The Linguist On Language

Loving a language is a one-sided love affair. You love the language. It does not love you back. But the good thing is that it is not jealous of you, of your other previous love affairs. It real y does not care if you carry on another love affair at the same time. But, as with people, doing so can create problems. The language does not criticize you. You can use it however you want, as long as you enjoy yourself.

You are not jealous of other people who love the language you love. In fact you like to meet people who love the language you love. It is a lot less bothersome to love a language than to love a person, because the love of the language is its own reward. You do not care what the language thinks of you. You are enjoying your affair with the language and do not expect anything in return. As long as you have that relationship, you wil learn and improve in the language.

If you just use a language without loving it, you wil not improve. If the goal is only to get a better job, or to pass a test, you wil not improve. People are the same way. You cannot have a love affair with someone just to get a better job.

This has been my approach. So when I learn a language I spend most of my initial time just listening and reading and building up my words and phrases. I just want to get to know the language, enjoy its personality and get used to it. I do not want anyone to question me, or explain my love to me. I do not want to speak in the language before I hav e real y gotten to know the language, because I know that I wil not do justice to my love. I only speak in the language when I want to, when I am ready.

Seek out high resonance situations

1. Resonance in language acquisition. The great imponderable.

Stephen Krashen is one of the leading proponents of the importance of input in language acquisition. Much traditional language teaching does not fol ow Krashen's ideas and suffers from a fundamental flaw. Too often teachers try to coax learners to produce the language, and to produce the language correctly, wel before learners have acquired enough vocabulary or familiarity with the language to be successful. This is counterproductive, because it creates a feeling of inadequacy in the learners' minds, and can cause feelings of frustration and resentment towards the language being studied. It is important to have a positive resonance between the language and the learner. Resonance is a positive response in our brains, cognitively and emotionally, to the messages and impulses that the new language is sending our way. There are at least four important ways to achieve positive resonance with a new language.

2. The resonance of interesting content.

If I enjoy the subject matter I am studying, I learn better. I feel immersed in the content, and therefore in the language. I remember words and phrases, as wel as the scenes and characters of what I am reading or listening to. The language comes alive and resonates. I can often remember where I was and what I was doing, when I was reading or listening to particular episodes of high resonance content.

3. The resonance of combining listening and reading.

The resonance of any learning material is greatly enhanced if I can both listen and read. I usual y listen to content before reading it. I sometimes listen while reading and I often listen repeatedly after reading.

4. The resonance of the culture.

In language learning, ―l’appetit vient en mangeant,‖ the appetite comes with eating. The more I learn a language, the more I get caught up in the culture and way of thinking of the language. I find myself responding to the culture, feeling the culture and participating in the culture. This is high value resonance.

5. The resonance of talking to the right person.

Where resonance real y comes into play is when we start to speak, when we final y have a chance to put into practice what we have learned. I always perform best when speaking with a high-resonance person. By that I mean a person whose use of language, intonation and voice suits me, turns me on, resonates with me. I pick up on the energy of such people, which releases the language within me. I find a rhythm and fluency that I cannot achieve with other people. I come away from such encounters energized, and the effect stays with me long after the conversation is over. A discussion with high-resonance speaking partners unlocks the language potential that I worked so hard to build up through my input activities.

Avoid low resonance situations

Here are a few low-resonance learning situations for me, or learning situations that I dislike.

 Podcasts, or learning material, which begin with a lengthy musical introduction, or are interrupted by pop music, songs and the like.

 Songs are low resonance for me, because they are not word intense.

 Learning material that is artificial, where the text and voices are not natural.