So you've made up your mind. It's your new year's resolution or you've just seen too many jobs that seem to want someone who speaks a second language. Maybe you're planning to go on holiday and want to know some phrases, or maybe you're just someone like me who loves learning. You get your books/tape/CD's/Computer Software and begin. After the 1st two weeks, you think this is easy, why didn't I do this years ago, your trying to evangelize all your friends and family to come and see the light. A month down the line and you find yourself so busy that you don't seem to have as much time on your hands to study everyday as before, now you are at best doing an hour at weekends. You try to promise yourself that you would do at least 3 hours to make up for the time that you have missed during the week. Another month goes passed and you see that you progress is slowing now and that you are finding it really hard to learn anything and how on Earth do these people actually use this language to communicate? You then find that you have become even busier and other things have come in to your life, do you really have time for this right now? Maybe, you should just pick it up again in a couple of years....
This is the story of so many people who start learning a language - This behavior is totally normal. But this person made so many mistakes because learning a language is like learning to play a musical instrument. You need to 'play' it and you need to play it every day, even if it's only for a short period. I will explain why later. Language learning when you don't live in the country where the target language is spoken natively tends to reward those people more who are slightly obsessive, or at least very organized and very determined. Personally, I prefer slightly obsessive, I've never been particularly well organized.
The first and most important principle that I have learned is that language learning is a physical skill. Exactly like going to the gym for the first time and trying to pick up a heavy weight. You can't do it; because you first need to physically change your body to make it able. You do that by eating good food and working out on those muscles needed to develop the ability to carry that target weight. Another example is, why can't you just site down at a piano, and play? You know that at one end is low note, at the other are the high ones, the theory is simple. So why can't you just site down and play? Once again, you need to practice until new physical connections are created in your brain between the neurons. Once these new physical pathways have been made you can just dictate with your conscious mind which direction you want to go in and you fingers will do the rest. This is exactly how language acquisition works. That's why you have to hit yourself with your target language everyday. Don't worry about the walls that come. Everyone comes up against walls when trying to learn a new language. Try not to worry about the speed of your progress either, that will come with time. Just try and immerse yourself in the target language as much as possible and play. This is also why 15 mins - 30 mins everyday is better than 3 hours at a weekend. If you can, try and write your daily notes in the target language. You are trying to reach the stage where you can start thinking in the target language without translating it in your head. That takes a while, and obsession helps. Listen to foreign media, watch foreign TV and check out foreign websites make it part of your daily life. The body and mind adapters to what it has to, and gets rid of what it can. Then even if you feel that you are up against a wall in your development and just don't seem to be learning anymore, don't worry about it one bit. That's just a feeling, it means nothing. If you are trying to use and get exposure to the language everyday, then you ARE developing no matter how you feel.
External Links: BBC article on brain development stimulated by learning a language.
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