The Linguist On Language

In 2002, while stil running my own company in the international trade of wood products, I created The Linguist Institute, to come up with a more enjoyable and effective way to learn languages, one which takes advantage of the Internet and related technological and social change. During this period I have also been spending more time on language learning, attacking Cantonese, Korean, Russian and Portuguese as wel as a number of old friends like German, Italian, Spanish and Chinese. I am not young. I was born in 1945.

Since 2004 I have maintained a blog on language learning, where I discuss the subject from the perspective of a learner. If I am at times critical of the language teaching establishment, it is because I feel that it is responsible for considerable waste and poor results. I believe that language schools, and schools that teach teachers, have tried to convert what is a natural process into an academic maze of hoops and obstacles. I believe the Internet is an unlimited source of language learning resources and opportunities that wil bring us back to basics in language learning.

I have removed the dates from most of the posts so that I could reorganize them into chapters, each with a common theme.

This book, then, is a col ection of observations and comments on how to learn languages. I hope it can help people take on the rewarding task of getting to know another language or two.

CHAPTER I: ATTITUDE

It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of the attitude of the learner. It is the deciding factor. Do you like the language? Do you think you can succeed? Can you see yourself as a speaker of the new language? Are you an independent-minded learner? These are the most important considerations in language learning success.

A talent for language learning

Some people learn faster than others. Some people pronounce better than others. Why is this? I am more and more convinced that it is a matter of attitude rather than talent. There is something that good language learners have in common. They can let themselves go. They are not afraid. They achieve that independence from their mother tongue. They do not ask questions about why the new language is this way or that way.

I do not know if you can you teach this attitude. I think that a teacher can inspire this attitude. It happened to me. Once the switch is turned on, everything else becomes easier. Of course it is stil important to learn in an efficient way.

Freedom

Stephen Krashen, who has had a major influence on my approach to language learning, once said that the main goal of a language teacher is to create the conditions whereby the student can become an autonomous learner. The more independent the learner, the better he or she wil realize that freedom is key!

Freedom can mean many things. First the learner must strive to be as independent as possible of the teacher, of any explanations the teacher might have to provide, independent of the textbook and independent of the classroom. Of course the teacher has a role, as a guide, for feedback, for encouragement, for the occasional explanation etc.. But that role should be as smal as possible.

The learner should be free to choose content to learn from, to choose words and phrases to learn, and to choose the kind of learning activity that suits his or her mood.

The learner needs to be free of prejudice. I remember when I started learning Chinese, I had another Canadian learning with me. When he discovered that in Chinese the structure for saying "Are you going?" is "You go not go?". His reaction was "that is sil y." Yesterday I bought some Russian books and chatted with the Russian owner of the bookstore. He said that he gets mad at English because it is so il ogical. In Russian "This book" is enough, in English we need to say "This is a book." This makes him mad.

We need to be free of the assumption that there is anything universal y logical about grammar, nor anything superior about the structures of our own language. Every language has its own "logic", or way of saying things. Double negatives work in some languages and not in others. Some languages require the constant use of pronouns and articles, and others do not, etc.

Learning techniques that provide the maximum freedom for the learner are the most effective. These techniques are reading and listening. The book and the MP3 player are smal and amazingly powerful language learning tools. We can carry them and use them anywhere.