5 myths for learning language
5 myths for learning language
one of the things on my Bucket List is fluent to learn Spanish. I learned the basics during my GCSes (16 years ago!), In 2010 took part in an evening course on the UCL and also tried with Rosetta Stone and Duolingo.
In the run-up to our big trip, I decided to take it seriously and registered online for a Rosetta Stone course. I checked the middle school B1 and are currently working up. Meanwhile, Peter is refurbishing his basic knowledge in French.
taken together we should have covered large parts of the South Pacific and South America.
linguistics is one of my passions (I hope that one day I will make a master in it). When I started to learn Spanish, of course I found out about some theories for language learning. To my surprise, some of my assumptions turned out to be wrong. Here are 5 myths for language learning that every language learner should keep in mind.
myth 1. You are too old to learn a new language
One of the things we hear most often is that children learn languages faster than adults. We name the much -cited example of immigrant children who learn English without a foreign accent and translate it for their parents at the doctor or dentist.
This is usually rooted in the "Critical period hypothesis", which indicates that children learn languages better because their brain is more elastic.
This theory has been questioned again and again since its beginnings [2] and experimental studies have shown that young people and adults perform better under controlled conditions than small children [3].
It is also a myth that younger children learn to learn faster than older [4]. In short: you are not yet too old to learn a new language, so do not use it as an excuse.
myth 2. The best way to live in a foreign country
conventional wisdom dictates that you should move to Spain if you want to learn Spanish. That sounds like a great idea, but if you move to a new country without learning some grammar beforehand, you will be forced to acquire bad habits.
You may think that you will improve over time, but consider how many immigrants of the first generation of sentences like "I take it" instead of "I take it", although they have been in the country for more than a decade. Without the right motivation, the move to a new country is not a safe way to learn a new language.
Instead, it may be better to practice at home where you have time and luxury to learn the right grammar and sentence structure first.myth 3. If you hear a language every day, learn it through osmosis
It may be tempting to turn on a radio station in a local language and to hope that something will get into your consciousness without effort, but effective language learning includes all forms of learning: reading, writing, listening and speaking.
Passive learning will certainly help your accent and pronunciation, but research shows that it alone is not enough to learn a new language.
myth 4. Pronunciation does not require active work
Many language learners assume that their pronunciation is sufficient because their teacher does not correct them. The truth is that most teachers all let go of the greatest agony.
If they are not taught privately, the teachers do not have the time to work on the pronunciation of the individual students in class. As a result, it is the most neglected area of language learning.
Test your verbal skills on real native speakers outside of the classroom and strive for an almost native language pronunciation - radio, television and film in the state language help.
myth 5. It is okay to make mistakes
As children, we are often asked to interact in class by promising that it is okay to make mistakes. However, errors can be harmful when learning language. Every time you use the wrong grammar, increase the likelihood that you will make the same mistake again.
Some learners want to learn as much as possible as soon as possible, but there is a big difference between fluent with mistakes and fluent without mistakes, and it is much more difficult to jump from the first than to build the second from scratch.
take the time to learn the grammar and structure correct sentences. It will go slowly, but it is the only way if you really want to speak fluently.
[1] Lenneberg, 1967; Penfield & Roberts, 1959 [2] Genese, 1981; Harley, 1989; Newport, 1990 [3] Snow & Höfnagel-Höhle, 1978 [4] Stern, Burstall & Harley, 1975; Gorosch & Axelsson, 1964; Bühler, 1972; Florander & Jansen, 1968
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