fcgamer's eccentric language learning tips

[fcgamer | 4,754]

I decided to post these tips here to help you guys out. I will post some more after work, though now my lunch break is over.

All of these are just some things to think about, which I feel often go overlooked by those attempting to learn a foreign language. Feel free to comment and post your own questions / thoughts on them.

1. “University classes are generally a waste of time, the pace generally moves rather slow compared to what you can do with self-study.”

 

In university I took German as a minor, and I also took three or four Spanish classes for fun, whilst in high school I had studied Latin. Latin by far was much harder than the German or Spanish courses I took. It’s a harder language grammatically, but similarly the teacher was old school and he had very high expectations for his students.

 

My experience with the university courses was a bit disappointing. For Spanish, I was just taking it for fun so I never studied, just relying on what I had learned in the class itself. My ambition wasn’t to become fluent in Spanish or anything like that. I still exceeded the abilities of my peers in the class. With German, I did spend hours memorizing flashcards and hundreds of words and grammar rules. I also did very well on this point. In both cases though, even though my abilities were intermediate at best, my peers were at a much lower level. This carried over into the pace of the classes being slow, and similarly, in pair work or whatever, you aren’t going to get much out of it if you are way ahead of everyone else. It’s a depressing situation, and imo any benefits are quickly lost when factoring in the disadvantages.

 

 

2. “Self-study has its own set of perils, such as falling into "bad habits" or mistakes.”

 

I much prefer self-study, as it allows you to progress much faster, at your own pace. The biggest problems though is that if you are constantly making a mistake, or if there’s something you find confusing, there is nobody who can help you to fix the problem.

 

Pronunciation, grammar, context – these are all things that can take a hit when trying to go at studying a language by yourself. Another problem is that it requires discipline, something that many people don’t have.

 

 

3. “Study abroad / immersion at a beginner's level is a waste of time, honestly. The very basics of any language can be quickly learnt at home, unless you have infinite money you should only do your stints abroad after already knowing the basics, to propel you to the next level.”

 

I don’t think there’s a lot more to elaborate on here. Just for an example though. Anyone can study a couple hundred French vocabulary words without ever going to France. Learning this while in France is a waste of time, as it’s quite easy just to do it at all. It’s much easier to go from nothing to an A2 level than it is from an A2 level to a B2 level. As with anything the gains are smaller and the work required is much more intensive. That’s why you should wait for your trip abroad until you already know the basics.

 

4. “Do not study grammar out of context, ever.”

I did the above occasionally with German, and while I could “apply” the rules on paper, it did nothing when it came to actually using it in real life. With Latin it’s a similar silly situation, where even my mother can rattle off a few declensions, but that’s the extent of it. Then there are my adult students. Then there’s many of my adult students. So many of them learned the grammar rules, but because they learned them out of context, they can’t properly apply them in a quick and natural manner. It’s not natural, and it will just hold you back.

A few anecdotes for what they’re worth:

A. My thoughts about grammar started to change while I was studying abroad in Germany. At this point I was still under the belief that grammar was the end all, be all, of language learning. I knew a guy from Turkey and a girl from Bulgaria though, and both of them were honestly much “better” at German than I was, despite their grammar being terrible. They didn’t get hung up over grammar, and therefore they got accustomed to speaking the language.

B. Why is it that if a non-native speaks English with poor grammar, we always tend to make fun of them, yet if a non-native speaks Polish with poor grammar, nothing is said? I asked my Polish friend once about foreigners who learn Polish, and he said that of course their grammar is poor, but that It generally does not cause problems with understanding.

C. If you listen to young children speak, they will speak based on the patterns they know, rather than by correct grammar. Yesterday I go to my grandma’s house. I have two eyes, two hands, and two foots. In these situations the parents might let some of the minor mistakes go, or they will correct the child, with an answer sort of like “Oh Johnny, so you have two eyes, two hands, and two feet?”, which would then likely elicit a response from the child, “Yes, I have two eyes, two hands, and two feet”. Grammar is being learned naturally, effortlessly, and painlessly, and because it is natural, it will not require much thought to put into use at a later date.

 

5. “Do not ever get hung up on "trying to sound like a 'native' speaker", whatever that even means.”

As OptOut can attest, people often ask me where I am from, as they can’t “place” my accent. Similarly, a guy from Alabama, a guy from London, and a guy from Capetown are all going to sound different, despite all being “native” speakers. And what about all of the Indians, Philippinos, folks from places like Ghana, etc? So trying to sound like a “native speaker” is stupid on so many reasons, without even getting to the next bit.

When I speak Chinese on the phone, sometimes people might think I am Chinese, or at least they might think that I’m not white. This is because there are tons of accents out there. With that said, even if I grew up in China or Taiwan, and learned Chinese as my native language, people are still going to treat me as if it wasn’t my native language. So if you aren’t going to pass the “look test” or “look the part”, why are you wasting countless time and hours to perfect your accent, grammar, etc when at the end of the day, anyone will know you aren’t a native speaker from the moment you walk down the street.

A. My business partner and I both know a Taiwanese woman who decided to learn British English instead of American English. When such people talk, it’s actually quite horrible to listen to, as it sounds so exaggerated and “fake”. Truth be told, most of the Taiwanese I know don’t sound particularly American or British in their accent, and it’s honestly best that way.

B. If I went to another place (England, southern States, etc) and then decided to learn and mimic one of the accents, people would honestly think I were taking the piss or making fun. Accent is a very funny thing in terms of personal identity.

C. Accent is natural, and a lot of people even like “the sexy French accent”, or whatever. It should be worn as a badge of pride, rather than looked on as something that should be removed when learning a language. The only time when grammar or accent truly causes a problem is when it impedes comprehension and communication. Otherwise, it’s something that shouldn’t be worried about particularly much.

 

6. ”Word etymology is your friend.”

Learning the origins of the words will not only help you to remember many of them due to shared cousins, they also provide cultural information and context, which likely will also catch your attention and help you to remember the words easier.

7. “Don't get hung up about tones, either.”

Chinese and Taiwanese often like to place a big emphasis on the importance of tones when learning Mandarin, or some of the other “dialects” of Chinese. Some food for thought though:

A. How are songs understood in Chinese? How can you “sing” a tone, and also a music note? Yet there’s lots of music out there in Chinese…

B. Vietnamese, Thai, etc also have tones yet those tones don’t match up to the tones in Chinese. So it’s not just a westerner problem.

C. In spoken Chinese, some tones change depending on the word that comes before or after it in the sentence. Why? To make it easier to say rapidly. If the tone is so important, why can we then disregard it and still understand the meaning, in such cases as this?

D. Many Taiwanese children have trouble distinguishing between second and third tones in Chinese, yet parents can miraculously understand what they are saying. How is that?!

E. Even stranger, older generations of Taiwanese can understand me when I speak Chinese, despite me not worrying about (and often improperly using) tones! Yet only younger people that speak pretty good English have a trouble understanding. Why is that? Well it’s obvious to me because they view language as a tool for communication, rather than a tool for showing off / impressing people, and are therefore more willing to want to understand.

F. Many foreigners have trouble distinguishing between tones. Yet they can still communicate in Chinese and understand what others are saying. Why is that? Because we focus more on context clues than the tones themselves.

G. The aboriginal groups in Taiwan all learn Chinese as a second language, and they also have the same struggle with tones as westerners, yet they still make themselves understood everyday.

 

8. “In this day and age, recognition is much more important than writing or spelling.”

How often do you physically write something these days? I mean, a proper paper, not just a small grocery list or your signature. With spellchecks on computers paired with the low frequency of actually writing large amounts of things by hand, it seems like a big waste of time to spend all the time and energy learning to write characters or words, when for the large majority of people, entering them into a computer is more than sufficient. Also think about the fact that spelling, in English anyway, is (was) arbitrary. You look up the history of the spelling changes between American and British English, and it just demonstrates my point even further, that it is a waste of time.

 

9. “Rote memorization is definitely *not* necessary, and is actually detrimental to learning.”

This fits in with the points in the grammar comment previously. It’s not a natural way of learning, and it will not facilitate usage. The words you need to know will enter your active vocabulary due to frequency, not by memorization. Case in point, I know what a densetsu is even though I never even studied Japanese!

 

[Brickman | 4,019]

Love the write up and thanks for making the time to expand.
 

I’m nowhere near a language expert but having learnt beginner German through high school, Spanish because of my wife and now Japanese as an interest in the language/culture I can say I am FINALLY following all these steps.

I used to spend so much time with drilling the grammar at the start of learning instead of building a good vocabulary and it took me so much longer. 

Also, great point about rote learning. If that’s in your study plan, throw out that study plan.