Description: In this article, EFL and Qualified teacher, Beth, shares her experience with learning a new language and how curiosity/interest gets results.
Everyone Can Learn a New Language
Not everyone finds learning a new language easy, but we have all mastered at least one language in our lives.
Our native tongue for example. This suggests that we all have an innate ability to master a language.
So, how did we learn our mother tongue? The answer is mostly by listening and mimicking, repeating the sounds we heard from our parents, carers, teachers and peers.
Let’s consider this: a baby hears his or her parents’ voices and gurgles back a response.
Naturally, the baby starts to mimic the sounds, unconsciously absorbing new vocabulary and language rules.
Gradually, he or she starts to create simple sentences, works out how to change from the present to the past tense, from affirmative to negative etc.
Basically, it is through exposure and curiosity that young children learn their mother tongue.
I also believe that these 2 factors can also be key to learning a new language for older children and adults alike.
A New Skill at Any Age
Granted, young children’s brains are more malleable and tend to absorb more readily than those of older children and fully-formed adults.
Even an adult can absorb a language through sustained exposure, providing their curiosity and determination are there to motivate them to do so.
This is why, in my work as a language teacher I tell my students how important it is to read and listen to as much of the target language as they can, not just in class, but outside class too.
Apart from attending lessons with their teacher, they can read comics, story books, magazines or newspapers and they can listen to nursery rhymes, and songs, or watch cartoons, wildlife documentaries, movies and even age-appropriate news.
Obviously, whatever the age is, there is something that can pique their interest, and I think that it is in this way that a student can make real progress.
Of course, children and adults need to learn a few grammar rules as well, but if they listen and read enough, they will absorb a lot of these too!
Getting Results
I can think of many examples of students who have followed my advice and made good progress, and I should know, as I myself am a good example of this.
In fact, I fondly remember the first time I truly fell in love with French!
I was 13 and on a language exchange with a French student, Hervé.
Back then I was quite shy at the time, but Hervé’s family had a lot of Astérix comic books.
I devoured them despite only having a very basic level of French at the time.
In those 3 weeks, I had learnt more than I had in the whole previous year at school.
When I got back to school that September, I was so much better than my peers that my mother decided to hire a private tutor to talk to me in French and stretch and challenge me further, and it worked!
I never looked back after that, realising that learning a language through primarily reading, listening and speaking is so much fun and very effective indeed.
Of course, grammar and spelling rules must be learnt too, and errors should be corrected at appropriate moments.
Interest and Curiosity in Language
Since that first experience, I believe that as long as a student’s interest and curiosity are piqued, regular exposure to a language works wonders, and it can be relatively painless.
One such example of a successful language learner was my own son.
He didn’t enjoy French at school but had chosen it for GCSE despite having rather low marks in it.
I decided to give him a helping hand at home.
At first, he was resistant, but I focused on encouraging him to listen, read out loud, and actively answer questions.
My aim was to help him love the language as I do, hearing the music and the beauty of it and taking pride in his pronunciation.
After just a few weeks of help, his school teachers were amazed by the leaps and bounds that he had made, and thought they had a different child in the class!
Practice of Skills
As I’ve said before, don’t get me wrong, I know that grammar and spelling rules must be learnt too.
I remind students that they do need to learn these to ensure accuracy in both speaking and writing, so a lesson must be a true balance of the practice of skills and the learning of grammar and vocabulary.
However, I believe that reading and listening are key to improving a student’s ability to effectively communicate both orally and in writing.
The good news is that these days, there is so much available online to enable a good deal of exposure to the target language without the student ever needing to leave their country.
As a result, I do believe that language learning is easier now than it was when I was young, and it is therefore the responsibility of a tutor to set age-appropriate homework which makes use of these resources.
Grammar practice and written work are important too, but guiding the student towards reading and listening activities should also be key, especially with older teenagers and adults who are more capable of working online.
So, I hope you have enjoyed this article, and that it has given you food for thought! Remember, language learning should be a joy, not a chore.
By tutor Beth. Contact Us