by Jeff Martin
My goal now is to help you to dissolve the misconceptions that you have been led to believe, as well as open your eyes to the reality of learning languages with the aid of courses. By uncovering the myths behind most language course advertisements, you will be better prepared to search for the right set of language courses for you.
07 Of Course
Step 4 - Learning to Read, Write, and the Basics of Grammar
The most common myth I see advertised is that a certain course will make you fluent in just a few months. First of all, like I’ve stated several times in this book already, a language course alone will not make you fluent. Secondly, the math needs to be understood. Most adults know 20,000 - 30,000 words or more in their native language. Most 8-year-olds know about 10,000 words, and the average kindergartener knows around 5,000. If we were to label these three levels as basic, moderate, and native-like fluency, the following would be a more accurate timeline for achieving each level of fluency:
Basic Fluency - 5,000 words
10 words per day = 500 days ~ 17 months
20 words per day = 250 days ~ 9 months
Moderate Fluency - 10,000 words
10 words per day = 1,000 days ~ 34 months
20 words per day = 500 days ~ 17 months
Native-Like Fluency - 20,000 to 30,000 words
10 words per day = approximately 7 years
20 words per day = approximately 3.5 years
In other words, how can you expect to become fluent in a short amount of time from a course? It is virtually impossible. Just as vitamins are strictly supplements and cannot replace food, language courses, too, are supplemental in nature. The quickest way you can learn a language is to have massive exposure to native speakers.
One common buzz word in the language learning genre is immersion. Courses that claim to be full immersion are falsifying their claims. You can’t immerse yourself in a culture in front of your computer or on a mobile app. That’s sort of I like trying to get a tan by watching a video of a sunset.
As far as "point and click" courses are concerned, I have found them to be minimally effective, unless used for passive learning. It can be compared to a multiple-choice exam that a student would take in school. When I was a kid, I always hoped that our teacher would give us this type of exams. This is because when you are presented with a number of possible answers, all you have to do is use process of elimination and single out the correct answer. You don't even have to know what the correct answer is. You simply need to know what the wrong answers are. On the other hand, on a test in which you are asked to fill in the correct answer, with no answers to choose from, you either know the information or you don't. While engaged in conversation with native speakers, the learner does not get to choose what they need to say from a list of possible answers. They need to recall what they have learned, or not communicate effectively. In real life, you must have easy access to your learned vocabulary and expressions.
Learning by repetition has the same downfall. Being able to repeat what you hear is an invaluable skill, however, little to no recall is required. The most effective form of repetition is repeating the action of recalling learned information, which will reinforce what has been learned. As I stated in chapter four, an ideal course is one that teaches you how to say something, later prompts you to recall said word or phrase, then gives you the correct answer to compare with your own.
Many language courses as well as foreign language classroom curriculums focus way too much on grammar in the beginning. Picture the following scenario; Imagine that your wedding anniversary is coming up, and you would like to do something special for your spouse. You decide to take some guitar lessons and learn how to play him or her a song on that upcoming special day. During the first guitar lesson, you explain your intentions to the instructor, and tell him the name of the song you wish to learn. Instead of teaching you how to play anything, the instructor teaches you all the different parts of the guitar. This process takes up the entire lesson, and you leave fairly disappointed and confused.
The next week, you return in hopes that you might learn to play at least one or two chords, so that you can begin practicing the song. Upon arriving to the lesson, the instructor tests you on your knowledge of the parts of the guitar. Since this wasn’t the reason you began guitar lessons in the first place, you hadn’t studied what you learned in your first lesson, and you failed his test. In response to your poor performance on the test, the instructor repeats the first lesson, explaining more thoroughly each detail about each part of the guitar.
How many more lessons would you attend before deciding to either quit or find a different instructor? This may seem silly, but many people approach language learning in a similar way, especially in the classroom setting, by mainly focusing on grammar. The problem is that grammar is only part of that which language consists of. To attempt to learn a language by focusing mostly on grammar is almost like trying to heat a cup of water by learning about the parts of a microwave or learning about electrical engineering when all you want to do is turn your television on.
In my opinion, the best way to approach grammar is to not worry about it for a while. Focusing mainly on grammar rules in the beginning of one’s language learning journey can be an arduous chore, a boring one at that, and certainly doesn’t provide much mental stimulation other than stress and frustration. If you have been learning your new language based on the philosophy of this book up to this point, then you are simulating your first language learning experience. Grammar is something that you began to focus on after you had become conversationally proficient in your native language. It was not taught to you as a way to learn how to become fluent, rather it was a method of refining and furthering your understanding of your mother tongue.
In the beginning, grammar is best absorbed by learning how to speak like a native, provided you pay attention to sentence structure. By learning the language as it is spoken by natives, your brain will naturally put the pieces of the grammar puzzle together. This is one reason why shadowing the spoken language regularly is so helpful. When studying grammar after one has gained a decent grasp on the language, it serves to be a much more rewarding process, allowing the learner to reveal previously unsolved mysteries and answer unasked questions about the language. For these reasons, I recommend you don’t use any grammar-based workbooks until after you feel comfortable with the language.
A great idea is to find courses and/or apps that include videos of native speakers speaking the words and phrases that you are learning. This will help you to see how to form the words and therefore enhance your pronunciation. This is highly effective, as it induces the learning of lip reading. When you lipread you are watching someone's mouth formulate words, and you can mentally hear those words in your mind. In my experience, up-close videos of natives speaking have been the most effective tool for learning at home.
Monolingual courses have also proven to be very effective for me. By monolingual, I mean that the course has no English script nor audio. You can usually find these by chasing the advertisements for full immersion, even though you can be sure that it isn’t true immersion. Nevertheless, going through a course with no script or audio in English can help you to think and reason in the language you are learning. It is also a great way to absorb grammar rules by context. Also, any language learning software or app you use should have a voice recognition component so that you can compare your recorded voice with that of the native speaker’s.
Avoid courses with transliteration. Transliteration is when the pronunciation is spelled out in English letters next to or underneath the foreign language. This simply causes you to compare the foreign language sounds to English language sounds. It is only a hindrance to your pronunciation.
Hopefully by now you have gained some perspective on how to find the right courses for you. I pluralize the word courses, because I believe that you will need to use more than one. All courses are different, and sometimes what is considered basic in one c
ourse isn't introduced until the more advanced levels in another. Using only one language course will leave you with many gaps in your vocabulary. In my opinion, it’s important to see the courses as a way of understanding about 70 percent of the words that are spoken on a daily basis. The rest you can learn by massive exposure to both the spoken and written language, as well as learning by context. In my experience, in order to reach this 70 percent comprehension level, I usually need at least one audio course, one or two mobile apps or software, with at least one of them being monolingual, as well as a set of beginner to advanced course books.
One thing I had to learn the hard way was the need to master course materials. When I was just starting out, my goal was to finish a course as quickly as possible with the mindset that the sooner I finished the course, the sooner I would become fluent. This caused me to not absorb enough of the information and therefore was counterproductive. Repeated exposure is the way to master the material. Take your time with each lesson. Go through each lesson over and over until you feel you have it mastered. You should know it so well that it even seems tedious to review. Periodically I will still review course material that I have previously mastered. As far as the audio portions are concerned, I listen to the tracks so much that I can anticipate the next word or phrase to be uttered.
Another tip is to only study for 30 minutes at a time. Afterwards, take a 10-15-minute break to allow your subconscious to process the material to which it was exposed. For some people, 30 minutes a day is all they can handle. After about 30 minutes, your brain will absorb less and less information as time goes on. Some courses even recommend only studying for 30 minutes a day, but when I think about how many hours per day a student spends learning at school, I believe the average human mind is more than capable of studying for an extended period of time, provided the person takes adequate breaks every 30 minutes.
This chapter is my long answer to the question that many people have asked me over the years. Which is the best language course to become fluent? The answer is none. Courses are only a small part of the immense task of really learning a language.
08 Fluency
I’ve always been fascinated by spy movies, particularly when it comes to the spies’ foreign language skills. Most of the time the character speaks a foreign language with seeming fluency and virtually no accent, so as to pass as a native. Another term for this level is native-like fluency. That level of mastery has always intrigued me. I used to wonder what it would be like to become so fluent in a language that I could pass as a native. Now that I have achieved that in a handful of languages, I can tell you that being mistaken for a native is one of the most rewarding experiences that I have had.
To attain such a high level of fluency may be a lofty goal for you, and depending on what your language learning goals are, it might even be out of the question. Either way, if you’ve reached this point in the book, I can only assume that you at least desire to become fluent in a foreign language. But what does the term fluent really mean? At what level can one claim to be fluent in a language? In my opinion, it is a highly misunderstood and often misused term. Many people claim to be fluent in a language yet struggle to sound like a native, or even struggle holding basic conversations.
The concept of being fluent is usually understood to mean that a person has reached THE level of proficiency called fluency, as if fluency were a destination. However, fluency is neither a level nor a point in a language learner’s journey. It is more like a never-ending staircase on which each step is a higher degree of ability to flow in conversation with natives as well as a higher level of comprehension and usage of both the spoken and written language. The first step on this staircase is the point at which a language learner has become proficient in conversation and has developed the ability to sound like a native. Regardless of their limited vocabulary, this person can verbally flow in conversation.
Just like children are considered fluent, even on a basic level before they start kindergarten, so too can the language learner be considered fluent at this level. Herein lies the problem. Obviously by this point the learner hasn’t learned to read or write and has a very basic understanding of grammar. If you compare this person’s level of proficiency to someone who has mastered a language, then the term fluent, even though it applies to both people, is rather vague. This is why when people ask me how many languages I know, it takes me some time to answer.
If you have followed the steps described in the first seven chapters of this book, having built up your listening skills, learned how to mimic and sound like a native speaker, learned to read and write as well as the basics of grammar with a few different types of courses, then chances are you are fluent to a degree. You possess basic language skills, yet continuously find yourself not understanding many things that you read or hear. You can impress your friends and survive in day to day conversations, but your vocabulary still seems limited, and your ability to express yourself is still underdeveloped.
So, what do you need to do in order to climb up to the next step on the ladder of fluency? If you bought into my philosophy that completing the steps described thus far will help you to understand about 70 percent of what you read and hear daily, then the first logical thing would be to build your vocabulary. In the next chapter, we will discuss many ways to rapidly and effectively build your vocabulary. Also, you should realize that your understanding of grammar is probably still limited at this point. We will work on that too. Before getting into those advanced concepts, there are some things that you can do mentally to prepare yourself for the next level.
The first thing to do is to pay attention to the way you express yourself in the foreign language. When you reach a certain degree of proficiency, you will find yourself being able to flow in conversation with ease, but you may be structuring your sentences as you do in your own language. Even if you use proper grammar, you will be mostly translating from English into the new language. For example, “Call me back.” In Spanish, you don't say, “Call me back.” Instead, you say, “Return my call” or just “Call me.” “Leave me alone,” is also not used. It doesn't make sense. They say, “Leave me in peace,” which sounds funny to an English speaker. You must learn how the natives speak. You can't just look up words in a dictionary and translate in order to speak like a native. Your vocabulary, including expressions, has to come from observation and comprehension of the foreign language as it is being used, either from interaction with native speakers, literature written in the foreign country, or media originating from there. Be honest with yourself about the expressions and sentence structure that you use. Are you saying something that you translated from your own language, or are you repeating what you’ve observed as being an actual expression?
The next thing that I’m about to tell you might seem odd if you haven’t experienced it, but becoming multilingual is almost like creating multiple personalities. It sounds strange but ask any polyglot, and they will more than likely tell you the same thing. To become fluent in another language, you have to create a new version of yourself. When speaking another language, I feel like I am a person from a different country. When I speak Spanish, I become Mexican. I'm Brazilian when I speak Portuguese. I genuinely feel and think differently. My body language and mannerisms change. Maybe this happened naturally but I am still aware of the thought process that takes place. You need to picture yourself as being a native speaker. If you're learning Italian, picture yourself as an Italian. Picture yourself in Italy conversing with another Italian. Visualize it vividly. Involve your senses. Picture yourself speaking just like they do.
Once, I had an enlightening experience with a polyglot taxi driver. When my wife and I got into his vehicle, I noticed he was from the Middle East. We engaged in conversation and he mentioned to me that he speaks several languages. I then began to talk to him in the different languages that I knew at the time. He was good and didn’t have any problem answering me in each language that I spoke, except for Hebrew. After a few minutes,
he looked at my wife and said, “Wow. When your husband speaks these languages, he speaks each one as if it were his own language.” It was at that point that I realized that I truly do adopt each new language as my own. They become a part of me and who I am. Adopt this mindset, as crazy as it sounds, and you will have success on your language journey.
As your fluency builds, the more natural it will seem to speak like a native. When a word or phrase surfaces in your mind, you should be able to spontaneously spurt it out as a native would. Everything you have learned should come out as a reflex triggered by an emotion or thought, just like the spontaneous speech of your native tongue. Adopt each word and phrase as your own, making it a part of who you are and how you express yourself.
One of the first signs that I am becoming fluent in a language is when I start dreaming in it. It’s always an exciting experience, and whenever I start learning a new language, I expectantly await the morning that I will wake up after having had one of these magical experiences. Another sign is when I find myself naturally thinking to myself in the foreign language. Rather than simply working out words and phrases in my mind, I’m having a conversation with myself, just as I would in English.