There are lots of mistakes that new and experienced language learners make but there are three that stand out. Those who are consistently successful and become strong speakers of whatever language they learn have learned to overcome these three bad habits.
1. FEAR – There are too many self conscious and overly concerned language learners who don’t want to try speaking until they are confident that they will say it perfectly. THIS IS RIDICULOUS! Learning a foreign language is like being an infant again. When you were an infant you didn’t say anything correctly but everyone got the idea of what you were saying and didn’t make fun of you. In fact they cheered and were excited at the simple fact that you were trying.
You have to practice and make mistakes otherwise you will never gain experience. Experience is the key to being a successful language speaker. Experience takes two ingredients. Repetition and Time. I think we are all capable of doing those things and thus we are all capable of becoming successful language learners. So get out there and just say it. Sure you might sound funny, who cares, but each time it will get better.
2. INSTANT SUCCESS - In the world of instant gratification in which we have come to forget the basic virtues of patience and hard work. Also, due to some language products and their commercialization there is the common misunderstanding that language learning is easy or instant. Of course there are those rare people who naturally take to languages like fish in water but those people exist in any activity (Sports, Academics, Business). Most likely you and I are not one of them. So don’t get discouraged and give up when you are not a native level Spanish speaker in 2 months. Depending on our aptitude, previous experience, EFFORTS, opportunities to travel or be immersed, and the instruction we receive it can take years or a life time to become truly fluent.
Just because becoming truly fluent could take years or a lifetime doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the fruits of learning a foreign language now. You can communicate conversational without being native, make new friends, travel, and enjoy the arts and literature from that language. So don’t be impatient and enjoy the process of learning a new language not just the goal.
3. HARD WORK – I’ve mentioned this in previous posts but hard work is the backbone of learning a new foreign language. If you are learning Spanish and you depend solely on your teachers instruction to advance your skills you will not get you very far. Teachers are guides but you have to do the walking. So make sure you are willing to put in the TIME and EFFORT needed to truly learn a foreign language.
Alright guys sorry to break your hearts but there is no magic pill that will make you learn a foreign language instantly. Are there some that have natural god given language skills that make them seem to learn languages effortlessly? Yes. Are you one of them? Probably not.
So what do you do? Just like the Tortoise or Thomas the Train that though he could those who are steady and consistent in their efforts win the race to foreign language mastery. So pace yourself and don’t burn out by studying 10 hrs a day and then after 3 months when you aren’t fluent you don’t give up. Setup and game plan that is challenging yet achievable. Then start practicing.
Don’t forget your Foreign Language Resolutions and Practice.
I hope that everyone got to relax and enjoy the holidays but it’s time to get back to the grind. So to kick off the new year right you need to set some foreign language learning goals for 2007. The most important things about language learning or any goal is to just get started. So to help you with your New Year Language goal setting here are some guidelines to setting goals.
1. Make your goals Challenging yet Realistic
2. Your goals should be Measurable
3. Make your Goals Specific
4. Place your goals in a Visible location for Frequent Review
So here are my foreign language goals for 2007
1. Speak French with a conversation partner 1 hour per week.
2. Study Spanish conjugations 1 hour every 2 weeks
3. Speak Spanish with wife 1 day per week
Alright language bloggers it’s your turn to set your goals for 2007. I’m calling you out.
http://internetpolyglot.blogspot.com/
http://aspiringpolyglot.wordpress.com/
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/
http://www.thelinguist.blogs.com/
http://www.nakedtranslations.com/
http://thelanguageguy.blogspot.com/
http://cunning-linguist.squarespace.com/
http://system13.org/
http://stevethelinguist.vox.com/
http://blog.jeremysimonson.com/wordpress/
So consider yourselves officially called out and start blogging about your foreign language goals for 2007. For my readers leave a comment about what your goals are for 2007.
Meilleurs Voeux et Au Travaille!
Thanks to my friend David Askaripour the creator of Mind Petals for the inspiration to write this post. I’ve been thinking for quite sometime about how foreign languages are perfect for entrepreneurs. Foreign languages are great for entrepreneurs because of the amazing business opportunities they can give them. The United States is a hard market to enter because there is so much competition, established markets, and a lot of people with more money than most new entrepreneurs. However, if you a brave, adventurous and willing to learn a foreign language there are millions of opportunities available.
In foreign countries where economies are weak or gaining strength the same industries that are already dominated here are practically non existent there. Think if you created a premium coffee brand in Russia, well someone already has but you can take the same type of American models and apply them to foreign markets. (Coffee Entrepreneur Story). What if you took the Borders Bookstore model to Brazil, created the Ebay of China (again that’s been done.),or any other nationally recognized and successful model to another country. There are huge opportunities out there but you need to have certain skills to navigate the complicated world of foreign economies.
Obviously you need to be able to navigate the foreign legal system, understanding the needs and wants of your market, but most importantly you need to be able to communicate. If you cannot communicate with local professionals or customers and understand their needs and wants you won’t succeed. The only way to understand and connect with a culture or market is to speak it’s language.
So how does a busy entrepreneur start learning a foreign language. Well lucky for you you have the advantage of being and an entrepreneur and the number one rule of entrepreneurialism (is that a word) is to JUST START. So here’s your entrepreneur language learning checklist.
- Pick a country or language where you would like to start a business.
- Start studying
- Remember the secret to studying is actually practicing the language by speaking.
- Don’t forget to not only study the language but the culture and history of the country
- Make friends locally that speak the language and ask them tons of questions
- Take an investigative trip to the country to scope things out and to practice the language with natives.
So go take advantages of all of the opportunities available in the world. Don’t limit yourself to just the English speaking countries just because you are intimidated by language barriers. Anyone can learn a foreign language and if you have the desire to be successful you will.
*If you are starting your business locally you can still apply all the same lessons that I just mentioned just focus on the local immigrant populations that speak the language.
These are just a few thoughts I’m having about learning a foreign language. So I apologize in advance for the unorganized or spacey feel this may have because I will most likely go on a tangent or two.
Why are foreign languages not main stream. I mean we all love foreign foods, foreign cars, everyone dreams of a boyfriend of girlfriend with a foreign accent, foreign vacations, and foreign fashion. So why do we not love foreign languages? Is is something innate within most of us to have a natural dislike or apathy regarding foreign languages? I mean all Americans are foreigners, with obvious exceptions to Native Americans but it’s speculated that they are even foreigners if we go back far enough, we are all, pardon my French “pun intended”, mutts. Personally I am a Euro-Asian-American. My best friend is all kinds of confused and is Native American, African American, Dutch, Welsh, and something else but doesn’t remember.
So with this rich culture and history do we not have a natural affinity for foreign languages? I mean we love to visit them but not enough to communicate with the people there. Possibly it’s not apathy but just ignorance to the all the pleasure and enjoyment one gets from speaking a second language. Not only that but lets face people that speak a second language are a lot smarter. *At least that’s what I tell myself. Also, an informal questionnaire how many of you language lovers out there are also good with Math? I don’t know anyone who is a language person who is also a Math person. Give me some feedback on that in the comments section. But really there is so many benefits professional and personal from learning a foreign language. I mean for one if anyone here is the least bit social we all like having friends and speaking a second language only expands the number of eligible people who can be your friend. But if you don’t like people and live in a cave and only come out at night time then ignore my previous argument.
So why are foreign languages not mainstream? However lots of mainstream people speak foreign languages. Robin Williams speak French, Mike D’antoni (coach of the Phoenix Suns) speaks Italian, Salma Hayek speaks Spanish (obvious). Add some other well known people here.
Let us know your thoughts.
Learning a foreign language can be intimidating, frustrating, and you may become discouraged. In order to keep things fresh try new techniques regularly in order to keep up your spirits and to keep things interesting. You may even try more passive learning methods that allow you to learn without feeling like you’re learning. For example instead of trying to memorize vocabulary from a list watch a movie with the subtitles on and learn vocabulary by what the actors do and say on screen. You will need to look things up from time to time to make sure you are observing accurately but with practice you will become very efficient.
You can’t say that our tax dollars aren’t hard at work. Look at this wonderful resource our spying and snooping has got us. Actually it is all public information but it’s definitely more fun to think they had to go in “Sydney Bristo” style to get all this info. Either way the CIA has created a very detailed and useful reference guide to almost every country in the world. It’s called The World Factbook.
The someone at the CIA works hard to keep this resource update because the last update was November of 2006. You can find information such as Government, Ethnicity, Birth Rate, Languages Spoken, Major Exports, and much more. If you need information for a homework assignment or are just curious about a particular country this is a great place to start. I especially recommend taking a look at the country who’s language you want to learn in order to get familiar with the culture and current state of affairs.
Enjoy!
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Le Tutor Language Services provides Private Foreign Language Lessons and Tutoring in Phoenix, Arizona to Individuals and Businesses.
We specialize in teaching Real Life language skills. If you want an effective, native, and fun language learning experience Contact us to schedule a free introductory lesson.
Languages and Locations:
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*Our foreign language tutors can teach at your home, place of business, or a central location such as a library or cafe.
Benefits: The world is getting smaller everyday so take advantage of the rich opportunities that are available by learning a new language.
- Learn to Speak the language
- Advance your business or career
- Enjoy meeting new people and traveling
- Improve your Grades
We look forward to helping you learn more about your foreign language of interest and improving your ability to communicate.
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Two Languages at once...
One of our readers has posed the question as to whether or not learning two or more languages simultaneously is a good or bad thing. This is a tough question and somewhat subjective. However after looking at my personal experience at that of others I have formed an opinion on the matter.
First, in order to remove some subjectivity I would ask the learner, what is your goal? Do you want to become fluent or at least conversational or are you just a casual learner who enjoys learning the language and it’s culture? If your answer was the second you can skip the rest of this post and continue to learn how you want and enjoy what you do because that is what you want to do. However, if your response was the prior then read on. Does this seem like a choose your own adventure book? Trust me if you read on you are not going to fall into a giant pit and die.
If you are serious about learning a foreign language and being able to communicate effectively your time would be best spent focusing your efforts on one language whole heartedly rather than dividing your time between two or three languages. It’s like a construction worker who only does part of the job at several sites everyday when he could complete the whole job and then move on to the next one the next day. However if you have already mastered or achieved an acceptable level of fluency in several languages and are just maintaining and or fine tuning them it is easy to split your time.
Conclusion:
* If you are a casual learner then learning several languages at once is no big deal
* If you want to become fluent or conversational focus on one language until you have achieved your goal. Then move to the next language.
* Last, if you have already learned several languages it is much easier to maintain and perfect them than it is to be learning four languages from scratch at the same time.
You can also visit another language site by Francois Micheloud who offers his opinion on the matter.
If you have questions about learning a foreign language in Phoenix, AZ don’t hesitate to give us a call or shoot us an email. LeTutor Contact
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