From Internet to Inter-action
The Internet has changed language-learning for the better, there’s no doubt about it. You can give or receive lessons over Skype to people at the other side of the world. Payments are made via PayPal and the whole process means that nobody even has to leave their bedroom if they don’t want to. All they need is an internet connection. It couldn’t be better, right?
Well, not quite…
In the same way as a Skype conversation will never substitute meeting up with your friends or loved ones in real-time, it’s not quite good enough for learning languages. When you’re learning a language in person, gestures, articulation and even pronunciation become easier. As much as the internet has revolutionized the process, humans are social animals and meeting face to face will always be more effective.
We’re huge advocates of learning-by-doing (what a surprise ;)). Looking around, asking questions about things, generating ideas and conversation is what language learning is all about. I once had a few students over to my place for an informal gathering. One student happened to look through my DVD collection – and learned some words just by seeing familiar titles in a different language. Another asked about the books on my bookshelf. So many conversations generated just by meeting up and discovering similarities!
This should be able to spark a conversation about movies ;)
Love your mistakes
Meeting up outside the classroom brings a lot of the advantages of meeting in a classroom without the limiting factor of textbooks and stilted conversations. You can still focus and are strongly encouraged to speak the foreign language, but meeting up with friends or like-minded people helps get rid of inhibitions and stress. We want to build an environment where you can express yourself and make mistakes. It’s fine, we all make them, all the time. Embarrassing things might happen (and it’s best to laugh about it), but the world won’t end.
“The path to fluency must include a lot of mistakes“ – Benny the Irish polyglot
If you’re working for certain language certificates, this might not seem like the perfect approach, but in the end you will be able to speak more naturally.
Ideally, you’ll enjoy long hours of listening and chatting about topics that interest you, two skills that are crucial for any language learner at any stage. Listening and speaking skills are two components of language learning that cannot be limited to the classroom, because there, learning is forced. And often the thought of having to be perfect and make no mistakes among those four walls becomes a block to the learner, and this halts the development of the language. Be with people you like, while doing something you love, however, and stress won’t be an issue because you’ll just enjoy the company and have fun.
Keep it together
In a classroom, language learning becomes unnatural in the sense that language is deconstructed and taught in pieces, not as a whole like when among friends. It’s a little like building a house with blocks and cement. Two different items, but both crucial to get the job done.
Similarly, the classroom provides instructed lessons; they are separate blocks that are often taught by separate teachers. I’ve often had students ask me when to use the Past Perfect Tense. If the students had learned from speaking and listening to their friends when to use the Past Perfect Tense, the chances that they would have understood the reason of using it would be higher. It would be higher because they have context. No native English speaker consciously decides what tense has to be used, it comes naturally. The classroom does not provide context, it provides structured, often doctored lessons with conversations that sound very unnatural at times. Basically, language cannot be simply learned in a classroom, it has to be experienced.
Think of the best speaker of any foreign language that you know and then ask them how they learned the language. I’ll bet you any money they won’t tell you that they learned the most through textbooks. Get out there. Meet people. It’s the natural way that any of us can learn a foreign language.
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