Do you remember the famous Jim Rohn quote? “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with!” Specifically, that includes how we think about our own abilities, and about how to tackle difficult tasks like learning a foreign language.
Few of us have taken the time to review scientific studies on language acquisition; many foreign language instructors have not either. In a speech at Monash University, Australia[1], Professor Farzad Sharifian mentioned the prevailing problem – that many native speakers teaching English abroad do not have any formal training in teaching methods. Nor have they studied the grammar of their native language thoroughly.
The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported a shocking study on April 17th,2007. More than one thousand first-year native students enrolled in German language studies (to later become middle and high school teachers of German) participated:
“A grammar test at Bavarian universities has now highlighted blatant deficiencies in the German knowledge of its students. In a questionnaire for first-year students …, for only ten percent, were the results "satisfactory" or better. More than two-thirds of the students did not have the grammar knowledge of fifth and sixth graders.”
Let us have a look at commonly held opinions on language learning:
“It takes too much time; it should be a much faster process”
John Lee Dumas from EOfire regularly warns his listeners (and guests): “Compare and despair”. Nonetheless, comparing ourselves to others seems to be an inbuilt, evolutionary mechanism. Even without other humans around, we constantly look for a base in our environment from which to gauge our performance. We also look to that same base to guide us in decision-making.
One frequent metric in language learning is how quickly we master a new language. This is a very tricky and easily self-defeating task.
Of course, we want to learn something as quickly as possible. Moreover, we want to tell others we reached our goals as quickly as possible. What do we typically brag about when speaking about foreign languages? We boast of how many languages we speak, and, how little time it took us to master the newest one.
Who tests our language abilities? How do we know someone who claims to speak a certain language is actually fluent? What does fluency mean?
There is a lot of uncertainty in this area, as standardized language tests also do not necessarily correlate with real-life language proficiency. Students orient their learning efforts towards passing exams while neglecting other skills necessary for effectively using a language. Others perform more poorly in tests but obtain tangible results in talking to customers.
Check out our book “The GO Method” on Amazon.
Check out our book “The GO Method” on Amazon.
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