language you learn, building on what you have learned before. How do you review? I suggest building a pattern of review into your study timetable. Obviously, you should review the previous lesson you studied, when you are working on the next. For example, as you progress through the course, you could, when you reach, say, unit 5, make sure you review unit 1 again, when you reach unit 6, review unit 2, and so forth…and then build a further review of units 1 and 5, when you reach unit 10, and so on. Another effective way to review is to schedule a day, or even more than one successive day, of revision every few days, in which you go back over what you have already learned, refreshing your memory and reinforcing your learning.
6) You can make review very effective by transferring the vocabulary and phrases from your course to a notebook you can carry around with you, each page divided into two columns, with the foreign word or phrase in one column, and the English equivalents in the other. Or, better still, make mini flashcards, about the size of a credit card with the foreign language on one side, and the English on the other. With a little extra work on your part, you can make flashcards you can use as a great passive study/revision tool for those times when you’re sitting in traffic, waiting in line or even idly watching TV. Use these times to review the material over and over again, and it you’ll find it sticking with in your mind much more easily. For this technique to be especially effective, transfer the material after you have ‘learned’ it via the lessons in the course. This will be useful because you are reviewing the material just by writing it, but also, it is very important that you learn to pronounce the language well, before you write it down.
(7) When you study, give yourself completely to the task at hand. Turn off the TV and the pop music in the background because it interferes with your concentration, and therefore, your learning. Having said that, it can be beneficial to revise material you've already learned actively, while you are doing something else, as stated above. For example, although you should give yourself entirely to the learning task at hand when you’re learning it at first, it’s fine to flip through and review words and phrases you may have transferred to flash-cards, when you’re watching TV, because you’re just reinforcing, not learning. And, of course, you should have all the audio segments on an iPod or some other digital device, along with the fluency development recordings I’ll show you how to make later in this guide.
Part Two
Improve Your Pronunciation Right Now! Let's assume that you want to learn or improve your Italian. This is: The Instant Accent Technique. Can you speak English with an Italian accent? Can you mimic someone with a strong Italian accent, the stronger the better? Well, that’s all you have to do! Simply speak English as an Italian speaker with a strong accent would, and you create for yourself an instant Italian accent; a skill you can immediately transfer to your learning of the actual Italian language. If you’re not used to doing this, then begin by practising it over a period of a few days, until you feel comfortable with it. Lay it on thick! Observe your model very carefully; mimic the sounds, the intonation (that’s the rise and fall of the voice) and don’t forget the gestures! Mimic those too! Italian speakers tend to use gestures, both bodily and facial, far more than their more reserved, English-speaking counterparts, and as much as 80% of communication is said to be non-verbal, you can guess that's worth bearing in mind! Do this exercise when you’re driving (as long as it's safe to do so), doing housework, or whatever, but be sure to do it out loud, alone in a locked room out of earshot if necessary, and it will soon start to feel natural, unless you have already been prone to mimicry of accents, whereby this might be a virtually instantaneous transfer of skills. Remember, this is really easy, because you’re doing it in English, not Italian. You don’t have to think about the language, just play at sounding Italian…and I do mean play! Enjoy it! Then all you have to do is apply the accent you are now comfortable with to your Italian and BAM! An instantaneous improvement!
This is so simple, you might even feel that I haven’t actually revealed anything ground-breaking here, but how many people actually do this? No-one who hasn’t read this book, for sure, so don't deny yourself the benefits, even if they are doing. Let’s take this a stage further. Choose a native Italian-speaking actor, actress, celebrity or in fact anyone you know as your role model, and make a point of imitating him or her throughout your study of Italian. Listen carefully to how that person speaks Italian and start to mimic it, even if it’s only an element or two at first. One final point here: Choose your mimic-model from someone of the same sex, if at all possible, and preferably someone with a similar pitch and timbre as your own voice. And also make it someone that you like and respect! This is even easier to do if you happen to mimic the same person for both the English and Italian. If you have chosen, for example, Sofia Loren, you will need to obtain recordings of movies in which she is speaking Italian. Visual Pronunciation I stumbled upon this while learning Chinese, but it’s relevant to any language learning or teaching situation. I have always prided myself on being able to mimic speakers of foreign languages with a high degree of accuracy. I don’t mean I don’t have to work at pronunciation too, I just mean that it isn’t the drudgery some people find it to be for me, and that’s partly because I enjoy learning languages. However, on one occasion I was trying to mimic the speaker on the tape I was using, but one of the sounds in Chinese (che) just didn’t sound quite right when I said it, in relation to the native speaker. Note that I was listening to the speaker, and trying to mimic the speaker’s pronunciation as closely as possible. It was an all-auditory exercise, as far as I was concerned. And why not? To pronounce a language, it is sound that you have to mimic, after all. I persevered, and knew (well, I hoped!) that one day I’d hit upon the right sound, but try as I may, something wasn't quite right. It wasn’t until I did something different that I was able to overcome this obstacle.
I had a DVD that accompanied a phrase book, that featured a full-on close up of two native speakers saying the phrases slowly and deliberately. I had put on the DVD without any particular goal in mind, but suddenly a phrase came up with that ‘che’ sound in it, and I started paying more attention. Then it hit me! I looked at the man’s mouth as he was saying it, and I knew immediately why I couldn’t pronounce the sound properly: I had been making the wrong shape with my mouth! That's all it was. As soon as I mimicked the shape as well as the sound I heard, I was able to get the sound spot-on. This lesson is one I had to learn the hard way, but that you can benefit from right away: Learning pronunciation is not all auditory!
By looking at the way native speakers of the language you are learning are moving their mouths, you can mimic the shape and movements as well as the sounds. You’ll find this particularly useful when you are trying to learn a sound that we don’t have an exact equivalent for in English. This simple technique will help you pronounce words better in any language. I have incorporated it into my teaching too. If I’m teaching English to Japanese students, I can tell just from looking at their mouths whether they are pronouncing certain sounds correctly, without even hearing what they are saying. I tell them not to be afraid to move their mouths in different ways to those they are used to, and to watch how I say the words and imitate it, and it works wonders for them too! Italian is far easier to pronounce than Chinese, I can tell you that for free, but if you’re finding yourself running up against a pronunciation hurdle, you may want to look at an Italian speaker pronouncing the word or phrase you are having trouble with.
Stay tuned for additional language learning tips and techniques!