Monday 20 April 2020

how to acquire a language in one year - and not 'to learn a language'!

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION:

You've heard of the Krashen approach to learning a language?

'Acquisition' means picking it up, not learning consciously with lots of grammar. We learn through reading and listening, not studying rules! That is 'comprehensible input', not monitoring everything you produce!

Back in the 1970s, we had 'the natural approach':
Natural approach - Wikipedia
The Natural Approach
www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/the_natural_approach.pdf

The second method is TPRS: Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling:
TPR Storytelling - Wikipedia
TPRS: Making Your Lessons Impossible to Forget | General Educator Blog
TPRS Russian – Effortless Russian Podcast – Real Russian Club

But which language should you learn?

A 'level one' language for English native speakers needs 600 hours = 11 hours a week in one year:
How Long Does It Take to Be Fluent in Spanish?

But some are more difficult - because there are fewer 'cognates', or things which are similar between languages:
Language Difficulty Ranking - Effective Language Learning
Foreign Service Institute Language Difficulty Rankings | Atlas & Boots
A Map Showing How Much Time It Takes to Learn Foreign Languages: From Easiest to Hardest | Open Culture

And with really difficult languages, don't do any reading or writing because of the different characters/writing systems - that will come later!

HOW TO ACQUIRE A LANGUAGE:

First: find a language parent:
Tandem Language Exchange App | Find Conversation Exchange Partners
HelloTalk - Talk to the World
Find language exchange partners | italki

Second: find magazines and children's stories because there are lots of pictures!
= something to talk about with both sides asking lots of questions
+ the language parent retelling the story using the pictures (but not you!)

Some rules:
- don't use your native language to understand! keep to the target language!
- draw!
- or 'it's not important!'
- no grammar!
- don't correct the learner!

Third: Total Physical Response!
= lots of movement!

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Here are some more posts from this blog:
Jay Doubleyou: theories of language learning and teaching: input
Jay Doubleyou: second language acquisition
Jay Doubleyou: krashen and second language learning
Jay Doubleyou: theories of language learning and teaching: input part two

Here's how to do it:


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Stop learning languages and start acquiring them! Jeff Brown is a full-time language instructor and polyglot who guarantees anyone can acquire any language in one year!
How to Acquire any language NOT learn it! - YouTube
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