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Clare Innes
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Posts by Clare Innes
Are There Secret Tips To Help Me Learn More Than One Language?
Sep 15th
No! If you have been deeply engrossed in learning a language, but are now approaching the home run, it can be extremely tempting to start to look towards learning a second language.
Language lovers have a natural curiosity about different languages, but you need to decide whether you wish to speak one language (to start with) fluently, or you just want to pick up a little bit of a number of languages. You must be aware, however, that the second choice can lead to you being fairly bad at any of the languages that you chose!
Make that decision right at the start. Decide you are going to commit to the time and hard work that it will take for you to become fluent in a language. Set goals; how many hours a week can you devote to study that ONE language?
You can make the choice of whether you want to become completely fluent, or to be able to hold a fairly straightforward conversation. But do just focus on that one language until you reach the point that you are happy with. This is the point that you can move on to language number two.
It needs a lot of time and hard work to learn a new language. Even if you are smarter than average, have the best teaching program in the world, and are aiming to learn a fairly easy language (something not too far away from your mother tongue) it can still take hundreds of hours of study. If you think that you can just include a little bit of study on a different language here and there so that eventually you will know them all, think again, because you won’t.
If you still do prefer to learn a smaller amount of a number of different languages, there still needs to be some kind of disciplined learning method that will give you optimum results.
When you buy a grammar book for French or German, for example, make sure you tell yourself loud and clear that you will finish learning Spanish first – and that this is just to satisfy your curiosity for other languages. If you do a few lessons of German for fun, make sure you are clear about why you do this – you just want to see what German sounds like.
Don’t get carried away and do an entire volume of German while you are only half way through the Spanish still!
So, in conclusion, it’s fairly clear that it is not such a good idea to try and learn more than one language at once.
About the Author:
About the Author: Clare Innes has a selection of health, fitness and lifestyle websites including one devoted to how to learn a new language. Look out for more of her lifestyle websites in the ‘First For….com’ series that is currently under development.
Can Anyone Learn A New Language, Or Am I Just A Bit Thick??
Sep 6th
Just how much time might it take?
There are generally two factors that decide whether a language is easy or harder to learn. These are how much time you have available to devote to learning, and the determination you have to progress. It also makes a difference if the language you want to learn is closely related to your own mother tongue.
You can be looking at a period of around 3 months, if 80% or more words are common with your mother tongue, or 6 months if you don’t have quite so much time to give to studying to become fluent For other languages you may be looking at 2 or 3 years. It is always much easier to learn a new language if you can spend a good amount of time surrounded by people who speak this language, rather than having to learn from a book.
Can anyone learn a new language?
Most people can learn most languages if they work with a sensible method for a reasonable period regularly. Although it is true that some people are really bad at learning languages, there are very few of these. Rather, there are many people who were discouraged by bad experiences in school and who believe that if they dont speak french or german with any fluency after having spent 10 years in school studying it, this is because they are not gifted. That is rubbish!
You don’t have to have any special skills to learn a new language effectively, you just need to have an effective method of learning. Almost anyone can learn, whether they are gifted or not, whether they have a good or a bad memory…don’t forget, you learned your native language didn’t you!
Most people can speak a language like a native if they live in a country where they have to speak it all the time, especially when they are young. For all the others, learning to speak a language without accent is very difficult, something very few achieve. But nonetheless it is possible to learn to speak a language with fluency, to be able to express your thoughts with finesse and understand all the intricacies in the speech of the natives.
The best way to learn is to set targets. Logically, the first of these would be to speak and be understood. This would be hotly followed by being able to understand (this can be difficult due to the variations in local accents). These goals, and your ability to keep pushing them onwards, are the difference between a gifted language student and an average one.
You don’t want to be working constantly to pass for a local, life is just too short, but there will always be room for improvement. There may never be a time when you can say ‘that’s it, I’ve learned all I can’.
Rather, it is an open attitude toward learning, a realisation that even if you speak really well, you could improve it, learn new words or new expressions or perfect your pronunciation. Aim for excellence, and you’ll get it!
About the Author:
About the Author: Clare Innes has a selection of health, exercise and lifestyle websites, including one showcasing the USA’s best selling method of exactly how to learn a new language…and in under 8 weeks! Watch out for more websites in the ‘First For….com’ series that is under development.