Based on my experiences, here are my Top 10 language learning tips:
1. Keep motivated even when you are frustrated with your progress - which will sometimes happen - Rome wasn't built in a day! Don't expect to become fluent very quickly, learning a language well takes many years. But always remember that any level allows communication.
2. Keep interested in new words - they are the key to any progress
3. Enjoy using the language you already have - many people often say that they are "not yet good enough" - but forget what they have already achieved and what opportunities it brings.
4. Use the Internet as and when you can. There is a fantastic amount of useful material, not to mention interesting and useful blogs and chatrooms.
5. Read in the target language as much as you can. But don't try to read at a level too high - or you will get frustrated. Try reading for enjoyment sometimes at the level you are at - or just a little higher. You will find this encouraging.
6. Make as many friends as you can that speak the target language - maybe you could join a language club where people learn together. I am a member of 3 French language clubs and 2 German language club. If you find it difficult to find a club, you could try to make some "virtual friends" online.
7. Don't think of mistakes as failure - this is negative. Think of mistakes as "feedback" and then you learn to find ways to reduce them by keeping a postive attitude. When did you see a young child worry about making mistakes?
8. Take every opportunity to speak the language and engage with people. If you can't find anyone to talk with, then talk about things with yourself (out of earshot or people will start to wonder...) I have some interesting conversations with myself whilst driving...!
9. Learn about the culture of the country or countries where the language is spoken when you have some spare time. For example: English culture is somewhat different to the USA but we have many similarities and we do speak the same language - or do we? In reality there are quite a few differences between American English and British English. However these variations in accent and dialect happen with other languages too.
10. Finally don't be too hard on yourself if you don't progress as fast as you would like to. Learning a language isn't a smooth process - you can learn a lot quickly sometimes - then sometimes the progress is slow. Always think of language learning as a long-term project not a short-term project and you'll enjoy it more.
Finally, here is my own favourite saying (I wrote it myself)
"Enjoy what you know and the rest will only grow"
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Monday, February 05, 2007
My experiences learning French
Learning French as an Adult
by Alan R. Palmer Orgininally written May 2000 for french.about.com (updated for this blog February 2007)
"I'd really like to be fluent in a second language."
A very easy statement to make, but what would it actually involve? This is what I had been asking myself for as long as I can remember. I think it all started at primary school when I was about 8 years old. A temporary teacher had been recruited for several weeks in order to help out during our usual teacher's illness. She was meant to just teach the normal curriculum, but for some reason offered the class a small amount of French language instruction one day. This both surprised and really interested me at the time and I still can remember some of the small amount of vocabulary provided: "La porte," "la plume," etc. I certainly can't remember actually stringing any sentences together. The lessons quickly stopped and soon we were back with the usual arithmetic and English lessons on our teacher's return. The event had sown a seed that was to be very slow growing as it turned out.
I started to want to learn another language from that point, but living in a small rural community in north-west England (I lived on a farm and my parents had never ventured that far in England let alone somewhere "exotic" like France!) it wasn't possible to travel abroad anyway due to the commitments of the farm and I accepted that this may not be something that I could try until much later. I did often think about what it would be like to be able to understand the strange sounds that I used to hear on my transistor radio late at night. French stations can be heard in England due to the proximity of the countries. Having waited to be able to have a serious attempt to learn French on entering secondary school (high school) at the age of 11, I very quickly found out that "the boys don't learn French, they learn German." French was exclusively for girl students. This inexplicable rule applied and I had to then start to learn "Die Tur" instead of "la porte." This disappointed me as I liked the sound of the French language and had hoped to carry on with this. Unfortunately the school's style of teaching for German did not suit me: rote learning from the blackboard, drills, grammar and more grammar. It did dampen my enthusiasm a little, but I persevered until I left school.
Having left school to become a farmer and work with my father, I found that I still hadn't lost the idea of learning a language and decided that I would start again during my spare time. I bought a small "Teach yourself Italian" book which, on trying to work through a few pages, told me that I wouldn't learn within a few weeks and this quickly ended up in a bottom drawer.
I left the farm to get married a few years later. I then had another attempt at German by attending an evening school class. This was quite successful for a while as I saw it as a way to restart my language learning ambition – but all too soon it was interrupted by the "patter of tiny feet." Family and work commitments then began to narrow down the reasons to learn. My ambition had been to actually be able to speak the language in a "real" situation by visiting the country and as this had become unlikely with having little money and a young family, I again put the idea of learning another language "on the back-burner."
Time passed and my family was growing up. It was 1991 and I had reached the grand old age of 35 and my wife and I were discussing visiting the new "EuroDisney" park near Paris, which was to be completed in 1992. We decided to save up to have our first family holiday "abroad" and also see something of France. This was my opportunity! I said to my wife that I wasn't going to France if I couldn't speak some of the language as I was determined to learn at least "enough to get by." I was lying of course, but it was my excuse to start again and learn French this time. I also wanted to know what I needed to do to be able to teach myself.
I visited our local library and found a book entitled "How to learn a foreign language quickly." I was shocked to find that I would have to (according to the book): buy lots of language books, French newspapers, magazines and audio tapes and spend at least 15 hours per week on studying at home. The book really spelled out the necessary effort that would have to be put into the task. I didn't bother borrowing the book and went home a bit disheartened but not put off. I just needed the right ideas and help.
My wife started the "ball rolling." She proudly brought home a second-hand "Complete French course" which comprised of audio tapes and books. I thanked her for her efforts and began this course that was going to help me speak "like a native." Unfortunately it was very old and consisted of learning sentences such as: "Please ask the maid to enter the room." I couldn't see myself having need for this, not actually having the money to employ a maid! On the other hand it was quite useful for helping with the difficult task of starting to learn French pronunciation.
I then decided to opt for the good old BBC. The British television channel was offering some good beginner's courses in French and at reasonable prices so that was my best option. People have asked why I didn't opt for more evening classes and I have to say that I really wanted to teach myself. It seemed that I would be able to decide how fast I learned and what methods were best for me within reason. Obviously I needed resources and help from somewhere. The self-instruction BBC courses I started to use seemed good enough to be able to start to make real progress.
After a year of listening to tapes, reading through the texts and slowly picking my way through the exercises, we were ready for the trip to France! We had a marvelous holiday and it was also a great success from a language point of view, as I actually was able to try out my beginner's vocabulary and phrases directly with the natives. Most responses to my feeble attempts went over my head, but in general I enjoyed the experience and did certainly "get by." We also met a French family one evening at our holiday centre and spent the following day with them on their invitation. This provided me some "real" language experience and some amusing moments where a dictionary was called-for in order to sort things out!
On our return to England I was determined to carry on and make this my "hobby." I needed to continue to devote quite an amount of time to the venture and decided I would have to be very patient and take my time in order to become "fluent." I had by that time a demanding job as a Production manager and didn't want to affect my progress in my career or disrupt my home life either.
"The main quest had then begun"
We found the money to be able to visit France the following year and again had a great time. I found that I could do more than just "get by" by that stage – but I realised my vocabulary was still limited. I felt I needed to expand my level in the language and I had heard about a new course offered by the Open University of Great Britain. Although established as a University and offering many different courses, a language course was a new venture for the OU. All courses offered by the Open University are basically offered as correspondence courses, but of a very high quality. This suited me as I knew it would offer me an academically challenging course that I could do mostly at home. I realised on taking a preliminary test that I wasn't at the right level and waited another year to try again. I managed to start the course "Diploma in French" in 1995 which was to last for three years.
I followed the course through each year which comprised an academic year from February to October. The course consisted of structured lessons with a number of assignments marked by either a computer or tutor. Things had really started to develop now and I became aware of how much I needed to learn and also excited by the challenge.
The first year went well and I passed the end-of-year exam with a satisfactory result. This meant that I could carry on to the following year. This second year was much more demanding, but involved a week "summer school" at the University of Caen in Normandy. I really enjoyed the chance to meet other adult students who were doing the same course and we had a really interesting week with some intensive lessons and trips into town, taking notes and visiting different parts of the town. The third year saw a much increased workload and a welcome repeat visit to summer school in Caen . By this time I had realised I was putting in 15 hours per week (as the library book had suggested!) and I made the effort to achieve a pass result when the final exam came in October 1998. I had achieved a qualification in French! This was something I had not expected when I started learning.
Did I feel fluent? Well I could hold a conversation fairly well without many mistakes and I realised that my initial concept of fluency had now changed. Where I had hoped to be able to speak just about general topics, I could discuss more specific things and understood quite a lot more of the French and Francophone culture.
What was I to do after the end of the diploma course? Well I had already joined a local French association that organised visits between "Twin towns" - a European idea where towns are "twinned" for cultural exchange with a counterpart in another European country. Our local town was twinned with a town just outside Paris and my family and I were lucky enough to be able to stay with a French family during a visit in 1998. This was particularly enjoyable as I could use my improving language skills and help other colleagues who weren't French speakers during the visit.
More recently I have had some private lessons at home with a French teacher. Just one hour per fortnight which I found particularly useful for helping to improve my conversation skills and pronunciation.
To conclude, I find that Paltalk.com has become an excellent follow-up to all I have done before concerning learning a second language. I have found, since starting to visit the site 4 years ago, that my ability to communicate in French does not now just extend to France only – but thanks to the Internet, to a whole world community of French learners and native speakers.
I have the blog and my room in Paltalk which now extends to other languages, where I can share my learning experiences and meet people who feel similar things about learning French as I do. My 15 years of seriously learning French has been very enjoyable as well as challenging and I have found it can be a life-enhancing venture to learn another language. I still am not sure whether I'm fluent yet or not, but to be honest, I'm more interested now in just using my existing skills and trying to keep developing. This probably means you never actually completely "learn" a language - rather you "keep trying to learn." It is important that you learn by whichever method suits you best. I also think it's important to remember to keep a sense of achievement for what you have learned.
by Alan R. Palmer Orgininally written May 2000 for french.about.com (updated for this blog February 2007)
"I'd really like to be fluent in a second language."
A very easy statement to make, but what would it actually involve? This is what I had been asking myself for as long as I can remember. I think it all started at primary school when I was about 8 years old. A temporary teacher had been recruited for several weeks in order to help out during our usual teacher's illness. She was meant to just teach the normal curriculum, but for some reason offered the class a small amount of French language instruction one day. This both surprised and really interested me at the time and I still can remember some of the small amount of vocabulary provided: "La porte," "la plume," etc. I certainly can't remember actually stringing any sentences together. The lessons quickly stopped and soon we were back with the usual arithmetic and English lessons on our teacher's return. The event had sown a seed that was to be very slow growing as it turned out.
I started to want to learn another language from that point, but living in a small rural community in north-west England (I lived on a farm and my parents had never ventured that far in England let alone somewhere "exotic" like France!) it wasn't possible to travel abroad anyway due to the commitments of the farm and I accepted that this may not be something that I could try until much later. I did often think about what it would be like to be able to understand the strange sounds that I used to hear on my transistor radio late at night. French stations can be heard in England due to the proximity of the countries. Having waited to be able to have a serious attempt to learn French on entering secondary school (high school) at the age of 11, I very quickly found out that "the boys don't learn French, they learn German." French was exclusively for girl students. This inexplicable rule applied and I had to then start to learn "Die Tur" instead of "la porte." This disappointed me as I liked the sound of the French language and had hoped to carry on with this. Unfortunately the school's style of teaching for German did not suit me: rote learning from the blackboard, drills, grammar and more grammar. It did dampen my enthusiasm a little, but I persevered until I left school.
Having left school to become a farmer and work with my father, I found that I still hadn't lost the idea of learning a language and decided that I would start again during my spare time. I bought a small "Teach yourself Italian" book which, on trying to work through a few pages, told me that I wouldn't learn within a few weeks and this quickly ended up in a bottom drawer.
I left the farm to get married a few years later. I then had another attempt at German by attending an evening school class. This was quite successful for a while as I saw it as a way to restart my language learning ambition – but all too soon it was interrupted by the "patter of tiny feet." Family and work commitments then began to narrow down the reasons to learn. My ambition had been to actually be able to speak the language in a "real" situation by visiting the country and as this had become unlikely with having little money and a young family, I again put the idea of learning another language "on the back-burner."
Time passed and my family was growing up. It was 1991 and I had reached the grand old age of 35 and my wife and I were discussing visiting the new "EuroDisney" park near Paris, which was to be completed in 1992. We decided to save up to have our first family holiday "abroad" and also see something of France. This was my opportunity! I said to my wife that I wasn't going to France if I couldn't speak some of the language as I was determined to learn at least "enough to get by." I was lying of course, but it was my excuse to start again and learn French this time. I also wanted to know what I needed to do to be able to teach myself.
I visited our local library and found a book entitled "How to learn a foreign language quickly." I was shocked to find that I would have to (according to the book): buy lots of language books, French newspapers, magazines and audio tapes and spend at least 15 hours per week on studying at home. The book really spelled out the necessary effort that would have to be put into the task. I didn't bother borrowing the book and went home a bit disheartened but not put off. I just needed the right ideas and help.
My wife started the "ball rolling." She proudly brought home a second-hand "Complete French course" which comprised of audio tapes and books. I thanked her for her efforts and began this course that was going to help me speak "like a native." Unfortunately it was very old and consisted of learning sentences such as: "Please ask the maid to enter the room." I couldn't see myself having need for this, not actually having the money to employ a maid! On the other hand it was quite useful for helping with the difficult task of starting to learn French pronunciation.
I then decided to opt for the good old BBC. The British television channel was offering some good beginner's courses in French and at reasonable prices so that was my best option. People have asked why I didn't opt for more evening classes and I have to say that I really wanted to teach myself. It seemed that I would be able to decide how fast I learned and what methods were best for me within reason. Obviously I needed resources and help from somewhere. The self-instruction BBC courses I started to use seemed good enough to be able to start to make real progress.
After a year of listening to tapes, reading through the texts and slowly picking my way through the exercises, we were ready for the trip to France! We had a marvelous holiday and it was also a great success from a language point of view, as I actually was able to try out my beginner's vocabulary and phrases directly with the natives. Most responses to my feeble attempts went over my head, but in general I enjoyed the experience and did certainly "get by." We also met a French family one evening at our holiday centre and spent the following day with them on their invitation. This provided me some "real" language experience and some amusing moments where a dictionary was called-for in order to sort things out!
On our return to England I was determined to carry on and make this my "hobby." I needed to continue to devote quite an amount of time to the venture and decided I would have to be very patient and take my time in order to become "fluent." I had by that time a demanding job as a Production manager and didn't want to affect my progress in my career or disrupt my home life either.
"The main quest had then begun"
We found the money to be able to visit France the following year and again had a great time. I found that I could do more than just "get by" by that stage – but I realised my vocabulary was still limited. I felt I needed to expand my level in the language and I had heard about a new course offered by the Open University of Great Britain. Although established as a University and offering many different courses, a language course was a new venture for the OU. All courses offered by the Open University are basically offered as correspondence courses, but of a very high quality. This suited me as I knew it would offer me an academically challenging course that I could do mostly at home. I realised on taking a preliminary test that I wasn't at the right level and waited another year to try again. I managed to start the course "Diploma in French" in 1995 which was to last for three years.
I followed the course through each year which comprised an academic year from February to October. The course consisted of structured lessons with a number of assignments marked by either a computer or tutor. Things had really started to develop now and I became aware of how much I needed to learn and also excited by the challenge.
The first year went well and I passed the end-of-year exam with a satisfactory result. This meant that I could carry on to the following year. This second year was much more demanding, but involved a week "summer school" at the University of Caen in Normandy. I really enjoyed the chance to meet other adult students who were doing the same course and we had a really interesting week with some intensive lessons and trips into town, taking notes and visiting different parts of the town. The third year saw a much increased workload and a welcome repeat visit to summer school in Caen . By this time I had realised I was putting in 15 hours per week (as the library book had suggested!) and I made the effort to achieve a pass result when the final exam came in October 1998. I had achieved a qualification in French! This was something I had not expected when I started learning.
Did I feel fluent? Well I could hold a conversation fairly well without many mistakes and I realised that my initial concept of fluency had now changed. Where I had hoped to be able to speak just about general topics, I could discuss more specific things and understood quite a lot more of the French and Francophone culture.
What was I to do after the end of the diploma course? Well I had already joined a local French association that organised visits between "Twin towns" - a European idea where towns are "twinned" for cultural exchange with a counterpart in another European country. Our local town was twinned with a town just outside Paris and my family and I were lucky enough to be able to stay with a French family during a visit in 1998. This was particularly enjoyable as I could use my improving language skills and help other colleagues who weren't French speakers during the visit.
More recently I have had some private lessons at home with a French teacher. Just one hour per fortnight which I found particularly useful for helping to improve my conversation skills and pronunciation.
To conclude, I find that Paltalk.com has become an excellent follow-up to all I have done before concerning learning a second language. I have found, since starting to visit the site 4 years ago, that my ability to communicate in French does not now just extend to France only – but thanks to the Internet, to a whole world community of French learners and native speakers.
I have the blog and my room in Paltalk which now extends to other languages, where I can share my learning experiences and meet people who feel similar things about learning French as I do. My 15 years of seriously learning French has been very enjoyable as well as challenging and I have found it can be a life-enhancing venture to learn another language. I still am not sure whether I'm fluent yet or not, but to be honest, I'm more interested now in just using my existing skills and trying to keep developing. This probably means you never actually completely "learn" a language - rather you "keep trying to learn." It is important that you learn by whichever method suits you best. I also think it's important to remember to keep a sense of achievement for what you have learned.
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