Im adding this page in response to some of the emails and comments i have had since i first set up this site. I think there are a lot of people out there who would like to learn another language but have never quite got round to it, perhaps because they dont know where to begin. Learning a new language can be a daunting process and requires a lot of time and commitment. Ultimately everyone has to find the learning method which suits them best, but below are somes tips and advice on possible ways to get started. Oh, incidentally the hippo has nothing to do with the theme, its just a very cute piece of clipart!
If you can afford it, the best way to start a new language is probably to enrol on a beginners class at your local adult education centre. I say if you can afford it, because these things often cost around 100 quid, and i know when i started learning German, that was well outside my price range. But if you can attend a class, you have a real advantage. One of the hardest things about language learning is keeping yourself motivated to continue. Going to lessons introduces an inescapable regularity to your learning, meaning you have to set time aside every week not just to attend class but to complete the homework you have been set. You have the support of other learners,who are at the same level as you and you have the benefit of a teachers expertise when you get stuck. The great thing about a class is it gives you the chance to interact with other people.Its really important to learn how to communicate orally as well as in writing,and regular opportunities to improve your spoken proficiency are invaluable.
However, if cashflow is a problem dont despair: all is not lost! It is perfectly possible to achieve fluency in a language without receiving structured tuition. Self study might be a bit harder, but it can be just as successful and perhaps even more rewarding. A good place to start is in the foreign languages section of your local Waterstones. There youll find a huge array of books covering everything from beginners arabic to advanced welsh. Indeed, the choice on offer may be a bit bemusing, especially if youre going for a more popular language like French. I recommend you go for the Teach Yourself range. These are really excellent self study books, starting with the basics and progressing to fairly advanced levels. Grammatical points are presented as clearly and simply as possible, and there are often interesting pieces of cultural information about the countries where you language is spoken.If you can afford it,buy the accompanying cassette as well.It does add on to the price but its a great investment.
Its crucial that you develop a feel for the way the language sounds and it is virtually impossible to pick up correct pronunciation and intonation simply from reading a book. As children we learnt to speak english by absorbing and imitating the voices around us. When learning a foreign language the process is essentially the same but it is much harder to seek out people to imitate. Listening to a cassette over and over again until you can repeat the dialogues standing on your head, is a really good way to improve your grasp of a language with minimum effort.
Of course, you dont have to buy a book. In this technological day and age there are self study courses available on the web in any language you care to think of. The BBC has a very good languages homepage which is well worth checking out. In the case of Esperanto, there are online courses where you can submit your work via email to be marked by a tutor. It is also possible to participate in a postal study course with the Esperanto Association of Britain.
Once youve chosen your method of study, the next most important thing is to stick to it! you need to make sure you set aside a regular amount of time to devote to learning. The self study books tend to recommend half an hour a day but this is not always realistic. If you dont do something every week however, you will find you begin to regress and this a real shame. It can be demoralising when you first start a language and you feel like youre going nowhere. The pronunciation is impossible and the grammar inexplicable. I nearly gave German up after 3 weeks because i was so confused. This was less to do with the actual german and more to do with the fact that my study book assumed a knowledge of grammar i didnt possess. There it was rambling on about accusative cases and declining adjectives and i was just like, so whats a verb again?! Straight up, i got an A grade in GCSE french without knowing the difference between a noun and a verb.
At school we were taught to pass exams by memorising set phrases and repeating them in the correct places. I was good at memorising and so i got a good grade. That was, however, no reflection of my ability to speak French. To really learn a language you have to gain some understanding of its grammar, otherwise you wont be able to create your own sentences. This is initially very daunting, especially if your knowledge of English grammar is as shaky as mine was. It isnt impossible though, and whilst some days you may feel like youre not making any progress, if you stick with it, i promise that you will! If grammar really is a problem for you it is possible to buy helpful books such as English Grammar for Students of German which go back to basics and fill in gaps in fundamental knowledge. You could also consider learning Esperanto! Because its such a simple language it provides a general introduction both to grammar and the language learning process in general.
There is also research to suggest that if, for example, a person wants to learn French, rather than start with French straight off, a better use of their time is to spend 6 months learning Esperanto first, and then move on to French. The time dedicated to Esperanto may help them to pick up French quicker and more easily.
Whatever the language you choose to learn however, the best advice i can give you is to make contact with a native speaker. If you already have a friend who speaks your chosen language, so much the better. If not dont panic, all you need to do is find a penfriend. Corresponding with a penfriend is one of the most helpful things you can do, especially if youre studying alone. For one thing, it motivates you to keep learning. By the second letter when youve told your friend where you live and how old you are, youve probably already used up half your linguistic expertise and need to quickly acquire some more before letter three! Because your penfriend will realistically be more proficient in English than you are in their language, your limited vocabulary neednt be a barrier to communication and they will be able to supplement your book learning by correcting your mistakes and perhaps explaining the trickier bits of grammar to you.
More importantly, writing to a penfriend forces you to have a go at using the language in a real life situation. At first you will get by by copying phrases out of your textbook. But sooner or later your penfriend will ask you a question to which you dont have a ready made reply, and you will be required to reach for the dictionary and construct a sentence entirely by yourself. Your first few attempts will undoubtedly be painful. I have memories of spending 2 hours writing 3 sentences of German, only to get them back from my penfriend the following week drowned in a sea of red pen. But this is an invaluable part of the learning experience. You learn a million times more from struggling away and commiting your own mistakes than you do from reading a book on grammar. There is also the added advantage that your penfriend will write back to you in your new language, enabling you to absorb not just the vocabulary, but the expressions, structure and style that they use.
You will no doubt find that the language you acquire in this way is far more modern and informal than that which you get out of books. This is a good thing. After all, most of us arent learning a language in order to write a novel in it, but rather to have a chat with someone. And if youre lucky, the person you start writing to may develop into a real friend who you can perhaps go to visit, giving you yet more opportunity to practise your language.
But how do you find such a penfriend? Its actually not that hard. The best way to proceed is to buy a dictionary, look up the word for penfriend, and type this into Google. With luck, this should bring up a whole host of penfriend sites, written in your target language. Of course there are also a multitude of english language sites where you can search for a penfriend, but the advantage of doing it this way is that most people will be doing it the opposite way. The result is that you will have a large pool of target language correspondents to choose from.
Having found a website, you have two options. Any site should have a search option which will allow you to seek out potentially interesting people and write them a message. In my experience however, this can be frustrating because many people who have put their details on the site will have done so a long time ago and may no longer be looking for penfriends. The potentially better option is to write your own advert and allow people to write to you. If you are going to do this, i recommend creating the ad in the target language. I learned the hard way that if you put an english language advert on the web, your inbox will be overwhelmed with mail from people in all corners of the world who simply want to learn english but dont necessarily speak a word of the language you were intending to learn. i always felt obliged to answer these messages explaining i was looking for german speakers, and believe me, it can take up a lot of time.
So, now you are armed with learning materials, a penfriend and a dictionary: the world is your oyster! Language learning takes a long time but after a year of hard work you will have made significant progress and should be ready to visit a country where your language is spoken. Going on a holiday is a great boost for your morale. Especially if you try to avoid the other English speakers in your hotel and take any opportunity to communicate with the natives, you will find that even within a week you have absorbed a significant amount of new knowledge and consolidated the theory you have learnt from your books. It can be daunting. Even now, after over 4 years of learning German and quite happily reading untranslated literature, my mouth momentarily dries up when i am standing in a german bakery and trying to ask for a bread roll. Its something to do with being confronted with a real live german who might not make the response of the theoretical German in the Going to the Bakery section of my textbook.
Somewhat inconveniently, foreigners never do stick to the nicely laid out dialogues ive memorised from the book. The woman in the bakery invariably tries to interest me in a doughnut or ask me for my store card or something else entirely unexpected and not in the script! And im always served by a person who speaks in an unintelligible dialect, or who is slightly deaf and doesnt appreciate the unique qualities of German spoken with a Brummie accent. But this is all part of the fun. When i finally emerge from the shop triumphantly clutching my bread roll and a miscellaneous doughnut i didnt actually want, i know that the last 5 years of my life have not been in vain! No, but seriously, it is a great feeling and it makes travelling a much more exciting experience. Try not to let the fact that everyone you speak to seems to have a near perfect command of the English language get you down. The chances are theyve been learning it since primary school, so theyd want to be pretty good at it by now!
As your language skills increase, its even more vital to seek out opportunities to practice. A major milestone is the day you get to the end of the Teach Yourself book. What do you do then?! Youve learnt a lot but theres still a long way to go if you want to achieve fluency. Once youve reached this level there is a limit to how much active learning you can do: you have to learn passively, through absorption. Reading is a great way to do this, the only problem can be finding foreign language books and magazines. if youre learning French, German, Spanish or Italian you will hopefully be able to find a small selection of publications in a major bookstore. If we take Birmingham as an example, the main WHSmiths has a whole shelf devoted to foreign magazines. The rule of thumb is that over half of them are french and the remainder split more in favour of german and spanish than italian. I have to say, these magazines are a bit pricy but unless youre a very fast reader, youre not going to be buying one every week.
If your Smiths doesnt normally stock foreign titles, its well worth asking if they can order one for you. Otherwise theres always the internet. A lot of good quality magazines like the German Spiegel, have their own websites where you can pretty much read the publication online. When it comes to foreign novels, Smiths is a bit of a dead loss. Waterstones is better, but still in my opinion disappointing. To be fair, French is fairly well catered for but the German selection is rather uninspiring. Something they do stock and you may like to consider, are dual texts which feature short stories or poetry, written in the original on one side of the page and in translation on the other. In Birmingham at least, Borders has a far more extensive range and is well worth a visit. The only criticism i would make is that a lot of their titles are translations of british novels. Ive so far resisted the temptation to buy George Orwells 1984 in German, or Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone in Irish Gaelic!
While these things are better than nothing, its more useful if you can read novels originally written in your target language. This enables you to get a better feel for the language and may also help you to gain interesting cultural insights. If your language skills are advanced, the only other place to try is a university bookshop. These will necessarily stock a range of poetry, prose and drama for the benefit of students. Its not a great idea for beginners though, as the texts tend to be pre twentieth century and a bit heavy going. If all this sounds too frightening, childrens books could be a good place to start. When youre on holiday its worth finding a good bookshop and searching for books aimed around the 10 to 13 age range. The language in these should be simple to understand and there should hopefully be some sort of story line to make your efforts worth while.
If reading isnt your thing, youll be pleased to know it isnt the be all and end all. Listening to a language is equally important and can be practised with minimal difficulty. Foreign radio stations can be picked up even by normal radios on medium wave, especially if you live down south. But these days most stations also broadcast over the internet. Listening to foreign pop music is an entertaining way to improve your language skills. In many areas it is also possible to receive foreign tv. Telewest viewers can watch the french channel TV5 as well as Deutsche Welle, a fascinating station which broadcasts in a mixture of German and English to the rest of the world. Failing this, any decent Blockbusters has a foreign films section. My local has no fewer than 3 German titles: Goodbye Lenin, Das Wunder von Bern and Der Untergang, and as ever there are many more in French. Even Russian is catered for from time to time. As a rule, these films are subtitled in english which is fantastic when youre learning.
If your Blockbusters isnt up to much, its worth checking out your existing DVD collection. Most DVDs have the option to change the voiceover and the subtitles into at least one other language. Ive had endless fun recently watching Groundhog Day dubbed into German. Since the cast spend most of the film speaking the same lines over and over again, its actually a great film to choose. After youve heard a sentence for the third time, the chances are youll understand it, and by the end of the film it will be permanently ingrained on your memory! Spanish learners will incidentally have the most luck with DVDs: many are produced in Spanish and English for American markets.
They say that you have truly learnt another language when you are able to think in it. If anyone ever gets that far, please let me know how. In the meantime, happy language learning and good luck!
