How to Really Learn a Language

Jeff Martin

• Publisher: Jeff Martin
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781087866093
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Where are all the bilinguals?

Have you ever felt like you are no good at learning foreign languages? Have you invested time and money into classes, courses, or mobile apps, yet with little success? You’re not alone. There are millions of people out there just like you. They believe that some people are simply gifted at learning languages, while the rest are destined to struggle. Allow me to change your mind, if you will.

I’m a master certified Spanish court interpreter, with no college degree. I’ve never lived in a foreign country, but I’ve managed to become fluent in several languages, and I didn’t start learning foreign languages until I was an adult. I’ve been a polyglot for many years, and I’ve only met a handful of people ever that can do what I do. However, I’ve met hundreds and hundreds of people who have taken foreign language classes and/or have bought language courses that have never truly learned a foreign language. My mission is to change that. I’ve spent the last eleven years writing a book just for you.

My philosophy is simple. Language learning is something that we naturally do at first, with our native language, yet becomes a mystery when we approach learning a second one. In my opinion, it shouldn’t be a mystery at all. We learned our first language so naturally and flawlessly, so it should be easier to learn a second one. Yet, because of the approach we take, most people never become fluent in a second language. My goal is to open up your to see that everything we need to know about learning foreign languages is already within us, in our experience that we gained from learning our first language.

04 Mockingbird

Step Two – Mimicry

As I stated previously, language is something that we initially learn from other people. Why should that change when learning a foreign language? In my opinion, the term language fluency implies that there exists some sort of flow of spoken words between two or more people. After all, a conversation is only possible with two or more parties.
How did you learn to converse or “flow” in your first language? After you began to listen to the spoken language, you desperately strived to produce the words that you heard. You naturally and effectively discovered how to mimic others. Fortunately for you, the people in your life were interested in you learning how to speak, so they coached you; but how were you coached?
Your coaches would make eye contact, speak slowly, and exaggerate the movements of their mouths to show you how to shape the words. This is how you learned to lip read. They would repeat simple words and syllables slowly, giving you the time necessary to try mimicking them. You listened to sounds, watched mouths, and struggled to repeat what you saw and heard. Without this intimate form of coaching, how much harder would it have been to learn your first language?

Most people skip the crucial beginning step of finding native speakers to coach them, and instead buy a language course. Learning a language from a course is kind of like playing catch with yourself. Have you ever tried to get your language course to coach you? I guess it’s safe to say that a course can’t replace a human being. Regardless of the seemingly endless propaganda served to us by language course companies purporting to offer the quickest and most effective way to learn a language, usually even guaranteed, it’s important to realize that a language course alone will not make you fluent. Learning to verbally flow in a language with other people will only come by practicing with and being coached by native speakers. Without this key element, most foreign language learners usually either give up, or never become conversationally fluent.
Face to face communication engages multiple senses. When you are learning a new word or phrase during a live conversation, you are having a multisensory experience. Afterwards, your recall of said conversation will be based on the experience you had. It is much easier to remember a word or a phrase that you learned through live coaching than it is to mindlessly memorize words and definitions. The more parts of your awareness that are engaged when learning something, the easier it is to remember it in the future.
It is important to note that communication is so much more than spoken language, and spoken language is often used to complement what is being communicated nonverbally. Most of the vocabulary you learned early in life was through situational context. Picture this scenario: The mother's face turned red as she clenched her teeth, glared at her son and said, "Don't you dare!" The child nearly panics as he quickly understands that he better not even think about doing whatever it was he was going to do. The key to remember here is that experience is what’s important. You probably learned the word hot from being burned, and cold from feeling something cold. Once again, learning vocabulary from live situations requires you to be in the situation in the first place, and with native speakers.
When involved in a live conversation, you have the opportunity to observe the speaker’s mouth, just as you did when you learned to lipread your first language. You’re also forced to use what vocabulary you know and improvise in the language. You learn new vocabulary by picking up on situational context and visual clues, as well as body language. The feedback from the native speaker induces learning. Also, you’re perceiving the language as it is spoken by natives, in its raw, authentic form.
Conversations are spontaneous, filled with emotions, false starts, body language, facial expressions, and variances in intonation, volume, rate of speech, etc. Almost none of the experiences that you benefit from during live conversation can be experienced with a course. Course materials are merely artificial examples of the language. In contrast, spoken language is seemingly alive.
Native speakers, therefore, need to be your primary source for learning the language. Many people shy away from approaching them. Instead, they spend countless hours studying from their language course. Obviously, they receive positive reinforcement from the progress they are making, such as completing a certain number of levels or milestones, which fosters the idea that they are really learning the language. If you spend most of your language learning time studying from a course and little time with native speakers, you will likely learn the language using your own version of pronunciation, which will probably be incorrect. If you continue to spend a considerable amount of time learning the language on your own, you will inevitably solidify these bad habits. Then, when you do approach native speakers, you certainly won’t sound natural. You’ll simply be speaking the version of the language that you created. When learning on your own, you don’t have the company of a native speaker to correct and coach you. Whereas if you are mimicking and learning from native speakers, you can compare your voice to theirs, making adjustments along the way.
Over the years, I’ve given language lessons to help me with my research. Of all the students that I’ve coached, very few were willing to actively seek out native speakers. Those that did so achieved success. Those who didn’t simply gave up. I have heard many reasons as to why a language learner doesn’t approach natives. Most of them were simply excuses, in my opinion. I have determined that the real issue for most people is fear. What do I say? How do I start a conversation? What if I mess up? What if I can’t remember how to say anything? What if they laugh at me?
Again, your best bet is to approach this as a child would. Children, even shy ones, learn how to speak their language. Of course, they have the advantage of necessity. If they don’t learn to speak, they may not make it very far in life. As a second language learner, most of the time we don’t have the element of necessity when it comes to speaking our new language. For most of us, our new language is a hobby, or perhaps we hope to gain from it somehow in the future. Either way, this fear of approaching natives must be overcome in the beginning. The purpose of learning a language is to communicate with native speakers. Don’t let your purpose become your fear and downfall.
Even though I am highly passionate about languages, I too face similar fears. Facing those fears is what has helped me achieve success in this field. One major element that has helped me to be brave enough to approach natives is having a small arsenal of phrases at my disposal. The best way to obtain this arsenal is to use an all-audio course.
The important thing to remember when beginning with an audio course is to stay true to your commitment to not learn to read the language until you can flow, at least with a basic conversational vocabulary, and have mastered your pronunciation. Luckily, most audio courses teach conversational phrases. As soon as you learn a few phrases, immediately find native speakers with whom to practice them. Hopefully, the native speakers will provide you with feedback and some coaching. Continue this process while you are going through your audio course. Learn a few phrases, practice with natives, receive feedback, return to your course, practice new phrases with natives, and so on. This is how you will become “kindergarten ready.”
These face to face experiences are what will solidify your learning of said phrases. If you mispronounce a word or phrase and are corrected by a native speaker, don’t be discouraged. Instead, consider yourself fortunate to have successfully reproduced a similar situation to the many that you had in your native language as a toddler. In Italian there is a phrase, sbagliando s’impara, which means you learn by making mistakes.
Unfortunately, at least in the United States, by way of politics and old mindsets that refuse to perish, most immigrants to our country are discriminated against and looked down upon. As a language learner, you can consider this as an advantage to you. When a native of this country approaches a foreigner or immigrant and is interested in learning their language, it is a sign of embracing them and their culture. Therefore, most non-U.S. natives welcome this type of interaction. Through your interest in them and their language, which is ultimately intertwined with their culture, they are being validated. They will most likely be delighted by the fact that you approached them and be more than willing to talk with you. Assume and remember this every time fear tries to stop you from approaching.
Forging friendships with native speakers will motivate you to keep going, especially if you know you will see the person or persons again soon. Desire to learn can further the development of your new friendship by causing you to want to meet more often, and by doing so, you become more exposed to the language which helps you learn faster. It is a perpetual cycle of bonding and learning. Each time you speak to a person, you make a personal connection with them, and the experience of each conversation is recorded in your memory. It may take some work to hone your recollection skills, but with practice, you can remember the gist of most real conversations you've ever had with anyone. The most meaningful ones are easier to remember, while the more mundane would require a reminder of what was spoken.
If you are fortunate to live in area in which it is easy to find native speakers of the language you are learning, you should strive to have as much in-person contact with them as possible. If you have difficulty finding native speakers in your community, the world is still at your fingertips via the internet. There are many language exchange websites and mobile apps available. Language exchange can help take away some of the fear as well, since it will be a reciprocal relationship. Both you and the native speaker will be going through a similar process of being coached and corrected. It is important to inform your language exchange partner, however, of your commitment to forgo reading and writing the new language until you have mastered your pronunciation and basic conversational skills. For this reason, you should suggest that the language lessons be done by video or audio chat. Video is best, as it is very similar to in-person communication.
When searching for native speakers to practice with, you may be tempted to practice with bilinguals. They may have moved here later in life and learned English as a second language. They may be children of immigrants and have grown up in the U.S. You may even find people who learned your new language as their second language. It’s important to understand with which of these groups you need to practice.
If a person grew up in another country and moved to the U.S. as an adult, it’s ok to practice with them. Their native language was probably not affected by them learning English. However, if they moved here as a child, or were born here, do not practice with them until you have become fluent. This is because they are most likely making many grammatical mistakes due to thinking mostly in English. A good way to test this is if they “code-switch” or switch back and forth between both languages frequently when speaking. If your potential teacher learned English as their native language, be careful about learning from them. Even if they are a master certified interpreter such as myself, they still probably possess some flaws in the foreign language.
For me, it's harder to speak a foreign language with someone who speaks English. Even though they are bilingual, part of me knows that the easiest thing for me to do would be to speak English. It's human nature to take the path of least resistance, and since language is birthed out of the need to communicate, that need is most easily satisfied by speaking English with them. Therefore, I always try to find native speakers that know little or no English.
Pride will often try to impede your learning. When native speakers are talking with you and they...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• 01 System Failure
• 02 Bridging the Gap
• 03 Clean Slate
• 04 Mockingbird
• 05 The Sounds of Language
• 06 Personal Experience
• 07 Of Course
• 08 Fluency
• 09 Wordsmith
• 10 Refinement
• 11 Polyglot
• 12 Mouth of Babes
• 13 Grand Finale