Understanding How To Learn A New Language

Just shut your eyes for a minute and imagine you can speak another language fluently. You can order a meal, find your way around town, go into business meetings, and answer questions at the job interview, all in a language that is not your mother tongue. A wonderful thought and it certainly would be wonderful if that could happen overnight or in our ‘minute of dreaming’. But as the saying goes, ‘It takes years to become an overnight success’.  Maybe not years in the case of language learning but it just needs a little hard work, practice and dedication.

When you were two or three years old, you soaked up language. You heard an important word like ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’ or better still ‘tractor’ or ‘cat’ and you liked or loved those things so much that you wanted their attention and therefore you labelled them and tried to say the word as best you could. Other people reinforced this for you by repeating it so many times that you finally ‘got it’. The human need for food and drink meant that language was vital for survival. You had to learn ‘milk’ and ‘dinner’ etc. rather than just cry! The need to be loved, to have attention, to survive provided the perfect motivation to learn a language. So where does that leave us poor adults? You may need to improve your English, for example, in order to ‘survive’ in your new posting in Europe or you are going to begin a course at university in Britain or America. Ask yourself, how much do I need this and why do I need the language?