The importance of materials in language learning
Most people assume that as long as they put in time and effort, they will eventually become fluent in another language. This assumption is correct, but the materials you use determine how long that “eventual” becomes.
The traditional (school) materials:
School materials come in a package, a language MRE built by institutional educators as a one-stop solution to your language needs. The package usually includes a book, a workbook, and a CD. The book covers grammar and vocabulary, the workbook is for practice, and the CD is for listening. These materials are great in that as long as you follow along, it’s very hard to get confused or stuck.
There are quite a few problems with these language packages:
1) Grammar is attached to vocabulary: If you want to learn grammar, you have to learn the vocabulary that they provide as well, or else you won’t be able to read the example texts. While some grammar points may technically be more complicated than others, there is no advantage to pacing your grammar learning. Why should you have to wait 5 chapters to learn how to speak in past tense, and then another 3 to learn future tense? It is actually far more useful to be able to tell someone what you did, what you are going to do, and what you are doing rather than what you “do”. Sure, grammar builds on itself, but grammar is not complicated in general, and building your grammar repertoire quickly allows you to actually start communicating.
2) The vocabulary chosen is not optimized: I’ve been studying Japanese, and the first lesson in one of the most common books includes words like “science and technology” and “museum”. I don’t know why these authors have not yet adopted the use of most frequent word lists to create their lessons. Sure, science and technology and museum are probably words that I will use one day, but making me learn them early is going to delay my ability to use the language, which means I get to practice it less and will be less motivated.
3) The materials are costly: university textbooks cost an arm and a leg, so unless you don’t need your left arm, you should probably avoid them.
4) The language used is too formal. This may be intentional, and is certaintly not the most helpful
5) Explanations are overly complicated. See this page for reference. I don’t understand why “educators” prefer to use the most complicated vocabulary and reasoning to explain simple things. Teaching materials should be put in the shortest, simplest form possible in order to facilitate learning. I have a feeling that egos come into play when materials are being produced by these large institutions.
A better approach:
The internet is a great place; there are free, quality materials on every subject imaginable at your fingertips. You can find better grammar guides, better vocabulary lists, and better audio files online, but the best part is that you get to pick and choose what you feel is best for you to learn. Your learning becomes customizable when you use the internet rather than traditional school packages.
I’ve mentioned the materials you need previously in this post:
A grammar cheat sheet: Get the main grammar points and put them on one sheet of paper. You can constantly come back to this sheet for reference. You need to learn each grammar point while making the cheat sheet, or it won’t be as helpful, as then referencing it will require to then reference the original material.
I originally mentioned that you need to find a native speaker to do this. I believe that this is not necessary. Finding a native speaker to practice with is essential, but there are resources online that can be more helpful than a native speaker in learning grammar.
For Japanese, you can check out this, and for Chinese this does a pretty good job. If anyone finds better resources, feel free to post them in the comments section.
Most common word list: I can’t stress enough how important this is. By learning these words first, you gain the power to understand a huge chunk of the language with very little time invested.
Smartfm is probably the best for this. Smartfm has taken the most common word list and buffed it up with audio and example sentences.
All of the above can actually be found within Anki’s shared deck server for Chinese, Japanese, French, German, English, Thai and more. Just go to file -> download -> shared deck.
Sentences, sentences, sentences: After you’ve made it through the common words, you just need to start reading the language. I never understood what third and fourth year language courses were meant for, because by that time you should be fluent enough in the language to be able to learn the rest on your own through exposure. The internet is best for massive amounts of exposure.
I’m currently going through smartfm’s most common word list decks as well as Tae Kim’s guide to Japanese grammar deck. I already finished the Hiragana and Katakana pronunciation guide decks. I only need to do 34 cards a day to reach my goal, and now that the process is streamlined with Anki, it shouldn’t be very difficult. It’s now just a matter of time.
Don’t let the materials you use keep you down.
Related posts:
- Frustrating phases in language learning – How to focus your efforts
- Japanese Day 1 and New Language Learning Methods
- How to learn a language part #2: Set up for success 1-3
- Japanese Week 1 Update
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http://beyondbounds.org/2010/10/the-language-learning-formula/ The Language Learning Formula | Beyond Bounds Blog