ly stopping you from exercising your amazing learning powers? The ones I have chosen you to consider are practices that no child does in ways that adults do. By coming to this from this perspective then, I will propose what this practice may actually be preventing.
No infant has fears about the unknown until we do or say something that brings it into their consciousness. And even when it enters, it is usually limited to certain situations. It does not define how they interact with all new experiences.
I have put fear first as I believe it is one of the key factors that stops language learners from embracing the unknown. Language learning is all about embracing the unknown; facing it and accepting it as a given thing. The ones who are comfortable with it and ready to turn it over, look at it from different sides without backing away, are the ones who will go on and learn more effectively. The ones who are not will be less willing to:
- speak to others, out of fear of making a mistake and believing they will look foolish
- try to say what they want in new ways out of fear of making a mistake
- try new ways of learning
- stop doing those things with which they are already comfortable.
Letting go of fear is the most difficult of the issues I have brought up here. However, it does not mean that it can’t be done. Many have done it. It does not mean that fear stops. It just means we accept it and walk towards it, knowing that by doing what we need to the fear will no longer be a force to stop us learning.
No infant studies. They learn as they do, speak, etc. Adults set time aside to learn a language. By focussing on studying as the place/time to learn, you reduce the emphasis on situational learning. The reality is that you can learn whenever you have any interaction with the new language (watching a movie, listening to a song, reading a book, talking, etc). For many, instead, the prevailing attitude can become “I have to get to a good level (through study, classes, etc) before I can do all that.” This belief dramatically reduces your learning time and actually can stop you from developing the skills you need to learn whilst you are using the language.
This might sound a bit harsh, but I have seen this in many students who keep returning to classes and make very slow progress.
Of course we never see infants trying to memorise vocabulary. They just learn the vocabulary, again, through usage of it. On the other hand, many people who learn a second language put time aside to memorise vocabulary. Just consider what would happen if you didn’t put time time aside for this task. You would then need to put your attention on what you need to do to retain what you learned. Wouldn’t that be something! 🙂 The reality is that by focussing our energies on how we can be better learners, we can discover strategies to achieve precisely that.
You know what it’s like when you face a difficult problem. You spend time thinking about it, you ask people about it, you may even dream about it. You end up activating more of yourself and you will eventually figure out that you do have ways of solving the problem in front of you.
Translation is only a skill we develop later in years. Infants learn their first language through a variety of means. All parents will tell you how attentive their children are. They see things in a light we don’t because they have no cultural, attitudinal, or perceptual filters. They work out from what they see and what they hear, and that meaning can be conveyed. They learn that actions can replace crying ( pointing to what they want, for example). Then there are words that can be used to name things, including people, around them as well as to get food brought to them (also instead of crying!). All this they learn by themselves through observation and action.
By an excessive reliance on translation there is a real danger that these kinds of capacities we all have never get a real chance to show themselves. Don’t get me wrong; translation does have a place … it’s just that an over-reliance deadens the amazing capacities we all h