Slow (but effective) language-learning

Buondì.

Our Autumn/Fall Sale promotion is over, thank goodness.

So once I’ve cleared the considerable backlog of work that’s piled up while I’ve been busy doing ‘commercial’ mailings, I’ll be back to writing the usual things about how I learn foreign languages (and how you probably should, too.)

In case you’re new around here, that means lots of reading and listening, as much speaking practice as you can afford, and not a lot of actual studying.

I confess, I’ve never been much of a one for studying, but more to the point, thirty years of language TEACHING has demonstrated beyond much doubt that studying, which is what most people seem to plump for, doesn’t actually result in communicative effectiveness.

You can study conjugations and tenses, memorize lists of vocabulary and so on, until the cows come home, but don’t be surprised if, when it comes to actually interacting in the language you’re learning, you draw a blank.

Lots of people, probably most people, disagree with me. Not studying, as a strategy, contradicts everything they’ve done before, everything they’ve been told, and for language teachers, threatens to undermine the whole point of their existence.

But it’s true.

Say you cut your actual studying down from 100% of what you do to maybe just 25%, and add in 25% of your time on listening practice, 25% on reading practice, and 25% chatting with a native speaker, what would the result likely be?

Uncertainty when it comes to conjugations and tenses, perhaps. But your brain would be getting masses and masses of input, real life use of the language you’re trying to learn, which would then be fertile ground in which to plant concepts (from any time spent studying, but mostly just things heard and read).

I didn’t always think that way, as I was reminded this morning while browsing through the ‘Best of’ page on the club website.

Scroll down through the years to see the evolution of my thoughts, but for instance, way back in 2013 I wrote this:

Hundreds Of Italian Verbs To Learn, And One Great Way To Remember Them

Do I actually do that for my own learning?

Well of course not.

The problem with what I suggested then (read the article) is that a lot of verbs are infrequent, and if a verb is infrequent, spending any time at all on it is likely time wasted, compared to other more useful and productive activities.

Every weekday morning since February 2022, I’ve been driving Roomie across town to her petting zoo/day care facility, which takes half an hour or so, then driving back on my own.

On the way back I listen to the day’s news highlights on the Swedish radio app I have on my smartphone. This morning there was a piece on the presidential election in Brazil, so brief snatches of people speaking Brazilian Portuguese with explanations in Swedish.

Ah, so that’s what she was saying, I mentally remarked to myself once the Swedish journalist had spelled it out for me and the other listeners.

Half an hour of listening a day for maybe five years, a conversation lesson each week, reading Swedish when I can squeeze it in, visiting the country only briefly on one occasion, and precisely zero studying, and the result is?

Pretty damn good.

Take a course at our Italian school in Bologna and you could make the same progress in an equivalent number of months.

But those would be months out of your normal life, and it would cost you.

Few of us can take five or six months off to study a language ‘full time’ in the country where it’s spoken, but that needn’t matter.

With my ‘slow language-learning’ approach, I get the same result, eventually, while carrying on with my normal life (while I exercise I listen to French, when making pizzas, Turkish!)

Go study if you must, but better, spend some time working out how to include reading, listening to, and speaking Italian in your daily routine.

Embrace ‘not studying’ as your language-learning philosophy and see where it gets you.

You have nothing to lose but your (mental) chains, as the man didn’t exactly say.

N.b. If I had a euro cent for every time someone has complained that they don’t understand, that Italians speak too fast, that they have to look up unknown words in the dictionary, or that they’ll get to reading, listening to and speaking the language AFTER they’ve finished Duolingo, I’d be a rich man.

‘Not understanding’ is not a bug but a feature.

Do enough ‘not understanding’, for long enough and the learning will just happen.

The trick is to include the ‘practice’ in the dead times in your daily routine (commuting, chores) and to make a habit of it.

And NOT TO STRESS if/when you don’t understand. ‘Successful language learners are tolerant of ambiguity’, I learnt on my teaching course back in early the nineteen-nineties.

Which basically means that, instead of getting worked up, they chill. But keep interacting anyway. Or trying to.

Oh and one final thing. Roomie’s now approaching two and a quarter, and can hold up a paw to show you her age.

The floodgates of speech are starting to creak open, and her ability to communicate is soaring.

Yesterday we were at a festa della strada, her in the stroller playing with a balloon, me pushing.

The ballon got some violent handling and, predictably, popped, provoking floods of tears, real upset, an almost life-shattering impact!

Which later, when she’d calmed down, she insisted on recounting to me, in her own way.

Balloon, bang, braccio (you picked me up in your arms)!

She did the same thing the time we stopped to help an old lady who’d collapsed in the park and waited with her until the ambulance came: “nonna, ne nah, ne nah” (grandma went in the ambulance).

She still remembers that months later, and I expect the balloon trauma will stay with her too. The point?

Do language-learning right and you’ll be understanding a lot more than you can actually say. Like Roomie. That’s normal.

But given time (years not hours) it’ll balance out.

A mercoledì.

P.S.

Have you listened to Saturday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, yet?

It’s free, as is subscribing to receive each of the three weekly bulletins, directly to your email inbox, immediately they are published on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

Subscribe (for free) here.

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OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | EasyReaders.org (ebooks) | NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (1-1 lessons)