CHILDREN AND LANGUAGES

First of all, I would like to stop for a while and return to children and their “miraculous” abilities to learn languages.

before school attendence

Some teacher told me few weeks ago (he wrote a replay to my post) that they are not so bright as far as learning languages is concerned according to his experience as I declared. He wrote that the children are just comparable to adults. After some time the answer came to me. I had kind of AHA MOMENT and now I already know. It is because of our school system. We cripple the natural abilities of children to learn languages (and maybe not only to learn the languages) and maybe this is not happening only to our children. Their spontaneity, joy from new, zest to learn… all this is unfortunately suppressed and distorted. J.A.Komensky (who was born in my country) would not be very happy. You can read more about this topic at Jesus used to say: "Be like a child"

at chool

This AHA moment came when I was reading this words of Tony Buzan in his book “Use your memory”:

“Children are not any better at learning languages than adults; they simply open their minds more to the language and are not afraid to make mistakes. They repeat and make associations with the basics, listen more attentively, copy and mime, and generally have a thoroughly good time without as much instruction as we adults think we need.”

Such a short and at the same time fruitful paragraph! Thank you, Tony, you are a genius.

The KEYWORDS are:

-open mind
-not afraid make mistakes
-repeate
-listen
-copy / mime
-(feel) good
-without much instruction

IT'S THAT SIMPLE