Getting Languages Easier to Learn. The Least Efforts & Best Wishes

– Memo to foreign language beginners;

– Is it possible to learn languages on your own?

– To learn a language or to study it?

– Grammar and vocabulary – theory and practice;

– Is it possible to forget a language?

Learn a language, and you’ll avoid a war.

Arab proverb

Memo to foreign language beginners

I would like to start my book with the features of a language that anyone who takes up the task of learning it should be aware of. They say that you have to have a talent for languages, just as you have a talent for math, physics, and other exact sciences. I don’t argue, it’s not difficult to determine the talent for something, but to develop it you have to make an effort. Let there be a statement that languages, mathematics, chemistry, and physics are not given to everyone, one should have a special gift, abilities, etc. Sometimes you can agree with it, and sometimes you can disagree with it, but if you are forced to learn a language and you have never been successful in it before, I hope that after reading my book you will find it easier to learn languages, you will become interested in them, and the ways to achieve perfection in all endeavors will open up. I still believe that if you are determined to learn a language, if you are confident and hardworking, everything I will share with you in this book will benefit you.

Those who have already studied a foreign language, be it English, German, or French, will certainly spend less effort, and time and achieve the desired success. On the contrary, if you have already studied English in an educational institution or course, but are not satisfied with the outcomes, you have a chance to make up for lost time, and it will not be so difficult.

Well, for those who are studying their first foreign language from scratch, and decided to take a course or study individually with a teacher, my book will serve you as a companion to achieve success. For those who take up language learning on their own, I suggest not to lose courage, despite the psychological resistance and difficulties you may encounter.

Remember, never give up, and see it through to the end. There are times when you have neither desire nor time to learn a language; don’t force yourself to do it, believe me, it won’t do you any good. The fundamental principle of language learning is DESIRE.

Remember the saying, «You can’t force a favor»? It’s the same here. What you need is to sincerely want to learn a language, and then it will be all yours, and the process of learning it will be a pleasure. Studying a language, you as if mentally, conclude an agreement with it: «the «Learner» undertakes to devote time to regular classes of the «Language», and at least once a week to speak it, while fulfilling the above obligations sincerely, with the Soul and with Love. And in turn, the «Language» undertakes to give itself completely to the «Learner».

Maybe the reader thinks to himself now «What an absurd agreement», but just try to study the language with reluctance and neglect, irregularly, even forcibly, so to speak, and see how far you will advance…

These seemingly ridiculous terms must be observed while learning a language, otherwise you will not learn it. If you are not satisfied with the above position, you will not learn the language, no matter how much you want to and no matter how hard you try. A vivid example of this: is the students who decided to study to become translators. There were only 10 out of 100 students who wanted to learn the language and become true translators. They studied hard, always attended classes, passed all the exams perfectly, and it was these ten who learned the language quite well and became specialists, while the rest just got certificates for «box-ticking». And you can draw your conclusions.

To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world.

Chinese Proverb

Is it possible to learn languages on your own?

The answer to this question I would like to start with a small excerpt from my autobiography, and you will judge for yourself. I have never had the desire to learn foreign languages on my own. I always wanted to put my laziness on someone to teach me something, to chew everything up and put it in my mouth. Nothing to say, in my 16—19 years I, as well as everyone my age, had a principle: they give me tasks – I do them, they tell me to learn – I learn it. Everything went its way, I was comfortably given knowledge, and I acquired it until the education system cracked… It all started when I was in my second year of college. My French teacher left. The hours allocated for the second foreign language were cut due to the crisis, and the French teacher was not found. I had no choice but to find out the phone number of my old teacher and take private tutoring with her. So I went to classes for a year, and during this time I learned not only the language but also the manner of teaching. A year passed, and then the summer internship started. I, as a successful student, was offered an internship in an international hotel, and this is where I learned my profession and determined what I should strive for.

Thinking about the future, I realized that it is necessary to improve and that the knowledge of two languages does not surprise anyone now (not to mention the skill of translation), and that’s when I came up with the idea to study a third foreign language – a Spanish one. As is customary, I started calling courses, looking for teachers, and native speakers (with whom I could practice the language), and then I was disappointed… The courses were too expensive, I could not find any Spanish teachers, and there were no native speakers. Well, the desire to learn Spanish never left me and I started looking for solutions. The search began with the Internet, I went to free sites, downloaded a few self-tutorials, audio materials (for practicing pronunciation and reading rules), and various grammar guides, and got down to work. The first month of studying was very difficult… To begin with, I was not used to working independently at that moment, I could not develop learning techniques and plan my lessons with a schedule, and even more so studying a language completely unknown to me before was something unthinkable…

Days passed, and little by little I learned new words, sorted out the rules of grammar, and learned to read, write, and build simple sentences. Over time, I learned how to use audio materials skillfully, discovered video courses, and even found Spanish-speaking pen pals. The skill of practicing on my own allowed me to eventually forget about a language teacher. And French, unlike Spanish, which I started learning from scratch, was much easier to learn on my own with some basic knowledge.

So, a year passed. I graduated from college, got a degree in translation, and in the summer I went on vacation to Thailand with my family. And then, thanks to my belief that hard work is rewarded and ambition is always welcome, I met the Spaniards from Barcelona. I was happy because in a year of studying Spanish, I had never practiced it neither with a Spanish teacher nor even with the people who taught it. My hopes were justified, I could not imagine that even on vacation in Thailand I would be able to meet Spaniards and communicate with them, and most importantly, I spoke fluently and understood as if I had studied Spanish not for a year, but at least three. I achieved all this by believing in my capabilities and thinking about how I would have been taught by the same teachers in the course. I have impartially assessed the possibilities of the Internet, and my linguistic knowledge and firmly said to myself: «WOW I can be a self-taught learner!» This is where it all began… When you start learning a language from scratch, you immediately begin to remember how you have taught others before, put into practice the previous techniques, and invent new ones. Studying on your own, you learn a lot of new things and try different teaching methods and materials that make the journey to your goal easier.

I hope that this excerpt from my biography has served as an inspiration for those wishing to learn a new language and a pull to self-study. While learning the language, I had to use the computer and the Internet, thanks to which I discovered all its invaluable interactive and communicative capabilities. This is what my book will be talking about.

Self-study is becoming more and more popular nowadays due to the emergence of many educational materials, self-study books, periodicals, and various audio and video courses, and what is taught by foreign language teachers is not always all that can be learned by studying on your own. However, much depends on the circumstances, mental abilities of students, their conscience, and financial possibilities.

If you think about it, ask any professional, preferably 45—50 years old, how many years he studied to achieve such mastery in his work. If he is a professional (if he is), he will answer you – «All his or her life». Note that most of his or her life he studied not at universities, not on courses, but learned everything on his or her personal experience, showing maximum inquisitiveness. So, independence and curiosity are the driving forces on the way to perfection. The ability to gain such power means to gain success

You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.

Geoffrey Willans

To learn a language or to study it?

Have you ever noticed that there are two concepts close to each other: «to learn a language» and «to study a language»? Probably not everyone has noticed the difference because we usually use both terms in speech. And we are right, in both cases. But I deliberately draw a parallel between these two notions, because if you look at it this way, the words «study» and «learn» are almost synonymous, but still, there is a distance between them. You can study science, history, and culture. You can learn a poem, a song, a rule, and a language.

The word «study» means abstract cognition and understanding of some important points and concepts about a subject. Does this definition apply to a language? Probably not, because while «learning» a language you have to memorize something all the time. Let’s take words for example, if we don’t learn them, will we be able to understand the written title of a text and start reading? And if we want to build a sentence ourselves? Without knowing either words or grammatical rules, this is hardly possible for anyone. It turns out that language proficiency is the ability to apply in practice a set of accumulated knowledge, in the form of learned words, rules, and common phrases, as well as various speech skills. At the same time, the accumulated knowledge cannot be superficial, especially when it comes to conversational practice. In the process of communicating in a foreign language, you constantly have to remember the learned words, phrases, speech patterns, and so on. It is difficult and not always possible to remember everything in the speech. Hence it follows that the speaking skill should be made automatic. How to make speech automatic? – Try to learn or rather «assimilate» the basic principles of speech patterning. It is not without reason that at the beginning of this section, I cited an aphorism of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy: I advise you to delve into the essence of the thought expressed in it…

To learn a language: The surest way to memorize something is to learn it. You should memorize all lexical (conversational) elements. These include words, collocations, expressions, topical dialogues, texts, etc.

Having learned something, while speaking, you will not have to «reinvent the wheel», constantly remembering words and straining to come up with a suitable expression.

In the post-Soviet period, the so-called academic method prevailed in teaching foreign languages i.e., they taught, first of all, to speak correctly by teaching grammar. However the teaching was usually poor, and as a result, only the temporal forms of irregular verbs were kept from the school knowledge. In the West (in the broad sense) they do things differently. There they teach mainly speech clichés, which are easily memorized in the natural environment of communication. Pay attention to the way Germans, Dutch, and «other Scandinavians» speak English, for example, effortlessly «shooting out» long sentences. Compare this to the agonizing search for every next word with endless «uh-uhs» and even scratching in the back of the head, typical of our compatriots who studied under the Soviet and post-Soviet systems. Our children, young people who have been trained by them, speak as easily as foreigners.

It would seem that the solution, is found in their practice as it usually happens: learn speech patterns of a foreign language and you will speak correctly. If you learn a lot of such clichés, you will be able to speak on any topic. But, unfortunately, everything is not so simple. Learning a language by memorizing speech clichés is like learning a phrasebook by heart. Of course, I don’t want to exaggerate, but sometimes learning all the phrases of a phrasebook in a row looks scholastic, like learning an English-Russian dictionary.

My advice, if you decide to learn a language by using a phrasebook, try making identical expressions with the same learned phrases, using other words. Example: “¿Dònde esta la plaza?» “¿Dònde esta la tienda?» – «Where is the town square?» «Where is the store?» You can also try to match phrases from the phrasebook with grammatical rules from the textbook for better learning.

This method is also suitable for keeping up small talk about weather, health, common acquaintances, etc. Moreover, you are not an interpreter, who should not limit himself or herself to memorizing speech clichés, because the interpreter’s speech is imposed by the original. You, unlike an interpreter, can use your bundle of knowledge that has been learned and unlearned.

We will talk further about the bundle of knowledge and what it should be to enable you to freely express your thoughts in a foreign language

To study a language: It is high time to talk about what we study at schools and on courses for several years, spend all our efforts on it, and then do not use it, and in the end, we fail to know how to apply it – about grammar.

To alleviate the problems with regular memorizing of dialogues, phrases, and topical tests, linguistics theorists have proposed the study of grammar. Learning a language on the principle of mastering grammar rules has its pros and cons. Many people believe that to learn a language you need to know all the grammar rules perfectly and be able to master them in practice.

But what does grammar itself mean? Grammar is a kind of classification of language, which allows you to learn a language by finding the correspondence of language norms for speech composition. Grammar is more of a theory. Is it possible to learn to speak, knowing the theory only? What is grammar for?

The original idea of grammar is to learn a language by knowing all its rules. Let’s discuss its pros and cons. First of all, the main disadvantage of grammar is the aversion it causes in beginners. At the first steps of learning a language, it seems to everyone to be a fig leaf, because of the incomprehensibility of the rules and the lack of practical need for them. Would not you lose the desire to learn a language, if, at the very first lessons, you were explained the use of articles in abstruse language, then given a tedious meaningless exercise on their positioning in the sentence? It is wrong to do so, I would even call this approach a disrespect to the listeners.

Beginners should be given the freedom to create even a «false» (in the opinion of the coryphets) perception of mastery of the language. It is recommended to learn simple words and simple expressions, such as: «Hello», «How are you?», «What’s your name?», and «How old are you?», which are taught playfully and memorized at ease. If you explain the rules of grammar to beginners, it is better not to get carried away with their abstruse explanations. It is desirable to use as few complicated terms as possible and to cite as many examples as possible. An effective process would be one in which students fire off their examples as if from a machine gun, applying the rules they have learned, and demonstrating their practical value. I do not consider grammar to be such an essential element of language mastery. The depth of grammar study should be determined by the degree of the learners’ background. For example, if a group has just recently completed A1 level, there is no need to move on to learning the subjunctive mood and compound tenses.

The second drawback of grammar is the impossibility of mastering spoken language fluently. Imagine, you know grammar well and have a good vocabulary. But then it’s time to express your thoughts and again it doesn’t go easily. First, you try to remember the appropriate words, then grammatical rules, then put all the words into a sentence, quickly mentally check yourself on the correctness of the sentence, and only then verbally express the thought. It takes about 20 seconds to do all that. How does this happen? It’s simple, most of the time we practice the language in exercises, and we have enough time to think about them. It takes us 3—4 seconds to translate a sentence or substitute a verb form, but we don’t have that in live speech! Maybe I am exaggerating something, but many people who learn a language only by grammar, most often express their thoughts with two or three words, without reaching fluency.

The third disadvantage, according to which it is not worth considering grammar as a way of teaching spoken language is that grammar, in fact, like any other theory, has the property of «airing out». Any theory is quickly forgotten because it is not needed or there is no possibility to apply it in practice. The point is that human beings have well-developed practical thinking rather than abstract thinking.

If grammar «fades with time», what should remain in the memory? And what should remain should be the templates by which a sentence is constructed. After all, without thinking about it, you can substitute the name «Roman» instead of «My name is Artyom» or «His name is» or «His surname is» instead of «My name is». Now we have a more complicated example. Let’s assume that the subjunctive mood is being considered (if «I were you, I would buy…» which means «На вашем месте я бы купил…”. You can substitute another verb for «buy», such as «say», and thus change the sentence to «На вашем месте я бы сказал».

So, in the end, what is the best thing to memorize when learning grammar so that you don’t waste your time? You should memorize patterns, not specific rules. I would like to point out that the model of teaching grammar from practice to theory is widely used in the Cambridge and Oxford learning systems. As you have realized, the problem of learning a language through grammar most often lies in the lack of its practical application

Another drawback of grammar is that it is detached from vocabulary, as is often the case. Just imagine, you learn the rules and each of them is supplied with a few examples – you can learn the whole grammar book, but in the end, you will not learn to speak. First of all, you will have a poor vocabulary, and secondly, you will not have the skills of practical application of grammar. It is important to understand (maybe even realize) the practical use of the rules in speech when you analyze a grammar lesson. This is something we do not see in everyday language lessons in educational institutions and courses. After all, grammar cannot exist without vocabulary. For practical mastery of the language, either a dialog or a topical text must be learned, and it is better to learn it all at once.

Moreover, there are some grammatical rules that «can be understood» only at a certain stage of language learning. It is useless to explain to a beginner the rules of the «sequence of tenses of the subjunctive mood in a compound sentence». And then we are surprised at how many people start learning languages and give up this thankless task.

In case you still want to learn speaking skills using grammar, study each rule carefully, try to do as many exercises as possible to consolidate them (I recommend translation exercises), and do not proceed to the study of a new subject if you have not understood the previous one.

Grammar cannot be completely excluded from our «diet». Without it, expressions, lexical expressions, patterns of narrative and interrogative sentence building, etc. will not be understood. Those who use grammar as an aid to practical speaking lessons can find useful speech patterns that allow them to translate correctly when working with a text. You just need to know how to use grammar correctly, understand the purpose of its study, and consider it as a supporting element (framework) of spoken language.

I can add that as much as I learn grammar, I still build phrases on a subconscious level. How to achieve this skill? Read more about it in my book.

When covering the topic of whether to learn a language or to study it, we forget to take into account one important factor, without which it is certainly impossible to learn to communicate freely, is listening to speech. All the elements of a language to be learned must be accompanied by sound. Few people who learn a language resort to audio recordings, and how wrong they are! For the most part, it is only through auditory perception that you can learn a language. Imagine, if you spend a whole year learning a language only from printed materials without audio, what will you learn? – You may be able to write without mistakes, translate, and express your thoughts in writing, but you will not be able to speak fluently. Then why do you need to learn a language if you can’t speak it?