Days passed, and little by little I learned new words, sorted out the rules of grammar, and learned to read, write, and build simple sentences. Over time, I learned how to use audio materials skillfully, discovered video courses, and even found Spanish-speaking pen pals. The skill of practicing on my own allowed me to eventually forget about a language teacher. And French, unlike Spanish, which I started learning from scratch, was much easier to learn on my own with some basic knowledge.
So, a year passed. I graduated from college, got a degree in translation, and in the summer I went on vacation to Thailand with my family. And then, thanks to my belief that hard work is rewarded and ambition is always welcome, I met the Spaniards from Barcelona. I was happy because in a year of studying Spanish, I had never practiced it neither with a Spanish teacher nor even with the people who taught it. My hopes were justified, I could not imagine that even on vacation in Thailand I would be able to meet Spaniards and communicate with them, and most importantly, I spoke fluently and understood as if I had studied Spanish not for a year, but at least three. I achieved all this by believing in my capabilities and thinking about how I would have been taught by the same teachers in the course. I have impartially assessed the possibilities of the Internet, and my linguistic knowledge and firmly said to myself: «WOW I can be a self-taught learner!» This is where it all began… When you start learning a language from scratch, you immediately begin to remember how you have taught others before, put into practice the previous techniques, and invent new ones. Studying on your own, you learn a lot of new things and try different teaching methods and materials that make the journey to your goal easier.
I hope that this excerpt from my biography has served as an inspiration for those wishing to learn a new language and a pull to self-study. While learning the language, I had to use the computer and the Internet, thanks to which I discovered all its invaluable interactive and communicative capabilities. This is what my book will be talking about.
Self-study is becoming more and more popular nowadays due to the emergence of many educational materials, self-study books, periodicals, and various audio and video courses, and what is taught by foreign language teachers is not always all that can be learned by studying on your own. However, much depends on the circumstances, mental abilities of students, their conscience, and financial possibilities.
If you think about it, ask any professional, preferably 45—50 years old, how many years he studied to achieve such mastery in his work. If he is a professional (if he is), he will answer you – «All his or her life». Note that most of his or her life he studied not at universities, not on courses, but learned everything on his or her personal experience, showing maximum inquisitiveness. So, independence and curiosity are the driving forces on the way to perfection. The ability to gain such power means to gain success
You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.
Geoffrey Willans
To learn a language or to study it?
Have you ever noticed that there are two concepts close to each other: «to learn a language» and «to study a language»? Probably not everyone has noticed the difference because we usually use both terms in speech. And we are right, in both cases. But I deliberately draw a parallel between these two notions, because if you look at it this way, the words «study» and «learn» are almost synonymous, but still, there is a distance between them. You can study science, history, and culture. You can learn a poem, a song, a rule, and a language.
The word «study» means abstract cognition and understanding of some important points and concepts about a subject. Does this definition apply to a language? Probably not, because while «learning» a language you have to memorize something all the time. Let’s take words for example, if we don’t learn them, will we be able to understand the written title of a text and start reading? And if we want to build a sentence ourselves? Without knowing either words or grammatical rules, this is hardly possible for anyone. It turns out that language proficiency is the ability to apply in practice a set of accumulated knowledge, in the form of learned words, rules, and common phrases, as well as various speech skills. At the same time, the accumulated knowledge cannot be superficial, especially when it comes to conversational practice. In the process of communicating in a foreign language, you constantly have to remember the learned words, phrases, speech patterns, and so on. It is difficult and not always possible to remember everything in the speech. Hence it follows that the speaking skill should be made automatic. How to make speech automatic? – Try to learn or rather «assimilate» the basic principles of speech patterning. It is not without reason that at the beginning of this section, I cited an aphorism of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy: I advise you to delve into the essence of the thought expressed in it…
To learn a language: The surest way to memorize something is to learn it. You should memorize all lexical (conversational) elements. These include words, collocations, expressions, topical dialogues, texts, etc.
Having learned something, while speaking, you will not have to «reinvent the wheel», constantly remembering words and straining to come up with a suitable expression.
In the post-Soviet period, the so-called academic method prevailed in teaching foreign languages i.e., they taught, first of all, to speak correctly by teaching grammar. However the teaching was usually poor, and as a result, only the temporal forms of irregular verbs were kept from the school knowledge. In the West (in the broad sense) they do things differently. There they teach mainly speech clichés, which are easily memorized in the natural environment of communication. Pay attention to the way Germans, Dutch, and «other Scandinavians» speak English, for example, effortlessly «shooting out» long sentences. Compare this to the agonizing search for every next word with endless «uh-uhs» and even scratching in the back of the head, typical of our compatriots who studied under the Soviet and post-Soviet systems. Our children, young people who have been trained by them, speak as easily as foreigners.
It would seem that the solution, is found in their practice as it usually happens: learn speech patterns of a foreign language and you will speak correctly. If you learn a lot of such clichés, you will be able to speak on any topic. But, unfortunately, everything is not so simple. Learning a language by memorizing speech clichés is like learning a phrasebook by heart. Of course, I don’t want to exaggerate, but sometimes learning all the phrases of a phrasebook in a row looks scholastic, like learning an English-Russian dictionary.
My advice, if you decide to learn a language by using a phrasebook, try making identical expressions with the same learned phrases, using other words. Example: “¿Dònde esta la plaza?» “¿Dònde esta la tienda?» – «Where is the town square?» «Where is the store?» You can also try to match phrases from the phrasebook with grammatical rules from the textbook for better learning.
This method is also suitable for keeping up small talk about weather, health, common acquaintances, etc. Moreover, you are not an interpreter, who should not limit himself or herself to memorizing speech clichés, because the interpreter’s speech is imposed by the original. You, unlike an interpreter, can use your bundle of knowledge that has been learned and unlearned.
We will talk further about the bundle of knowledge and what it should be to enable you to freely express your thoughts in a foreign language
To study a language: It is high time to talk about what we study at schools and on courses for several years, spend all our efforts on it, and then do not use it, and in the end, we fail to know how to apply it – about grammar.
To alleviate the problems with regular memorizing of dialogues, phrases, and topical tests, linguistics theorists have proposed