|
|
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|
So you want to learn to speak another language! You can, you know. Right now, my oldest private student is 75 years old, and my youngest is 3. But there are some linguistic principles to follow if you want to get quickly to where you want to go. We all know people who have studied a language for years and years in high school or university but still feel uncomfortable to converse with native speakers. So they go and live in that country for a while to actually learn to speak. Now, you probably don't have the time or patience to go through all that process. What if we could find a way to duplicate that second stage of living in the country where the language is spoken? Actual speaking, which is the production of the sounds of the new language one after the other so that the individual words and the whole phrases and sentences sound reasonably authentic is a very complex task. And since the making and hearing of sound is what speaking is all about, I believe that huge stress should be laid on developing these skills right from the start, and emphasizing them all through the time the language is being studied. The second hurdle to overcome, an impossible one for most people studying on their own, is learning to make sentences is their new language using all the elements that the structure requires. For example, while English, German, and Swedish say "I see you", French, Spanish, and Italian put the order, with exactly the same meaning, "I you see." Then there are all the complexities of saying things in the past or future or with or without emotion. Yes, you can sweat for years memorizing a set of intellectual rules, but most people have considerable difficulty converting those rules into fluent speech. We have some very palatable methods of teaching you to think and say these patterns! The third component is much easier but boring! We need to acquire a vocabulary of several thousand words. We need to know which words fit into which categories and how they form their plurals. We need to learn where the irregularities are, so that we say "We ate". and not "We eated". And finally, as we put together the sounds we have learned to pronounce and hear, into proper, coherent sentences, using the impressive vocabulary we have accumulated, we learn the expressions and turns of phrases that people actually say. And we learn the short cuts that people normally use: Dja wan ta napple? (Do you want an apple?) I believe there are 5 principles to learning to speak and understand when others speak:
Two final words of caution: First, the alphabet is not universal. Since each language has its own sounds, it uses the letters of the alphabet for its own purposes. Looking at a word in your new language before you have thoroughly mastered the sounds will give you no clue as to what it sounds like. I often spend ten times (or more) as long correcting the pronunciation of words that students have learned by reading, as I do to teach them brand new words that they have never seen. Once the student has solid control of the sounds, it takes very little time to teach them the spelling rules (always much easier than English) and then they can read to their heart's content. Secondly, native speakers are a valuable resource in practising your new language. But unless they have training to do so, they can't help you learn how to hold your mouth and tongue to make the sounds. And they cannot explain or show you the principles of sentence construction because the rules of the language to them are internal and subconscious. |
|
|||||
|
|
"Effective
Spoken Language Skills for Ordinary People"
(C) 2009 Brian Mullin |
|||||||
