In my previous post I came with the concept of language as a mosaic. I promised to explain how to achieve that. First of all, I would like to say one thing - I am learning myself and I read my previous post a few minutes ago and I could see my mistakes - so, should I be ashamed of them or be happy that I have move forward again with my knowledge of this beautiful language? This is, of course, just rhetorical question.
To learn language naturally means to do a lot of mistakes and be able to correct them on your own. You do not need any teacher to do it for you. What you need is model, example to follow, to imitate. The children have as examples from real life their parents at the beginning. They do not need to go to school to learn mother tongue. When they go to school they already know it. But you can say: it takes them around 6 years, but I need to know English much more quicker! My answer is: YES, you CAN! The language-learning is ongoing process, newer ending. But to reach some level of mastery, when you are able to understand and express what you need, does not take too long. Although it is very individual. The main thing is to do it right! And what is that "right" way? I will tell you my opinion here, based on (not only) my experiences. We, learners of some language, let's say that it is our second language, started having already knowledge of some language, our mother one. And it is a big advantage (if used correctly - I will explain later). A child is starting from scratch. It does not know anything. Every word has its (internal) meaning and the child must recognize it. The child learns from experiences, observations, seeing situations... This process is relatively slow at the beginning but it creates very strong foundation, very deeply "hard-wired" knowledge which is very helpful and learning of the child gradually accelerate. This is not often the case of us, the adult learners of foreign language, unfortunately. Why? We should have the advantage of our developed brains, knowing of one language and knowing internal meaning of words... The reason is that we try to use our mother tongue to "help" us with the new language we are learning the wrong way. We are mixing these languages together and the "winner is" our mother tongue. And we will return to it abandoning frustrated new language we are learning. Tired after a big unneccessary effort. The RIGHT way is this: At the beginning (ONLY) you need to "use" your mother language to KNOW what is the meaning of new language you are learning. The good example is a method of V. F. Birkenbihl. In her method she writes words in the mother language above (or below - it does not matter) that foreign text to know the meaning of that text. It is in order in which they are in the foreign text! And this is important. It matters! The foreign language is "the boss here" ;-) Our mother one is only helper (and a temporary helper) We will not learn words that way as we are accustomed to learn at school - that (classical) approach connects new foreign and mother word together and creates such a "couple" in our head. This is not natural. We need only know the meaning of foreign word without this unbreakable (unnatural) connection. The result of this new approach is that we will have such words as something like synonymous words in our head. So, we have the foreign text, we know its meaning of it by using our mother tongue (not “normal” way). What next? If you have a meaning, you can learn. And we have it now. So, let's get the ball rolling! To be continued ... The more you know, the easier you learn. Is it true as far as a language is concerned? Really? Not always. But it is exciting perspective! Isn't it? It is not about remembering more and more words, expressions, adding a new vocabulary to the existing one, which demands continues repeating and revising and represents a continues effort to maintain and keep what you already know – not to be forgotten. Despite the fact, that in most cases it is this way, there is here an another, a different approach. It is to see the language as MOSAIC. The lexical units are the pieces of a broader picture, the whole which represents not only the collection of that pieces but IS much more than that, because it has a MEANING. That picture, that mosaic represents the meaning expressed by the language, is created from those pieces. If you have a mosaic, you do not need to know all pieces to figure out the picture – the meaning. And it works vice versa too – you can “easily” figure out missing pieces (meaning of unknown words in our case) from the broader picture, mosaic (=context). This way you can learn, and this process is natural way of learning new vocabulary. In addition to that, you can also notice some grammar patterns and you can find that some words go together (collocations). You learn them too. Naturally. This “mosaic” approach significantly improves your understanding – it is instantaneous, without any internal translations, no need for mixing languages anymore, no need for thinking about grammar rules, actually there is no need to think at all (“about” language) – just communication happens! So, isn't it nice? Yes! You can ask: “But how to achieve that?“ And it is the relevant question! I will explain it, but not now. Think of it, maybe you are going to get it! The hint is: we do not have only a logical mind.
DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE? IF YOU ARE MORE COMFORTABLE READING AND WRITING THAN TALKING TO PEOPLE, THERE'S A NEW E-BOOK THAT CAN HELP YOU GAIN CONFIDENCE WHEN SPEAKING! IT'S THE "Brain Speak Activator"
Assess your skills - ENGLISH SURVEY: http://www.brainspeakactivator.com/survey.html Sometimes I think of my English and I know that it is not perfect at all. I am not very confident, especially as far as the grammar is concerned. When I was younger, I had studied this language at school. We combined our mother Czech with English, it was a lot of grammar, theory, exercises. Yes, I understood them, but only that particular hour, next was another grammar rule and it was the same. Gradually I realized that I have a big mess in my head. An it has not changed to this day :-) Maybe, fortunately for me, I started few years ago looking at English from a little different perspective and maybe because of it I was able to continue to learn and actually I love this language today. What happen? I realized that all of that is nonsense. I realized that I do not need all this knowledge ABOUT the language, I need USE this language, understand it, be able to speak and write... NO grammar rules too much needed. I realized that when I was a little boy I did not learn any grammar too. Yes, at school it started and actually it does not helped me to be more FLUENT in my mother tongue – Czech. Maybe to the contrary :-( While speaking I do not have time to think about any grammar rules, I need to focus my attention to the topic I am saying, to the message I am delivering and to my partner in communication. I found that it is better to make mistakes, but to be fluent and natural than NOT TO BE ABLE to communicate at all. By the way, most of the time I speak with not-native speakers and they “do not now” too, and if with native ones – they are tolerant :-) So, I follow the rule: "Always Do Your Best" what is, I think, the 4-th agreement by Migual Ruiz. Hopefully the right grammar will come later too! With my Czech it was the case after all. What about you?
Hi, some say that the price of our course Brain Speak Activator which is 37$ is too HIGH! And I tell you: "IT IS TRUE!" and it is intentionally. First of all, the book has 190 pages and 180 of them are practical exercises (it is 180 lessons, every lesson has 7 exercises, and every exercise has 5 tasks in average), there is no "wadding" there - but it is not so important. What is important - if we give you our course too cheap or even free, would you do it, would you do it every day for 180 days? Would you have that motivation, so strong motivation? Actually you need to do it at least 30 days to create a HABIT, motivation itself cannot sustain so long but that 30 days is hard. If you pay for something a "real money" there is a bigger chance that you will stick with it, saying yourself that you must use it because it cost you so "much"! Actually we could profit probably more if we were cheaper. More people would be buying our course. But it would not be helpful for them too much. If you think that you could sustain with our course, if you are certain that you could - contact me and convince me - I give you our course free or nearly free! :-) Excuse my mistakes, I am learning to write, our course is about speaking! Enjoy! :-)
Hello, are you aware of the fact that majority of people speaking this beautiful language (English) are not native speakers? Yes, English has now become a real world language.
It is sometimes rather hard for us to learn our second language, especially by using so-called “classical” methods. On the other hand it is a big joy to be able to communicate with people all around the world (what I am doing now;-) ), to travel without being lost in foreign countries and without being dependent on others, to listen music and to understand (at least partially), to watch movies in original ... In this short article, even though not native speaker, and maybe not free of mistakes ;-) I would like to share with you few of my experiences, things that worked and continue to work for me and maybe will work for you too and could help you: 1. People learn languages by HEARING. Yes, look at the children, they do not read books, do not speak. They can hear and are exposed to the language by their eyers. It means that at the beginning is very important to listen, and it is important all the time after all. And to listen the language you are learning very often. Grammar rules, reading, speaking … are secondary, not so necessary. Maybe later. The time will come. The natural way to learn language is to listen to it! If you start with other methods too soon you will harm your learning process. I studied “classical” way and it was not very helpful. I realized that it is not the way and I started to use my MP3 player slightly differently, listening (for me interesting materials for witch I had transcript) = known text. I listen it every day (even now), repeatedly, sometimes I pay attention, sometimes I do not care that it is playing at all (it is in the background), it is just speaking, like a radio playing, who cares, just sound on the background. I use only 1 head-phone not to separate myself from „real life“. It goes over and over and it makes me 2. THINK IN ENGLISH. Yes, my brain learns to think in English this way. English becomes for me so familiar. And it is crucial for better (instant) understanding and speaking. Without it you cannot be fluent, you will always do translation in your head form and to your mother tongue. It is too slow and counter-productive. So, it is better to forget your mother tongue while using foreign one. Lend to “switch” 3. SPEAKING should start later. Listening creates good foundation for speaking, but in my experience it is not enough. After about 2 years of this kind of hearing I was able to understand quite well, even native teacher was surprised ;-) But to say something (to speak) was a real struggle:-( for me. And I found that it had at least two reasons – 1. I was not accustomed to my voice speaking in English and 2. I did not have very good ACTIVE vocabulary. So, what to do with it? In this phase (not too soon) you need really to speak. But it is difficult. I know. I was in this situation and fortunately I found a method (originally not intended to be a learning tool for foreign languages) special exercises which are used by professional speakers and spokesmen. I started to practise them in English and after few weeks my speaking improved dramatically! :-) At the same time I realized, that important thing is TO BE ABLE TO SAY IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE WHAT YOU ARE SAYING IN YOUR MOTHER LANGUAGE “normally“. The other is not so important. You have some vocabulary you use in your mother language and you need it in your second language too. At school they teach you usually other things, other vocabulary = not necessary material (for you). And they do not differentiate between active and passive vocabulary. They force you to learn words as if they were all for an active usage. But it is not normally the case. You do not need to use every word actively, you need to understand many more words than you use. But back to this method - I call it now „Brain Speak Activator“ - because it ACTIVATES your natural speaking abilities (both in English and in your mother tongue), the knowledge you already have inside of you (the reason why it is so important to listen fist) and learns you to think in „target“ language (meaning English in our case), to be familiar with your voice in English. It teaches you to speak instantly without inner translation and think in English. I am not author of this method – I have tested it on myself, I gave it the name and I would like to help others to use it (with permission of and cooperation with the author of this method, of course) So, what to say finally. First you need to improve understanding, always! Without understanding there is no communication. So, my recommendation is: START TO LISTEN. It does not take very much time. You do not need to sit and just listen. Do other activities at the same time. At the beginning it will be strange for your but it is only question of time and habit. Find topics you are interested in. Find materials with transcript in English. Find unknown words there, look up them in dictionary but do not learn them normal way. Just from time to time look at the text. Listen native speakers if possible. REGURLARY. In my case, I listen Eckart Tolle daily – see my web – you will find his picture there:-) on right side. So, even though is our method focused on SPEAKING, basis is listening. Then Activate it, use Brain Speak Activator or similar activities and you will succeed! Good luck! Here you can post your testimonials. All versions of our product, 7-day one included.
|
AuthorSelf-employed computer specialist and Qigong practitioner MIND MAP nAVIGATION
Archives
December 2013
Categories
All
Be in touch
|