Beyond Bounds Blog

Prequel:  Are you ready to learn a language?

Drop your class and separate school from language learning.

Learning a new language in school is painful: hours upon hours of conjugation, sentence writing, and lecture from a teacher who will rehash the same material over and over.  Maybe you don’t get it, maybe you got it right away, but either way it’s still the wrong way.

Learning language in school and then trying to actually use it is like raising a pet lion and then releasing him into the wild: you either hide in fear and shame, or relearn everything.  Language classes are signed up for by years of study, classes have a single content source, and the speed is set by the teacher who sets it for the average student (who’s just there for the credits usually) to be able to get a C.   After 2 years of language learning (4 for Chinese), you should be able to hold a conversation, finally!  Wait… that’s only with people who speak at one-tenth of normal speed with awful accents.  Language is a great skill to learn and requires sacrifice, but you don’t have to sacrifice your sanity along the way.  Here boy.. want a gazelle?

School is not the only place to learn, even while back home.  There are tons of resources out there for learning language outside of the classroom - books (ahem buy your own), movies, downloadable audio lessons, free Internet sites, Internet communities, friends, clubs, etc - and learning in school inhibits your ability to use them.   2 important reasons why:

1) School makes you believe that you are learning when you’re not:  Class is often used as a substitute for motivation, and the illusion is that by being there you are learning (I guess by osmosis).  Most students get through school by procrastinating and cramming at the last minute, but language requires constant conscious focus over time (emphasizing over time, like an integral) in order to learn.  It has to sink into your subconscious, but cramming only puts information into your short-term memory.  School rewards procrastinators, as school is broken down into a series of tests.

2) You will focus more on less because of tests.  Classes are built around tests, and tests are not a real reflection of ability: they miss the point altogether.  Language is a tool to communicate and express ideas, but tests only see if you memorized the logic structure behind it and to what level of perfection.  Worst of all, tests can not measure real learning, but only what you know at a single point in time; a test cannot differentiate between short-term memory and long term memory.

Outside of the classroom there are no tests, thus no procrastination.

If you need school to motivate you to learn language, then consider not learning a language because you will not get good results.    Language is meant to be fluid and adaptive; it’s not math (although I think math could be taught in a better way as well).  The environment that you learn language in matters because everyone uses language in a different way.  If you learn language only in class, then your language skills will be set up to be just like the writer of the book or teacher.  Not only is it robotic, but it doesn’t work for human beings because everyone inputs information differently.

Instead, language learning should be done in context.  Text means nothing to our brains; if you say “give me an apple (给我一个苹果)” and all that happens is your teacher says “good job,” and saying “I want an orange” and “I went to the bathroom” give the same result, you are only connecting do-what-the-teacher-says with reward, and not even a very good one at that.  However, if after saying “give me an apple” someone gives you an apple, your brain will make the distinction far easier.  It’s simple psychology: do something –> get reward –> learn.   You will find more motivation this way as well because the rewards will be in every area of your life.

Learning language in real world situations makes sense on every level.  There are no tests, but at the same time everyday and every new situation is a test, because how you do will directly affect the rewards you reap.  If you read Japanese manga (comic books), you could download or buy the ones that do not have English subtitles.  Instead work through them in Japanese.  The more you learn, the more of the story you get to enjoy.  If there is a French exchange student you want to date, you could learn a joke or song in French to impress her.

But there is no structure, so how do I measure my progress and competency?

You have to think outside of the box (classroom).  If you enjoy Japanese manga, then the best place to learn how to read it is by reading Japanese manga: there is no other way for you to learn more appropriate vocabulary.  You measure your progress by how much manga you have read, and your competency by how easy it is to pick up a new one and read it without help from a dictionary.  I’m not advocating picking up a Chinese newspaper on your first try, but why not after a few months?  Classroom time is only worth time-effective when learning the basics, and even then only when you don’t limit yourself.

Language is a tool that is used in different ways by different people.  Every one’s tools look different, because they are built by different vocabulary indexes. There are a set of basic building blocks that you see everywhere, this is grammar, pronunciation, rhythm and common vocabulary, and no matter your methods you will learn.  Besides the basic building blocks, there are advanced or specialized vocabulary for different specialized situations.  School focuses on the building blocks for a long time, but then tries frivolously to teach you specialized vocabulary.   This specialized vocabulary is picked at random, taken out of context, stripped of motivation, and laid bare for you to devour.  This is pet food for the language learner.  Get off of pet food and into the juicy stuff.

It’s a Jungle out there.

The world is a tough place to face, so we more often than not choose safe and stable environments to live, work, and study in.  If you have ever taken economics then you know that risk = reward, and in this case the risk of learning in the jungle will create a reward of time and fluency.  You can save yourself years of study and gain real fluency in the language, but it requires a lot of work and a lot of courage.  You just have to realize that it won’t kill you to try, but maybe just embarrass you a little bit.  The best way (and of course riskiest) to do this is to go abroad.

If you are too embarrassed to strike up a conversation with a stranger at random, then perhaps communication isn’t the right field for you.  Language is a tool of communication and the shy lions that sit in their caves aren’t the successful ones - they are the ones who I call the bilingual mutes.  You should probably first work on getting over your fear of socialization then come back and learn language.  There are those who don’t like to communicate orally but prefer to have conversations over MSN and email as well as those strange folk who want to be document translators: your jungle will be the Internet.

Diversity is Key

Learning outside of class will give you exposure to more at a quicker pace.  Do not underestimate your ability to take it in, especially as real life situations give the best motivations for learning.  The exposure to a diversity in material and methods of learning will keep you on your toes and keep you interested, but most importantly you will make language connections across all parts of your life.  Our bodies thrive on routines and habits, so if you study language at 4pm every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for an hour, your body will adjust to be most open to language learning at that time.  If you don’t allow yourself to get locked into time or topic routines, your mind will be more flexible in picking up new information.  Although counter-intuitive, this will make learning language easier and feel more natural.

Get rid of the mindset that learning must happen at school and get out into the real world.  Now go get that gazelle.

Check out my adventure learning Chinese