Beyond Bounds Blog

If you’ve followed the earlier parts to this series, one, two and three, you are ready to move on to actual learning!  Ideally, the early game should last no more than 3 months, meaning that you are ready to start sounding like an idiot in front of groups of strangers native to the language within this time frame.  Hopefully you should have the following:

Cheat Sheet
List of the 300 most common words
A Native speaker at your fingertips
Subject picked out that you enjoy and materials on it
Dictionary
Flash Cards
Audio Lessons / MP3 player
Plane ticket

This is the ideal situation.  This is the what I ask of myself when I am learning a new language; however, you COULD supplement the plane ticket for some radical shifts in your life while at home - check out this post. Just don’t expect the same results.

I realize that some people simply can’t drop everything and go to another country, however if you want to learn a language effectively you have to be willing to sacrifice.  Fluency in another language is not like learning web design or how to build a house - it takes completely different methodology.  It must become your whole life, and yet none of your life at the same time.  You can’t just set out a block of time to learn everyday like you can with other things.  Language needs to be embedded in everything.

The Breakdown:

Intensity + Effectiveness + Fun

Intensity:

Language must become a part of everything in your life; this way your brain will make the correct connections.  If you learn language for one hour a day at a certain time, your brain will connect the language with that time of day and will be more receptive to the language at that time, and less so at other times.

Language cannot be compartmentalized into a time block, nor can it be confined to any single method (audio, CD, book, etc).  The goal is for you to be able to use the language at all times, even while thinking and dreaming.  When learning we have to have this goal in mind.

This IS possible while still at home.

Your mind must be continuously brought back to the language.   When you are sleeping, walking, running, watching TV, showering, playing video games, blogging, hanging out with friends, or even working out at the gym, the language must be present.   You can recite words and phrases you learned; simple thought processes can be replaced by the language, such as “what am I going to eat” or “what will I do today” as soon as you have the ability to say these.  You should count in the language while working out. This is intensity.

Decrease the use of your mother tongue while increasing the use of your target language everyday at all times.

When I was learning Chinese and still State-side, I would count or sing random things in Chinese while showering.  When running I would use Chinese when thinking the directions in my head: “turn left.  turn right.  A little longer.”  I would respond to friends’ questions in Chinese even if they didn’t understand (jokingly of course, and not all the time: you get the point).  I immersed myself in the language and it paid off quickly.

While the above is true, it is important to put in small blocks of time for certain language learning activities, but I do not see them as solely language learning, but also as enjoyable activities that you would otherwise do in English.   These are mentioned in the below section.  Try to take at least hour a day - obviously the more the better - to do the following.

Effectiveness:

This is where I messed up with Chinese before.  You will shine here.  This is what you need to do in the early stages:

1) Abuse your list of the most frequently used words:  You should have these down on flashcards and be flipping through them constantly throughout the day.  Take 10-15 words with you a day and put them in your pocket.  After work or other classes, test yourself and do it often.

2) Pound out the grammar: Re-write your cheat sheet 50x:  Your cheat sheet contains the keys to the grammar of the language.  By the end of 2 months you should be able to re-write your cheat sheet perfectly from memory.  Use different nouns / verbs / objects / indirect objects every 10 times.

3) Start reading after your 10th re-write (10-20 days in): Go directly to materials on the subject that you found interesting.  If it was video games, start reading articles on games RIGHT NOW.  There is no rule stating that you have to learn vocabulary linearly.  After you’re pretty much gotten your cheat sheet memorized, reading is only a matter of looking through the dictionary.  If you are reading online, use online dictionaries for quick referencing.  For Chinese-English check out www.nciku.com

4) Start a vocabulary list:  All new words and definitions need to be written down by hand.  When you test yourself, you should also write by hand.  By using more senses in the process your brain makes more connections and you are more likely to remember the words.
Every time you run into that same word, go back and make a note.  You can leave a space on your vocabulary list to re-write the word again when you find it, or you can simply make a check mark.  This will help you when deciding which words make it into your second flashcard pile and which words don’t make the cut.

Simplify your vocabulary list every few days.  You don’t want a list of 500 words.  Keep erasing words that haven’t come up often, but keep the ones that have until you are sure that you know them by heart.  The top 10 words on your list at the end of each cleansing period should be put on flashcards to be carried with your 10-15 frequent words.

5) Start Listening: Audio is actually the most important part of the early game.  You need to train your ears to distinguish between words in the target language.  Audio will get you from hearing a jumbled mess to hearing distinct words and phrases, even if you can’t understand the meaning.  The meaning will come from your reading and vocabulary lists, but if your ears can’t pick out the sounds you are doomed.

Audio also helps train your accent.  You should try to repeat, whenever possible, what you hear.  It doesn’t matter if it’s music or podcasts or audio lessons from language CDs.  You need to be exposed to the spoken (sung) language as often as possible.   Passive listening IS FINE.  Obviously doing anything consciously will be more effective than passively, but that can be tiring so just make sure that when you’re on the bus, subway, train, in the car, or walking somewhere that you put your headphones on and train those ears!

6) Start Using the language:  About 1-2 weeks in, you should be ready to start using the language on a very basic level.  The grammar should be pretty clear - although of course you will be making many mistakes here as you get used to using it - and you could have up to a 100 word vocabulary.  Your pronunciation is going to suck, but that’s where using the language really helps.  Start meeting with your language partner and participating in some online activity / forum / group.

Fun:

Enjoy what you are doing.  Obviously there is difficulty that comes with language learning, but if you set yourself up right and have the proper motivation, learning language from start to finish will be an enjoyable experience.  Here are some helpful tips for making it more enjoyable.

1) Do it with friends: If you have a friend who also wants to learn, you can do it together.  You can test each other, joke with each other, and help each other during the process.  The more the merrier - doing things alone can be pretty, well, lonely.

2) Don’t worry about anything. Are you not making the progress you thought you would?  It doesn’t matter.  Focus on the process.  Make goals, but don’t worry if you don’t reach them as everyone learns language at a different pace, but most importantly language itself is not the goal: communication is.  As long as you are enjoying yourself, you are being successful and are most likely improving quickly.

3) Your needs are the standard for fluency, not some language test.  If you can use only 100 words in Chinese to do everything that you do already in English, then I would consider you fluent.  Most people need more (a lot more), but hey it’s possible.  For me, I need to know how to say “Zerg, Protoss, Terran, Archmage, Mountain King” in order for any language to mean much to me (I’m a video gamer).  I bet most linguists don’t know these words - are they any less fluent than I am?  When you measure your success and make goals based on your own needs, fun is easier to be had.

4) Pick subjects that you really enjoy.  As mentioned in a previous post, the materials that you choose should be enjoyable for you in order to keep you interested, but also matter to your life.  Reading German books on rocks doesn’t sound like a way to keep my attention, but hey maybe that floats your boat.  I’ll be reading about blogging, video games, or music.

The most important tip

4) Make mistakes, and lots of them.  Double your rate of failure to double your rate of success - a popular motivational phrase that’s going around these days.  It’s true.  If in the first 3 months you can fail as much as most people fail in 3 years, then your successes will match.  Making mistakes, contrary to popular belief, is a good thing (well… at least in language, not with hand grenades).  Making a mistake means that you attempted something that you haven’t mastered already, which means that you are challenging yourself, which means growth.  You can see where you were wrong and correct it.

The biggest problem that most people have in learning language is that they want to do it in the classroom, and even then they prefer to never raise their hand and attempt to answer questions because they might be wrong.  People might laugh.  The teacher might scold you.  Oh no, call in the national guard! Get over it.  Get comfortable with making mistakes and you will find your language skills jump through the roof.

Good luck and I’ll see you abroad in 3 months!