Learnlanguage

In all these cases you want to communicate with somebody in the target language even, in the case of books and films, if it is somewhat removed from the originator of the material.

What are the main language skills?

There are four main language skills.

Listening Speaking Reading Writing

Can we learn anything about language learning from children?

There are those who say you can learn a foreign language by recreating the way you learn language as a child.

So how do children learn language?

Firstly they listen. They listen for a very long time before they speak. Although they do exercise their voice from the beginning, it is not until a child is about one year old that they will try to imitate the sounds typical of the language that they have been born into. That is an awful lot of listening before any sort of basic copying is tried out.

The next stage is for the young child to practice speaking often and without inhibition, that is, without fear of making a mistake. The child is prepared to do this because of the overwhelming desire to communicate. Fear of embarrassment at being wrong is overridden by the desire to communicate with the significant people in the child's life, typically the parents, siblings and other primary carers.

The skills of reading and writing, of course, come a long time after both speaking and listening have been mastered.

So can we learn like children?

Language learning systems trying to copy the way in which the mother tongue is learned will start with listening and speaking. Reading and writing are introduced at a later stage.

So if you are a beginner, resist the temptation to ask how something is spelt and resist the temptation to read your way to fluency.

What we find difficult as adults is pronunciation. Children seem to have the ability to learn the sounds of a language up to the age of maybe as old as ten but thereafter it seems difficult to acquire native speaker ability.

But I have developed my own way of learning over the years!

Of course you have. We all have preferred learning styles. Research seems to indicate that we learn best primarily through one of our senses.

Hearing

Seeing

Touching/experiencing

How do I know which category I fit into?

You can find a number of tests online.

OK, so I'm a hearing sort of person. What now?

If you learn mainly through sound then try the following:

Listen to other people speaking

Read material out loud.

Listen to tapes of exercise material.

Role-play

OK, so I'm a seeing sort of person. What now?

Try the following:

Reading

Videos

Make mind maps

Use pictures

Illustrate your vocabulary lists.

Visualise scenes and objects in your mind.

OK, so I'm a kinaesthetic sort of person. What now?

Try the following:

Take notes

Role-play to stir up the emotions

Use music (either as background or by singing songs)

I've just seen the size of the dictionary for the language I want to learn. It's huge. Help!

You don't have to learn the dictionary to be fluent. Most languages have a core vocabulary of a few thousand words, which form the basis for most communication. Learn the 2000 most common words in English and you can cope with basic conversation. A fluent speaker will know about 7000 words.

Are words on their own enough?

Unfortunately no. Words are like people and tend to associate often with a small group of other words. So you have to learn who are the 'friends' of the word you have just learned. Take the word black for example (number 586 on the list). You will often find black with eye, look, out, magic, humour, person, coffee, mood and blue. You will rarely find black with table, car, cake or pen. That does not mean that talking about a black car is wrong but it does mean that it would be useful to know the meaning of black humour. Modern dictionaries are a great help with this.

So far you haven't mentioned grammar.

If language was compared to driving then grammar would be the rules of the road, vital to know but not the first thing to find out about. It is important to know the basics about verbs and tenses, word order, singular and plural and so on . More misunderstanding is caused by wrong or missing vocabulary than by incorrect grammar. When you know enough to communicate your message effectively then you know enough grammar. For business and published messages grammar needs to be perfect but for everyday life you can get by with the basics.