Ways of learning a language: Discuss the following ideas about how people can learn a language: do any of the

suggested techniques appeal to you personally. 1) The Natural Approach: Adults acquire a language in much the same way as infants do. 2) Most people can do a pretty fair job of imitating foreign sounds-if they try. What keeps people from trying..is that they do not like to hear themselves sounding foreign. How can such people overcome this inhibition ? One way is to pretend they are making a hilariously funny imitation of the foreign speaker. 3) Technique: Selective listening: In this technique, one listens repeatedly to a tape recording of somebody really using the language. Each time through, one listens for something different: the way the speakers voice goes up and down, for example, or strange-sounding consonants, or familiar-sounding words, or certain endings that come up frequently . There are two nice things about this technique. One is that we do not worry about the meanings at all. The other is that we soak up a lot of things about the language even beyond the features we thought we were listening to. 4) Seven characteristics of successful language learners: (Omaggio): i) ii) iii) iv) v) vi) vii) They have insight into their own learning styles and preferences. They take an active approach to the learning task. They are willing to take risks. They are good guessers. They watch not only what words and sentences mean, but also how they are put together. They make the new language into a separate system, and try to think in it as soon as possible. (starting with a clean slate) They are tolerant and outgoing in their approach to the new language.

5) What about your pronunciation ? I asked Bert (who had successfully learnt Chinese). Its lousy ! Bert confessed. In any language I speak, Ill speak with a Chicago accent, I have no doubt. By and large I seem to be able to reproduce sounds with no difficulty. But intonation gives me a great deal of difficulty. 6) Techniques: Example: Imagery with vocabulary cards: one technique is to replace the word by a blank on the sentence side of the card. Then I can start by looking at either side, and test myself by trying to give the other (without using translation.) A second variant is to put the word on one side, and some crude pictorial representation of its meaning on the other.

Im very poor at drawing, but the fact that Im the only one to use the cards makes artistic quality irrelevant. The important thing is to make and use ones own images. 7) When I hear the Turkish word okul for school , for example, I visualise the building, a school, the feeling of a school, and thats what I try to associate with the Turkish word. The feeling of it, so I dont have to translate through English.. and it works for dialogues too. I try to read the sentence in Turkish, and get the words down cold, so that I feel the meaning coming out of them. And then I go on and feel what the whole dialogue is. Its like I put together a series of mental pictures. 8) What happened..was that we got to the point where we could paraphrase. The emphasis was on understanding the content, the circumstances, in Chinese, without ever translating mentally..the small loss in translation ability was more than offset by the fluency you gained..we could read a lot more rapidly than the people who were trained primarily in translation. We didnt stop and think what every word means. You strive for a general grasp. Then, as your vocabulary expands, you fill in the blanks. By the end of this training, I think you can both remember more content, and interpret more precisely. Youre not hung up on the word-to-word correspondences. 9) In order to succeed at.. acquiring a language..an adult must make free and uncritical use of intuition. She or he must also have a certain kind of fearlessness about making errors. 10) A technique: listening to ones own voice: One simple way to become more conscious of the sound of your own voice is to listen to its echo. You can do this conveniently if you sit facing into the corner of a plaster wall, or any other kind of corner that is close to your ear or mouth. Even an open book will do, but that requires you to use your hands..once you have arranged some sort of echo-source, read sentences or short texts aloud and just listen. One advantage of reading is that you can easily do the same thing over and over, concentrating on one feature at a time. Another advantage is that you can focus your attention on how you sound, rather than on what you are going to say next. 11) Vocabulary cards: another technique.. Pick out ten cars that seem to be related in meaning; concentrate on one card at a time, trying to form a non-verbal image for each one; imagine a situation or story into which all ten of the words might fit. Collect the cards and, without looking, remove one or two of the cards. Put those cards where you cannot see them. Look at the other cards. The object is to give the words on the missing card or cards. 12) Miscellaneous: a) To practise the features of pronunciation of your target language, pretend to be a foreigner speaking your native language using the pronunciation of the target language. b) Try to create a new personality for yourself in the foreign language. You can even use gestures and facial expressions from the culture of the new language etc.

c) When listening to a native speaker, repeat their words in your head but in your own voice. d) Sub-vocalisation: when listening to someone speaking the language you want to learn, murmur what they say to yourself under your breath. That way your mouth muscles will also remember the word and you are more likely to remember the correct pronunciation. e) If you are working on a particular grammatical structure, think of a conversational situation where you could use this structure and try to set up and have a conversation with a real or imaginary native speaker or a fellow learner. f) Invent and use your own symbols for marking pronunciation, stress, grammatical and word formation features: you will remember them better than if you use a ready-made system. g) Think of what you normally speak about a lot in your own language and of common phrases you often use and decide what you want or need to be able to say in the new language. Try to find out how to say this but dont expect to be able to translate directly. h) Make your own example sentences for new vocabulary rather than trying to remember model sentences from a book or teacher. Try to make these sentences true for you or relevant to your life in some way. This way you will remember the sentences better. i) Shadowing a news broadcast: Listen to a newscast and try repeating along with the speaker. Dont let your mind stop to figure out or remember anything that you dont understand. First try it in your native language , then try it in your new language and compare what it was like.