Why Most Fail in Language Learning & How You Can Succeed
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The document discusses why most language learners fail to achieve fluency, attributing this to ineffective traditional methods, poor materials, and negative attitudes rather than a lack of effort or aptitude. It emphasizes the importance of choosing engaging, relevant materials, leveraging digital resources, and adopting a positive mindset towards language learning. Recommendations include maximizing exposure and practice to improve fluency and ultimately enjoy the language learning process.
Why Most Fail in Language Learning & How You Can Succeed
- 1. by John Fotheringham LanguageMastery.com How You Can Succeed Why Most Fail in Language Learning &
- 2. The Problem Most language learners fail to reach fluency despite years of formal study.
- 3. But Why? Most of us assume we fail to reach fluency in a language because we simply didn’t study hard enough or just aren’t good at languages. It’s certainly true that some learners are lazy, and given the same methods, certain folks tend to pick up languages faster than others. ! But neither of these is the real issue; both are but symptoms of the underlying problem... The Supposed Cause
- 4. The Real Reason Most Fail For most learners, the real root cause of failure in language learning is not laziness or a lack of aptitude, but rather the “crappy triumvirate” of traditional language learning: Crappy Methods 1 Crappy Materials 2 Crappy Attitudes 3
- 5. Crappy Methods Despite their poor track record and the widespread availability of far better options, most language study is still focused on three outdated, ineffective, inefficient, painful methods: Grammar- Translation A Rote Memorization B C Standardized Testing 1
- 6. Grammar-Translation This academic approach focuses on memorizing grammar rules and vocab lists, and translating written passages to and from one’s native language. It was originally used for studying “dead languages” like Latin, but came to be applied to modern spoken languages as well. It’s a highly inefficient means to reach oral fluency as shown by the vast majority of students who emerge from ten plus years of grammar- based formal instruction unable to speak the language well, if at all. A
- 7. “You do not have to know grammar to obey grammar.” ! ―Barry Farber How to Learn Any Language
- 8. Language is Innate Grammar-translation fails because it treats language as a set of facts to memorize, not the innate biological system it truly is. Nobody learns to drive by reading the car’s owner’s manual, yet that is precisely the way most people try to learn foreign languages.
- 9. “Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, deployed without awareness of its underlying logic…” ! ―Stephen Pinker The Language Instinct
- 10. Rote Memory Trying to commit a new word to memory by writing it out hundreds of times is not only boring, but also highly ineffective. It may work to temporarily memorize a set of facts or figures for tomorrow’s test, but this approach does not lead to long-term retention. Moreover, rote memory only works—if it works at all—for explicit information, not the tacit knowledge required to understand and speak a language. B
- 11. Oh the Memories... Grammar-translation and rote memory approaches attempt to force feed language facts into declarativememory. This might work for memorizing the capital of Namibia or a list of Spanish words out of context, but it does not work for building proceduralmemories, the kind that allows you to actually use words in context or produce grammatical sentences. Dr. Stephen Krashen defines this distinction well in his Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis.
- 12. Learning vs. Acquisition “Learning” is like knowing all the parts of a car, but not necessarily knowing how to drive.
- 13. It is a Conscious Process
- 14. Acquisition... ...is like being able to drive but not necessarily knowing how the car works.
- 15. It is a Sub-Conscious Process
- 16. Acquisition is Hardwired Humans have been acquiring languages for hundreds of thousands of years without any help from textbooks or grammar teachers. This is because the ability to acquire languages is hardwired into our genes. The language acquisition process happens automaticallyif—and this is a big if—you get sufficient exposure to a language and enough practice using it. This is precisely what happened when you were a baby, and can happen even faster as an adult.
- 17. Adults Can Learn Faster Contrary to popular belief, adults are actually better, or at least faster, language learners than children. We grown ups have three main advantages over ankle biters: ! ‣ Adults have the power of choice ‣ Adults have learned how to learn ‣ Adults have big vocabularies to draw upon
- 18. The Power of Choice The freedom to choose what you learn, why you learn, and how you learn significantly increases motivation, enjoyment, and retention. Most people develop a hatred for foreign languages in school because they have no control over any of these choices. It is very likely that both enjoyment and proficiency would significantly rise if language courses were optional.
- 19. Adults Know How to Learn You have already learned how to drive, operate the printer at work, program the clock on your DVD player, and fix that toilet that keeps running for some reason. You learned all of these things more quickly than any child could because you have already learned so many other things. Every task you learn helps you learn other tasks. And every language you delve into makes the next one that much easier to learn.
- 20. Adults Have Big Vocabularies Infants must first develop basic cognitive functions before they can begin acquiring the language around them (what Steven Pinker calls “mentalese”). Assuming you don’t have brain damage, adults have fully developed mentalese and massive vocabularies to draw upon. You already know the meaning of “photosynthesis”; you need simply learn it’s equivalent in your target language.
- 21. Test, Test, Test! As the late Peter Drucker said, “What gets measured, gets managed.” This is sage advice, but what you measure and howyou measure it is extremely important. Standardized language tests are poor assessment tools for progress in a language because: ! ‣ Standardized tests don’t measure what really matters. ‣ Test preparation usually distracts from fluency-building tasks. C
- 22. Measuring What Matters Formal tests are not a good way to measure one’s ability to use a foreign language in real communication. Not only do they focus on exceptions and overly formal usage, but they tend to assess one’s knowledge of the language, not one’s ability to communicate in it. The only true assessment of language fluency is the ability to understand—and be understood by—native speakers.
- 23. Test Prep is a Distraction Test prep books and classes focus almost exclusively on declarative memorization, not the procedural memories that actually lead to fluency. If you spend your time actually acquiringthe language, you will do better on standardized tests and be able to actually usewhat you learn long after the test is over.
- 24. Crappy Materials Even though modern learners can access heaps of free, interesting, relevant materials online, most language learners still use traditional textbooks and readers. Instead of boring, generic, text-only print materials, the effective language learner chooses: Interesting, Targeted Content A Audio Over Text Content B Digital Over Print Content C 2
- 25. Choose Content Carefully There is no better way to improve both enjoyment and efficacy than choosing materials that fit your specific interests, goals, and needs. This is perhaps the greatest disadvantage of traditional classroom- based learning where you are stuck with whatever materials and topics your teacher happens to choose. With so many free, high- quality resources available online today, independent learners have no excuse to study uninteresting, stilted, irrelevant materials. A
- 26. “We should remember the warning of the wise Grail knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: ‘You must choose, but choose wisely, for as the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you.’ Choose the highest-yield material and you can be an idiot and enjoy stunning success. Choose poorly and, as the Grail knight implied, you’re screwed no matter what. You’ll chase your own tail for years.” ! ―Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Chef
- 27. Audio > Text Reading tends to be less intimidating for adult learners since we have time to think our way through the language as we go. But you get better at what you practice, and reading alone does very little to help improve your listening and speaking abilities. When possible, try to focus on audio over text, or materials that include both: ! ‣ Podcasts with transcripts ‣ Audio books along with the e-book or print version of the book B
- 28. Digital Materials I have an almost fetish-level attraction to good old-fashioned paper books, but when it comes to language learning, digital materials trump paper for 3 important reasons: ! ‣ Digital materials are faster ‣ Digital materials are more portable ‣ Digital materials are cheaper (if not free) C
- 29. Digital Materials Are Faster Looking up unknown words you encounter in paper books, newspapers, or magazines is slow and laborious. Worse yet, when you rely on a notebook or pad to write these words and definitions down, you risk misplacing all your hard work. A far faster option is using the built-in dictionaries on Kindle and iBooks, popup browser dictionaries like Rikaichan, or online dictionaries like Google Translate, Tatoeba, or Tangorin. Best of all, some of these tools allow you to export words directly to spaced repetition flashcard apps like Anki!
- 30. Digital = Portable Bitsarealotlighterthanatoms! Most smartphones and tablets can store more reading and listening content than you could get through in a lifetime. So instead of killing your back and wasting valuable space in your bag, carry your foreign language content in digital format instead. That way, you’ll never have an excuse not to study when “hidden moments” arise.
- 31. “Harnessing your hidden moments, those otherwise meaningless scraps of time you’d never normally think of putting to practical use, and using them for language study―even if it’s no more than fifteen, ten, or five seconds at a time—can turn you into a triumphant tortoise.” ! ―Barry Farber How to Learn Any Language
- 32. Bits Are Cheaper than Atoms Due to their much lower production and distribution costs, eBooks, streaming videos, and MP3s tend to be much cheaper than print books, DVDs, and CDs. In fact, they’re not just cheaper, they often free! Why spend hundreds of dollars on Rosetta Stone or language classes when you can watch free YouTube videos, download free podcasts, or talk to native speakers for free on Skype?
- 33. Crappy Attitudes Perhaps the greatest obstacle of all is one’s attitude toward the language learning process and the target language itself. Until you can move past the following 3 misconceptions, even the best methods and materials won’t get you very far… “Languages are Difficult” A “I Suck at Languages” B “I Don’t Have Time” C 3
- 34. “In language learning it is attitude, not aptitude, that determines success.” ! ―Steve Kaufman Creator of LingQ.com & author ofTheWay ofThe Linguist
- 35. “Languages Are Difficult” As Benny the Irish Polyglot points out, foreign languages are not “difficult”, they are just “different”. The more time you spend with a language, the more familiar it becomes. This may sound like mere semantics, but one’s outlook significantly changes one’s outcome. “You don't learn a language, you get used to it.” ―Khatzumoto, All Japanese All theTime
- 36. “I Suck at Languages” Being “good at languages” is only a factor when you study using the crappy, conscious, academic methods discussed earlier. When you follow a natural, input and output based approach, your brain’s innate language acquisition process does the heavy lifting for you. You simply need to “show up” day in and day out. ! “80 percent of success is showing up.” ―Woody Allen
- 37. “I Don’t Have Time” I don’t doubt that you are busy. But the cold, hard truth is that even the busiest person always finds time to do things they really want to (like watch Breaking Bad). So if you catch yourself saying “I really want to learn a language, but I’m simply too busy right now”, you need to do some honest reflection and see if you are truly strapped for time or just failing to prioritize language learning in your life.
- 38. “Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness―lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.” ! ―Tim Ferriss The 4-Hour Workweek
- 39. Now Get Going! Don’t wait for the “right time” to begin your language learning adventure. The perfect timing will never come. Take the first steps toward foreign language fluency rightnow: ! ‣ Choose interesting, targeted, digital materials ‣ Maximize exposure to the language throughout your day, every day ‣ Prioritize language learning & believe you will succeed
- 40. For more tips, tools, and tech to learn languages the fun way, visit: LanguageMastery.com This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.