by Jeff Martin
I once did an experiment to attempt to recreate a similar experience to my first language learning experience. When I began learning Arabic, I didn’t utter a single Arabic word for the first 30 days. I didn’t allow myself to be exposed to the written language either. I began an audio course, but without repeating. I also listened to the spoken language in recorded conversations, allowing my mind to absorb the sounds. Nowadays when I speak Arabic, my Arab friends tell me that I have great pronunciation. I wonder if my experiment had anything to do with that.
The main point to gather from this perspective on listening is to listen to the language enough that it doesn’t sound like a foreign language to you anymore. Again, this will take a substantial amount of time. Don’t let that worry you. There are 24 hours in each day for every one of us to either use or waste. Language learning is largely an investment of time, and a highly rewarding one at that.
04 Mockingbird
Step Two – Mimicry
As I stated previously, language is something that we initially learn from other people. Why should that change when learning a foreign language? In my opinion, the term language fluency implies that there exists some sort of flow of spoken words between two or more people. After all, a conversation is only possible with two or more parties.
How did you learn to converse or “flow” in your first language? After you began to listen to the spoken language, you desperately strived to produce the words that you heard. You naturally and effectively discovered how to mimic others. Fortunately for you, the people in your life were interested in you learning how to speak, so they coached you; but how were you coached?
Your coaches would make eye contact, speak slowly, and exaggerate the movements of their mouths to show you how to shape the words. This is how you learned to lip read. They would repeat simple words and syllables slowly, giving you the time necessary to try mimicking them. You listened to sounds, watched mouths, and struggled to repeat what you saw and heard. Without this intimate form of coaching, how much harder would it have been to learn your first language?
Most people skip the crucial beginning step of finding native speakers to coach them, and instead buy a language course. Learning a language from a course is kind of like playing catch with yourself. Have you ever tried to get your language course to coach you? I guess it’s safe to say that a course can’t replace a human being. Regardless of the seemingly endless propaganda served to us by language course companies purporting to offer the quickest and most effective way to learn a language, usually even guaranteed, it’s important to realize that a language course alone will not make you fluent. Learning to verbally flow in a language with other people will only come by practicing with and being coached by native speakers. Without this key element, most foreign language learners usually either give up, or never become conversationally fluent.
Face to face communication engages multiple senses. When you are learning a new word or phrase during a live conversation, you are having a multisensory experience. Afterwards, your recall of said conversation will be based on the experience you had. It is much easier to remember a word or a phrase that you learned through live coaching than it is to mindlessly memorize words and definitions. The more parts of your awareness that are engaged when learning something, the easier it is to remember it in the future.
It is important to note that communication is so much more than spoken language, and spoken language is often used to complement what is being communicated nonverbally. Most of the vocabulary you learned early in life was through situational context. Picture this scenario: The mother's face turned red as she clenched her teeth, glared at her son and said, "Don't you dare!" The child nearly panics as he quickly understands that he better not even think about doing whatever it was he was going to do. The key to remember here is that experience is what’s important. You probably learned the word hot from being burned, and cold from feeling something cold. Once again, learning vocabulary from live situations requires you to be in the situation in the first place, and with native speakers.
When involved in a live conversation, you have the opportunity to observe the speaker’s mouth, just as you did when you learned to lipread your first language. You’re also forced to use what vocabulary you know and improvise in the language. You learn new vocabulary by picking up on situational context and visual clues, as well as body language. The feedback from the native speaker induces learning. Also, you’re perceiving the language as it is spoken by natives, in its raw, authentic form.
Conversations are spontaneous, filled with emotions, false starts, body language, facial expressions, and variances in intonation, volume, rate of speech, etc. Almost none of the experiences that you benefit from during live conversation can be experienced with a course. Course materials are merely artificial examples of the language. In contrast, spoken language is seemingly alive.
Native speakers, therefore, need to be your primary source for learning the language. Many people shy away from approaching them. Instead, they spend countless hours studying from their language course. Obviously, they receive positive reinforcement from the progress they are making, such as completing a certain number of levels or milestones, which fosters the idea that they are really learning the language. If you spend most of your language learning time studying from a course and little time with native speakers, you will likely learn the language using your own version of pronunciation, which will probably be incorrect. If you continue to spend a considerable amount of time learning the language on your own, you will inevitably solidify these bad habits. Then, when you do approach native speakers, you certainly won’t sound like them. You’ll simply be speaking the version of the language that you created. When learning on your own, you don’t have the company of a native speaker to correct and coach you. Whereas if you are mimicking and learning from native speakers, you can compare your voice to theirs, making adjustments along the way.
Over the years, I’ve given language lessons to help me with my research. Of all the students that I’ve coached, very few were willing to actively seek out native speakers. Those that did so achieved success. Those who didn’t simply gave up. I have heard many reasons as to why a language learner doesn’t approach natives. Most of them were simply excuses, in my opinion. I have determined that the real issue for most people is fear. What do I say? How do I start a conversation? What if I mess up? What if I can’t remember how to say anything? What if they laugh at me?
Again, your best bet is to approach this as a child would. Children, even shy ones, learn how to speak their language. Of course, they have the advantage of necessity. If they don’t learn to speak, they may not make it very far in life. As a second language learner, most of the time we don’t have the element of necessity when it comes to speaking our new language. For most of us, our new language is a hobby, or perhaps we hope to gain from it somehow in the future. Either way, this fear of approaching natives must be overcome in the beginning. The purpose of learning a language is to communicate with native speakers. Don’t let your purpose become your fear and downfall.
Even though I am highly passionate about languages, I too face similar fears. Facing those fears is what has helped me achieve success in this field. One major element that has helped me to be brave enough to approach natives is having a small arsenal of phrases at my disposal. The best way to obtain this arsenal is to use an all-audio course.
The important thing to remember when beginning with an audio course is to stay true to your commitment to not learn to read the language until you can flow and sound like a native, at least with a basic conversational vocabulary. Luckily, most audio courses teach conversational phrases. As soon as you learn a few phrases, immediately find native speakers with whom to practice them. Hopefully, the native speakers will provide you with feedback and some coaching. Continue this process while you are going through your audio course. Learn a few phrases, practice with natives, receive feedback, return to your course, practice new phras
es with natives, and so on. This is how you will become “kindergarten ready.”
These face to face experiences are what will solidify your learning of said phrases. If you mispronounce a word or phrase and are corrected by a native speaker, don’t be discouraged. Instead, consider yourself fortunate to have successfully reproduced a similar situation to the many that you had in your native language as a toddler. In Italian there is a phrase, sbagliando s’impara, which means you learn by making mistakes.
Unfortunately, at least in the United States, by way of politics and old mindsets that refuse to perish, most immigrants to our country are discriminated against and looked down upon. As a language learner, you can consider this as an advantage to you. When a native of this country approaches a foreigner or immigrant and is interested in learning their language, it is a sign of embracing them and their culture. Therefore, most non-U.S. natives welcome this type of interaction. Through your interest in them and their language, which is ultimately intertwined with their culture, they are being validated. They will most likely be delighted by the fact that you approached them and be more than willing to talk with you. Assume and remember this every time fear tries to stop you from approaching.
Forging friendships with native speakers will motivate you to keep going, especially if you know you will see the person or persons again soon. Desire to learn can further the development of your new friendship by causing you to want to meet more often, and by doing so, you become more exposed to the language which helps you learn faster. It is a perpetual cycle of bonding and learning. Each time you speak to a person, you make a personal connection with them, and the experience of each conversation is recorded in your memory. It may take some work to hone your recollection skills, but with practice, you can remember the gist of most real conversations you've ever had with anyone. The most meaningful ones are easier to remember, while the more mundane would require a reminder of what was spoken.
If you are fortunate to live in area in which it is easy to find native speakers of the language you are learning, you should strive to have as much in-person contact with them as possible. If you have difficulty finding native speakers in your community, the world is still at your fingertips via the internet. There are many language exchange websites and mobile apps available. Language exchange can help take away some of the fear as well, since it will be a reciprocal relationship. Both you and the native speaker will be going through a similar process of being coached and corrected. It is important to inform your language exchange partner, however, of your commitment to forgo reading and writing the new language until you have mastered your pronunciation and basic conversational skills. For this reason, you should suggest that the language lessons be done by video or audio chat. Video is best, as it is very similar to in-person communication.
When searching for native speakers to practice with, you may be tempted to practice with bilinguals. They may have moved here later in life and learned English as a second language. They may be children of immigrants and have grown up in the U.S. You may even find people who learned your new language as their second language. It’s important to understand with which of these groups you need to practice.
If a person grew up in another country and moved to the U.S. as an adult, it’s ok to practice with them. Their native language was probably not affected by them learning English. However, if they moved here as a child, or were born here, do not practice with them until you have become fluent. This is because they are most likely making many grammatical mistakes due to thinking mostly in English. A good way to test this is if they “code-switch” or switch back and forth between both languages frequently when speaking. If your potential teacher learned English as their native language, be careful about learning from them. Even if they are a master certified interpreter such as myself, they still probably possess some flaws in the foreign language.
For me, it's harder to speak a foreign language with someone who speaks English. Even though they are bilingual, part of me knows that the easiest thing for me to do would be to speak English. It's human nature to take the path of least resistance, and since language is birthed out of the need to communicate, that need is most easily satisfied by speaking English with them. Therefore, I always try to find native speakers that know little or no English.
Pride will often try to impede your learning. When native speakers are talking with you and they say something you don’t understand, you may be tempted to pretend that you did understand so as not to face embarrassment. This will not benefit you at all. It’s ok to ask them to repeat what they said or to slow down. Remember, you are learning.
One very damaging mistake I see language learners make is trying to interpret what is being said to them into English. This will only hinder their learning. First of all, the person speaking already knows what they said to you, so there is no need to interpret for them. Secondly, your goal is to be able to think in the foreign language as well, which can’t be done if you keep transforming what you hear into English. When someone talks to you in the foreign language, and you’re unsure if you’ve understood what was spoken, try to repeat it for them in the same language. For example, if they say, “Are you hungry?” you can respond, “Am I hungry?” or simply repeat exactly what they said.
Another potential downfall is the frustration that comes with not understanding words spoken by natives. This will happen more and more often as you surround yourself with them. Remember, the same thing occurred to you in your first language, and it happened for several years. Luckily for you, the stress of not understanding will help you to listen more closely. As you dive into the deep ocean of endless language sounds spoken by natives, your awareness will increase, causing you to try to swim instead of sink, so to speak.
It may take some experimenting with different audio courses before you find one that you feel is right for you. In my opinion, the courses that are most effective are those that prompt the student to recall and speak words that have been previously learned. Following the prompts, there is enough space for the learner to give the answers aloud, followed by a recording of the correct answer given by the native speaker. There are courses that have the student repeat words and phrases after the native speaker, in hopes that they will learn the material from this incessant repetition. Repeating what you hear is not as effective as being prompted to recall what you have already learned. You do initially have to repeat or mimic words when you are first learning them, but repetition alone does not cause learning to take place.
Your audio course must be conversational and simulate interactivity with native speakers. You must be prompted to participate in mock conversations. If the course has dialogues, listen to them often. Try to shadow the conversations to help you build fluency. Shadowing is when you repeat speech immediately after hearing it. If you’re shadowing a conversation, for example, you would be speaking the words of the conversation along with the recording, except you will be lagging a little behind the speakers. This will help you build speed and fluidity, train your ear to listen, improve your grammar, solidify learned vocabulary, adopt intonation and pronunciation, develop rhythm, and ultimately help you sound like a native.
When learning and practicing phrases or shadowing conversations, imagine yourself talking to natives. Be creative. Imagine your senses being engaged. For example, if the mock conversation is taking place in a coffee shop, imagine being there, smelling the coffee grounds in the air, listening to the music play over the speakers. Include as many senses as possible.
While going through this process of using an audio course to feed your conversational arsenal, don’t forget to continue your daily listening practice that was discussed in the previous chapter. Continuous exposure to the spoken language will accelerate your learning at an exponential rate.
Hopefully by this point you have developed enough understanding and courage to face the challenge of learning a new language head-on. Perhaps you still have some doubts about your ability to sound like a
native. I invite you to continue along this journey with me. We are just getting started.
05 The Sounds of Language
Step Three - Sounding Like a Native
Mastering accent and pronunciation might be the most important milestone in your journey to learn a foreign language, because at that point, you will have successfully trained your ears to hear the true sounds of the language as spoken by native speakers, and your speech organs to reproduce them. Until you reach that point, how much will you be able to understand when exposed to the spoken language?
Pronunciation is the key element that connects listening and speaking a language. If you can pronounce a word correctly, then you can hear it correctly. For example, if you think the verb to be in Spanish is estar (pronounced with an American accent, finishing the word how Americans say the word star) then it's no wonder you have limited comprehension of the spoken language. You probably wouldn't be able to recognize the word estar in the middle of - Me dijeron que tengo que estar en la oficina a las ocho en punto. - because the words you hear in your mind sound different when pronounced by natives. After all, if it doesn’t sound like Spanish, is it really Spanish?
Unfortunately, it is acceptable to speak and even claim to be fluent in a foreign language all while retaining one’s native language accent. This of course, is a result of the system failure that I described in chapter one. Due to the abundance of second language learners that never learn to sound like a native, a myth has been embedded into the minds of most people that doing so is unattainable. Hopefully you read the introduction to this book and agreed with me that your human body and mind are similar to those of people from other countries, and you are fully capable of learning to use your speech organs to produce human language sounds, regardless of the language. If you are not convinced of that, please read the introduction again.