How to learn a language. Informed means armed

Автор: Тимур Бережной, директор лингвоцентра “Свободный Английский”

When circumstances of our life dictate us a necessity to learn a foreign language, we are usually full of determination to do it. But not always we understand how difficult this may prove to be. Any foreign language is an immense array of knowledge and mastering it requires a well-considered and complex approach. Here I would like to share with you the fruits of my experience in languages (I speak five languages so far – Russian (native), Ukrainian, English, Italian and French), namely my 7 years’ experience of teaching English and that of learning Italian and French on my own.

How I learned Italian in half a year

I have been learning English all my life, starting from Primary school, just because this is the International language that, my parents believed and I do now, each person must speak. When I decided to become an opera singer, I understood the necessity to learn Italian and French, since they are the two principal opera languages. My first task was Italian.

I bought myself a good teach-yourself book, and started studying. I dedicated 1 hour every day to my new foreign language. The grammar exercises were a relatively easy task to complete, but soon one problem arouse – a pile of new words that one must memorize during each lesson! It was obvious, that the words must be learned purposefully, but how? If you want to learn a language in half a year, you must learn at least 25 new words every day! And this requires so much time!

So, my first innovation was the use of cardboard cards. I cut white two-sided cardboard into small cards (7*7,4 cm.), on which I wrote out new words. There were about those very 25 words on each card (on both sides). This gave me a possibility to learn words, not dedicating separate time to it – in subway, in queues, etc. The method of memorizing was usual – cramming. However, soon I noticed, that my brain was starting to steam from so much cramming – it was more and more difficult to learn new and new 25 words each day – I forgot many of them soon after memorizing. Either a daily quantity of words had to be reduced of a method of memorizing had to be changed. And since I didn’t want to spend years on learning Italian, I chose the second option and became interested in non-standard methods of learning words; in doing it more effectively, then with simple cramming.

And I found the method – the Image method (I will explain it below)! So, I studied about 1 hour almost each day and learned words with the help of cards and the Image method. During my everyday studies I first used a teach-yourself book and learned words from there. This book finished, I read articles, jokes, watched news reports in Italian, and started to use the language for my direct purpose – read and translated opera texts, learning more and more new words from those very articles, jokes and texts. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anyone to practice spoken language with, so… I spoke with myself! I just translated all my thoughts into Italian! During these conversations with myself I sometimes wrote out the missing words and then looked them up in a dictionary.

In half a year I went to Italy to visit my relatives, who live there and communicated with people absolutely freely.

This is my story. Of course, not everyone can study themselves, but anyway an ability to effectively and fast
learn many words is crucial for your success. So first let’s talk about learning words.

The Image method

For example, you want to learn the Italian word cane ([kane], dog).

Step1 – You imagine what comes to your mind, when you think of a dog. For me it’s my neighbors’ dog.

Step 2– You take the foreign word and find a word from your native language or some other language you know that is similar to it (similar in spelling or pronunciation). For example, the English word “cane”, which is spelt the same.

Step 3 - You combine the two! How do we put a dog and a cane together? Apparently, a dog, gnawing a cane.

So, how do we recollect the word?

Task 1 – What is the Italian for dog? I remember my neighbors’ dog and I at once see it gnawing a cane – the word is cane!

Task 2 – What is the English for cane? I remember it’s similar to the English cane and I see a dog gnawing it – it’s a dog!

Why is this method effective? Firstly, it’s several times easier for your brain to remember images, than to memorize words mechanically – you don’t get tired with cramming. Secondly, images are stored in mind longer. Once I made an experiment on myself. I took a card with 25 words and learned them all with the Image method. Once the picture is made, I went over to the next word and didn’t return to previous ones. I didn’t revise the words a single time during a week. In a week I took the card to find out how many words I remembered. I remembered 20 out of 25! With mechanical learning I don’t think I would remember more that 1 or 2. And thirdly, this is just fun, and an alternative to gloomy cramming!

Actually, there are more difficult words, than a dog. For example, inoltre
([inoltre]), which means “moreover”. The steps are the same, but you need more imagination. And you must not be afraid, that your pictures be weird. It’s all for the sake of learning the language!

Step1 – What is moreover for you? I see a paragraph of a business letter, and I am about to add one more paragraph starting from the word “moreover”.

Step 2 – We take the word inoltre and look for English words that are similar to it in spelling or pronunciation. If no English words are similar to the whole word, then we have to divide it.

We divide it by syllables – in – ink, olt – old, re – red.

Step 3 – Let’s combine. We insert our images from step 2 into the situation from step 1 one by one:

1. I am writing the letter with ink
2. The paper is old
3. The ink is red

So I imagine, that I am writing a business letter on old paper with red ink, I have finished the first paragraph, then I write “moreover” with big letters, and continue.

Now, some tips on how to consolidate the memorization by the Image method.

• In step 1 imagine not only the image itself, but also the situation, the environment around it. (e.g., not only
  my neighbors’ dog, but also the hall where it’s lying).

• Make some standard images for two-letters syllables. For example, let in (which is a very frequent prefix in
  Italian) always be ink, and re – always be red.

• After step 3 spend several seconds to see the picture clearly, sense it, make it as real, as possible, see it
  from different angles, pay special attention to the key-image (to the written word “moreover”)

• Make the key image bigger than normal (for example, I see no harm in writing the word “moreover” with 10 times bigger letters, than normal type of the letter).
• Justify all the nonsense that is happening in your picture (Why is the paper old? Why with ink? Because I want
  to impress my business partner by using antique paper and using ink instead of a ball-point pen or computer. Why is the ink red? Because this way I want to stress, that the letter is important. Why is the word “moreover” so big?
  Because this word will be followed by very important information).

So, if you master the Image method, memorizing words will not be a problem for you any more and you will never be afraid of a large amount of unknown lexis you have to learn. And don’t worry, that you will always have to remember these pictures. You need them just for one or two days – for memorizing the word until the several first revisions. When you have revised the word several times, you will already remember it without any pictures – the job is done. The pictures play the role of scaffolding. You need it to erect a building, but once it is built, the
scaffolding is removed, and you enjoy the new and nice edifice!

Language studying strategy

Learning words is an important part, but this is not all. I advise you to follow these steps in learning any language; however you study – yourself, in a group or with a private tutor.

1. Decide, what do you need the language for? For business, traveling, for communication with friends, for reading books, watching films or maybe for listening songs?

2. To what level of knowledge do you consider will be enough for you? Situational (e.g., for traveling), Advanced
(e.g. for free communication with friends or for watching films), Professional (for working in a specialized sphere
or for teaching)?

3. Now think carefully: are you sure you will be able to dedicate 1 hour a day (every day!) to studies? Do you have time for this? Is learning the language worth your efforts?

It’s important to know, that studying is an everyday process. If you study only on Sunday and forget about the language the other 6 days, this will not be successful. It’s Ok to go to a language school 3 times a week and
dedicate at least 1 hour to doing homework between classes. If you take the course, which is 2 times a week, then you must study yourself at least two times (at least 30 minutes each) between classes.

4. Now decide, how you will study - yourself, in a group or with a private tutor.

In the following table we will compare the three alternatives of studying a language.

5. When you have chosen one of the three options, find correspondingly a teach-yourself book, a language school or a private tutor.

6. Set a goal. Estimate how much time you will approximately need to learn your target language at the necessary level and aim at completing your task by the end of this period.

7. Study! Don’t limit yourself with a teach-yourself book, or a scholastic program. Watch news, movies in your target language, read books, magazines, articles and jokes that are interesting for you, translate them and learn new words. Speak the language wherever and with whoever you can; you can even speak with yourself, just like I did

And now some more things you need to know.

Innovational technologies in learning languages

In the XXth century many non-standard and (as their authors say) more effective methods of studying languages appeared. Let’s talk about those that are present in Ukraine.

Mingling picture methods. They are concerned mostly with learning words with the help of video-technologies, where words or pictures mingle quickly in front of your eyes, such as the 25th shot or poly-screen technology. I personally am not sure if they are effective and I don’t know a single person, who learned a language with their help. What is for sure, is that they cost huge money. Moreover, I doubt that mingling pictures are good for your health.

While-driving methods. There are several courses that imply only listening to a course CD and repeating words and phrases heard. No writing and no reading (but there is usually a small book with tape-script). This gives you an opportunity to study while driving a car or doing physical exercises. These courses prove to be inefficient on their own, because if you want to achieve your goal, all the four language skills (reading, listening, writing and speaking) must be practiced and words must be learned purposefully. However, these courses usually contain very useful dialogues from real life, which are undoubtedly worth analyzing (with subsequent learning unknown words) and listening to.

Grammar-based methods. These methods use a specific explanation of grammar as their main asset.Grammar is explained as a whole, as a system, which, of course, helps to master the language faster. These methods are practiced only at language schools, which also usually have some specific and intersting algorythmes of learning words. The only, but a very significant, disadvantage of these courses is that they are mostly less interesting, than courses by communicative approach (read about it below), and their textbooks are quite dull and boring. But the cost is quite high.

Parallel reading. This method’s gist is in reading the same text in two languages at the same time – your native one and your target language. For example, you read a sentence in English, and then it’s Russian translation (in case you don’t understand the English variant). Thus you automatically memorize foreign equivalents of your native language’s words and phrases. The brightest example of parallel reading’s efficiency is Heinrich Schliemann, a famous archeologist, who learned 16 (sixteen!) languages this way. Recently there appeared books, that use the parallel reading method and that are more convenient to read. Some have two columns of text – one for each language. Some have English text with inserted in brackets Russian phrases. (Ilia Frank method).

In my opinion, parallel reading is indeed a very effective method, but only in case you read a lot and very intensively. Otherwise, the language is not learned. And, not diminishing the merits of parallel reading, my strong belief is that words must be learned purposefully, not only in phrases during reading.

The Communicative method. As you can see from the name, this method makes a stress on communication. It is very popular nowadays and is practiced by most language schools (the method is designed for group lessons). It’s basis is a textbook, published in the corresponding country and written by native speakers (It is called Student’s book). Communicative courses are universal – they are designed for learners from all over the world; Student’s books and are always colorful, bright and interesting – with a lot of photos and pictures as illustrations to words, phrases and situations, humor, interesting information.

Communicative method implies appropriate development of all the 4 skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. A lot of attention is paid to speaking – there are many speaking tasks (games, communicating in pairs, in mini-groups or a “corporate party” – everyone must speak with everyone). Listening is performed with a course CD (for group classes) and a Student’s CD (for homework). Each student gets a Student’s book, a Workbook and a Student’s CD (the former is for group lessons, the latter two are for homework – consolidation of grammar and lexis learned at group classes). I consider this method the most effective, because communicative classes are very interesting (interest is crucial in learning a language) and all the 4 skills are practiced appropriately. The Best English course, in my opinion, is Cutting Edge by Longman (England).

My students achieved very good results, when I taught English by this course. Though new words are learned and consolidated at group lessons, I recommend writing them out and learning outside classes – this way you will ensure your results will be outstanding.

Native speakers. Are they better?

And one more important question: if you chose to study at a language school or with a private tutor, whom to pick as your teacher – a Ukrainian specialist or a native speaker? Let’s compare them in a table.

As you can see, both alternatives have their advantages and disadvantages. I think, the ideal variant is a combination of the two. For example a Ukrainian teacher conducts 2 lessons out of 3 at a language school, and teaches by a communicative course like Cutting Edge. The remaining 1 lesson is conducted by a native speaker and is mostly dedicated to speaking (role plays, conversations, games, group discussions etc.). If you want to have individual classes, choose a teacher by your level – a Ukrainian teacher is preferable for beginners, a native speaker – for advanced students.

Conclusion

Now you have all the information you need to know for successfully mastering a foreign language. Follow the steps given above, keeping in mind all the other facts, when making a decision about a way of studying, choosing a course or a private tutor. Take my tips into account when organizing your own studies. And always remember one simple thing – even the greatest teacher or the best course won’t work if you don’t put your own efforts into it. Good luck in achieving your goals!