Learning the language in the country where it is spoken

I live in France (for 4 years) but am having trouble learning French...

This is the title of a thread at one of our Forums at LingQ and starts with the common complaint of someone who lives where the language is spoken but cannot learn the language as well as he would like.

I am going to post here my own comments on this thread.

First of all some facts from my experience,

1) Just being surrounded by the language will not enable you to learn. It takes a deliberate effort.
2) You need to build up your ability to understand what is said. That is the first goal, not to speak. For the time being your ability to speak is not important, just accept it as it is.
3) You need words, lots of words. You cannot use a word actively, until it has been a part of your passive vocabulary for a while.
4) It is normal to forget what you learn. I can be considered a good language learner and forget most words that I learn.
5) You need to listen at least 1 hour a day, and at first listen more than once to the same content.
6) Read the text of what you are listening to. You need both aural and visual exposure to the language at first.
7) Save or "LingQ" words and phrases that you either do not understand or want to be able to use. This will automatically create flash cards.
8) Review your flash cards regularly to help you notice them when you listen and read.
9) Kids learn better mostly because they are not anxious about their learning. Take it easy and try to find a way to enjoy your learning.
10) If I were lucky enough to live on Corsica I would be going for walks in the countryside and listening to interesting content on my iPod, but in my case it would be Russian or Portuguese,but it would not matter.

Someone suggested just listening to the radio even if one does not understand, like a child.

I do not recommend spending much time listening to things you do not understand. Having learned 11 languages I can tell you from experience you are better off spending your time listening to content that you have a chance to understand, where you understand at lest 50% and eventually 75% and are struggling to learn more. You listen more than once, read,and mine this material for words and phrases that you can start to "own", to understand in different contexts and eventually to use.

You can play the radio in the background, or watch TV for fun, but the learning of the language requires a more deliberate strategy.

The child focuses on bits of the language that are important to it, and typically that is a limited range of content. The brain is able to prioritize things to learn (read Spitzer) and shut out things that are not yet important or relevant. Eventually the range gets larger and larger.

That is why it is important, as a foreign language learner, to focus on content that is interesting and meaningful. That means having some of the vocabulary, hopefully being familiar with the subject, and a relatively non-frustrating way of acquiring more of the vocabulary.

Nothing wrong with having the radio on, but it is not going to do much for you in my experience. Being with native speakers can be a high-resonance situation if you take it as an opportunity to listen and learn and do not worry about your own performance. You will know when you are comfortable speaking up, meanwhile just build up your language power through listening and reading and do not allow yourself to become frustrated.

Someone described her own experience at LingQ, where for the first time she tried to study without a through study of the grammar. She was surprised at how suddenly the language  became clearer.

You have mirrored my experience. You do not deliberately learn in the sense that you study something and then "own" it. It is not a matter of direct cause and effect. You just try to do things that will fill your brain with useful bits of information and experience and the brain will put it all together on its own terms. When you least expect it you will notice that you understood something more easily than before, or that a phrase that you learned long ago has suddenly popped into your mind. On the other hand you will suddenly find yourself unable to remember a simple word that you felt you already "owned".

Through it all, mysteriously, the language becomes a part of you.

One of the strangest things is that when you spend time on a third language, you end up doing better on your second language.

It is quite mysterious. That is what is wrong with language teaching, where the expectations that things that were taught will be learned, and should be tested, just because they were taught.

Comments

[lyzazel]

Hi, I disagree with #2 and #5.

First of all, I think you need to start speaking as soon as possible. I can't see why you shouldn't do that.

Second, why listen to the same material more than once? This is the way to getting bored and that's what language learning should not be.

I agree with #4, though.

[Jeff Lindqvist]

Nobody is saying that #5 means listening to an audiobook version of the Holy Script, but maybe a short dialogue, a newscast et.c. How else will the sounds and words "stick"?

[lyzazel]

Just listen a lot and they will.

[Emilio Wuerges]

I think the number 2 is the most important.
For number 5, 1 hours/day is too little for me.
About repeating what you listen: It becomes very satisfying when you start to understand what was previously gibberish.

[Steve Kaufmann]

To each his own. I find that repetitive listening is very powerful as long as the text is not easily understood, and therefore I am motivated to listen again to try to understand. If I enjoy the content and the narrator's voice I can listen many (up to 5 times) times, to audio books even. It is at the beginning that I listen 20 or more times.

I do not want to speak at the beginning because I have no vocabulary, no familiarity with the language. If find it unhelpful and unpleasant to speak when I am at the beginner stage. Just an unnecessary torture. I prefer to wait until I can actually say something. By then I have listened enough that my pronunciation is starting to get quite good. For a long time the purpose of conversation is to confirm that I still have a long way to go, and lots to learn.

[John Fotheringham]

@ lyzaze

As both Steve Kaufmann and Stephen Krashen (I always find it interesting that both have the same initials...) have said many times, you don't learn to speak by speaking. It is like a teapot; you can only pour out tea once you have filled up the pot with enough water.

Moreover, speaking before you have received sufficient input leads to fossilized errors and bad pronunciation. Author, linguist and martial artist Antonio Graceffo said it best: "Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes PERMANENT." Most adult learners develop permanent errors because they begin speaking too soon.

[Chad]

Listening without understanding anything, for me, is WORSE than not listening at all. It just trains my mind to let the sounds wash over me as background noise, getting my ears used to hearing it all as gibberish, and accepting the impossibility of understanding it. After a while of doing that, it takes some serious study to unlearn that habit.

Just because children learn to speak before they are formally educated doesn't mean that learning through osmosis is the secret key to effortless learning. On the other hand, I've heard stories of people moving to a country and learning the language via constant TV watching. Maybe they have a skill that I don't.

> [...] One of the strangest things is that when you spend time on a third language, you end up doing better on your second language.

Better at the second language without even studying it, in fact. Strange indeed!

[John Fotheringham]

@ Chad

I agree that one cannot learn though mere osmosis, and that most adults just end up tuning out what they don't understand. But this is why it is so crucial to choose input that is just above your level. And why it is more important to listen on your own (rather than forcing yourself to speak with native speakers) for the first few months. In the early stages, most authentic materials are out of reach, unfortunately, and you will have to put up with content or topics that are perhaps not as thrilling as one would hope. But as Steve has mentioned elsewhere, the goal is to get to "the real stuff" as soon as possible.

[Roberta King]

When I arrived in Mexico in 2001, my only vocabulary was tortilla (which I could pronounce correctly) and tequila! I had no choice but to start speaking right away. However because I spoke French and a little Italian, I managed to understand and communicate fairly quickly. I watched television. I spoke to my neighbours. I spoke to the Mexican teachers in the school where I taught. I did get two lessons in Spanish providing me with some vocabulary and some verbs and how to form the present. Did I understand everything and did they understand me? No, but as we wanted to understand each other, we had a lot of fun. For the first couple of years, I could only use the present tense with hand gestures to imply the past and the future. I don't think that I speak Spanish that well, but what is most important for me is that for the most part people understand me when I speak. I understand Spanish via listening and reading quite well. In fact, part of my job entails translating Spanish to English. However, I am loath to write in Spanish because my work schedule has precluded my studying and practicing the verbs, grammar and vocabulary necessary to write well.
Through experience and observation, I agree repetition is very important in learning a language because we need to hear and use most new forms around fifty times in order to incorporate it naturally into our speech. This is why listening to the same short segment of something that interests us is a good idea. Besides, if our attitude is that we'll learn something new each time we listen to it, it isn't boring.
As to improving my second language, because I used my French to learn my Spanish, my abilities in French have suffered. I laugh and say that I speak Frespanol because Spanish has displaced so much of my French vocabulary.
Strangely enough, I haven't lost as much of my German, perhaps because it is more similar to English. Mind you not having spoken it for many years, I'm more than a little rusty.
So that's my two cents' worth on learning a language in a country in which it is spoken and other topics discussed in this thread.

[Ramses]

One hour per day is not nearly enough. I'd say; the more the better! 10 hours per day is not uncommon for me, and it's done easily.

About understanding vs. not understanding. A while ago research showed that listening to audio (even though we cannot understand most of it) in our target language, will build structures in our brain which are essential for later language acquisition.

[Spanish courses in Spain]

Nice experience blog to read

[Ting]

Lyzazel,

I can almost guarantee you that starting to speak a foreign language without having a huge amount of passive vocabulary first is harmful. It discourages you as you struggle to find words that you need and eventually fail to do that.

In the year 2006, I went to Italy on a scholarship. I remembered I got off the plane and I just started to communicate in Italian in no time, whereas lots of Chinese immigrants who own their restaurants or shops in the centre Rome for years are struggling to speak the language naturally.

Why? Because I came to Italy with lots of passive vocabulary under my belt. Going to Italy personally for me is just a process of "activating" my passive vocabulary. Those Chinese immigrants were forced to speak when they didn't have the prior knowledge of the language. To make things even worse, they don't continue to have enough input during the whole process, so there you have it, chances are they never learn to speak Italian properly. Being a native Chinese speaker, I am in no way more clever than those hard-working Chinese immigrants throughout Italy. The only difference is that I've accumulated a significant amount of passive vocabulary before having to speak and they haven't.

Trying to speak way too soon is just like being asked to pour out water from an almost empty cup. Our brain is just as empty as the cup in the very early stage. So how can that be done?

[Steve Kaufmann]

I agree with you Ting. When I lived in Japan I spent a lot of time looking for content that would help me acquire a stronger based in the language, familiarity with the structure and lots of words, so that I would have an easier time talking. I will do a video on the myth that "to learn a language you have to use it, or go where it is used."

I suspect, however, that you are not only more motivated to learn Italian than those immigrants you referred to. What is more, unlike them, you have no trouble visualizing yourself speaking Italian, and do not cling to your Chinese identity as a defense against a perceived threatening world of Italians.

[Tas]

When I started listening to real content, in my case BBC radio 4, I would usually understand 1% of what I heard, although I had the potential to reach 15-20%. After a few weeks of half an hour's listening every day, I made it, I started breaking the language into words, and I got at this 15-20%. Ever since, when I listen to radio 4, I understand just about 100% of what I'm capable to understand, and at the same time, I keep picking new words and expressions just by hearing them. The absolute percentage depends on the kind of programme, it can vary a lot, let's say 40-100%. So, even now, there's a fair amount of content that is beyond my understanding. To think that being exposed to this content could harm me, well, that's never occurred to me. In what way could this happen, Chad?

About the post, well, I won't say you can't learn through purely passive exposure, since there are people out there who seems to have make it, and I myself haven't listened to the radio or watched movies in any way that could be called massive, but just like Steve, I personally prefer to complement passive exposure with attentive reading, repetitive listening and deliberate practice. When I'm tired I turn the radio on, while not, I keep learning in a more active way.

[Gerrit - Learning French]

I'm currently learning French with Rocket French and I think it's a great way to learn the French language. But I agree that you need to make use of other resources as well like watching French movies, make some French speaking friends and try to communicate only in French, etc.

Practice makes perfect!