How to learn a language with the least amount of difficulty and the most amount of fun
This book shows you:
- how to work out exactly what you want to learn
- how to work out how you learn best
- which sort of course you might choose
- how to choose dictionaries, course books, grammar books, computer courses etc.
- how to organise yourself
- how to "collect" language
- how to make the most of contact with a native speaker
- short cuts to speaking, listening, reading, and writing
- how to understand grammar and use it effectivley without being bogged down by it
- how to make the most of your time in the country which speaks that language
- how to have fun
In addition, there are loads of hints and tips to get you going. And the main point is that you should have fun, fun and more fun.
And there are even extensive lists of other useful contacts. Can you be without this book if you are learning a language, whatever your level?
Excerpt
Preface
It was the bubble gum which started it for me. Little packs were sold at the tuck shop near to my primary school. A rectangular piece of card held the gum flat in its waxed paper pack. There was a national flag printed on one side of the card, on the other a few useful phrases from the language of the country involved. How our journeys to school were enhanced as we practised on each other the phrases we had acquired from last night's chewing! Woe betide he or she who had not chewed enough to know that "Tengo ocho años" was a statement about your age and not an invitation to a sexy Latin American dance.
Then came the delights of the Children's Encyclopaedia. Many a Sunday morning, whilst my parents had a lie-in, was spent skipping form section to section finding the stories in French, which were well illustrated, and translated into English below. And delight of delights, sandwiched between the French and the English, a phonetic spelling of how the French sounded. Reading it aloud, taking on the roles of the various characters was such fun!
How thrilling, on the first day at Grammar School to look at the timetable and see that by this time tomorrow, we would have had our first Latin lesson and our first French lesson. And what disappointment when both of those lessons were cancelled because we needed to do more administrative work with our from mistress. We had to wait a whole day more before we could begin to converse in another tongue.
Not that it has always been joyful. That moment of panic, at the end of the first year in secondary school, when I told myself that I knew very little French, even though I had performed well in every lesson and in every piece of homework. Being plunged into the deep end of A-level German after just two years of two lessons a week, and struggling for three hours with the first piece of homework. Being tongue-tied on my first visit to France, even though I had been learning French for a long time.
And there have been times of great joy. Like seeing my own pupils, just at the end of their second year of French cope with following directions, ordering food and shopping in French. No, they did more than cope. They performed. When I was a student myself and worked in a small group, we were often joined by the German assistant. Two teachers, therefore, to three pupils. We discussed everything under the sun, put the world right and read not just the set books, but everything of significance written by the authors concerned. And then some. We stopped noticing it was a foreign language. Or my own son, on our return to England after living for two years in Holland, complaining that the other kids didn't understand the extra bits of language he could use. He meant the Dutch he had acquired by playing with other children from our street.
Gradually, gradually, over the years, I have noticed what actually makes it happen, what makes it all come together. Recently, I have been able to put that into practice with my private pupils, and have been astonished and delighted by the results. If only I had known all this sooner! When I first started on my own language learning for instance or when I started teaching others. We would have attained our goals more rapidly. I hope this little volume will offer you a short cut.
But the fun doesn't have to stop there. My level of understanding and appreciation in all of my languages is way beyond what I had hoped for in the bubble gum days or even had aspired to in obtaining a degree. I now have many meaningful friendships with speakers of other languages. The process does not end. Instead, you go in deeper and deeper until, aided by your willingness to understand, you touch the very soul of the other. You understand and appreciate Otherness and are yourself transmuted by it.
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