I've been thinking about how I learn languages. I know I wrote about this before in my old logs but I've made some changes.
I think of language learning as having three parts
- Listening
- Speaking
- Reading/Writing
These parts are connected, but for me listening always comes first. When I hear a language for the first time I will think that it sounds beautiful or exotic or maybe mysterious but really it just sounds like noise. I want to get past this noise phase and eventually understand the words and phrases being used. I like to start listening to songs but I also use radio broadcasts, TV shows and movies.
Speaking starts with learning the alphabet even when the language uses the Roman alphabet I want to know about unique letters or sounds I wouldn't expect. Pronunciation comes next but it could start anytime from the first day to a year later but I've never waited a year and I probably won't.
Speaking also includes vocabulary, I have to know what to say to practice pronunciation, but I usually start by singing along with the songs I'm listening to at the moment. I learn phrases, sentences and some individual words by first trying to pick out things I hear repeated frequently such as the words in a song's chorus. I used to learn more individual words but in the last few years I've decided to learn mostly phrases and sentences. The individual words I do learn are often verbs that I know I'll use a lot like "to be", "to know", "to go", "to do", "to want" and "can" . This is a little bit of grammar but one change is that I no longer focus so much on it since I have finally learned that using a grammar-heavy approach in the early phase of language learning distracts me too much and prevents me from actually using the language.
Ideally, listening never stops since I believe that if I am serious about learning a language well I need to hear people speak it, but I haven't quite done All Japanese All The Time-style immersion consistently. I don't worry about how many hours or minutes I spend listening to anything, because I'm not good with mathematics, therefore I just listen a lot.
Reading/Writing come later since I consider them intermediate or advanced level activities. Just like with speaking I don't really have time frame for starting to read or write, I just attempt these things when I think it seems right. I like to find simple books and articles to read at first but since my main source of reading material is the internet that doesn't always work.
Now I'll also add a few things about fluency. I know I've written about fluency before (though I can't remember where exactly so I won't try to find it) but I was very concerned about being fluent; i.e. What does it mean to be fluent? How quickly can I get there? How many words must I know before I can claim fluency and so on....but no one can seem to agree on anything about fluency excepting maybe the CEFR scale. After reading some of the seemingly endless debates on HTLAL about what fluency means and seeing no resolution, I don't care that much about fluency per se anymore. If I ever do think I need to describe my level in a language I'll probably use the CEFR scale. I will not guess my level in any language I'm learning right now, my unplanned break from the forum and language learning last year (family emergencies) means that I have forgotten most of what I learned. I will claim that as of right now, my level in Finnish, Spanish, Afrikaans, Swedish and maybe also Italian is false beginner and that I'll just start from the beginning if I actually decide to learn any Hungarian, Polish, Hindi or Thai.
I've typed too much English for one day, so I'm going to listen to some Finnish music and then read something in Spanish before I go to bed.
Buenas noches
Hyvää yötä
Mick