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 ...
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 ...
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