What's the word?

Okay, if this is you, raise your figurative hand.

·         You love bookstores, and are rarely seen without a book in your hands.

·         You adore word play, word games, and puns, and relish word puzzles.

·         You are a big fan of tongue twisters, riddles, idioms and phrasal verbs.

·         You enjoy flicking through dictionaries, encyclopedias and atlases of all sorts.

·         You tend to be philosophical and learn easily by discussing big and little concepts with friends, often learning as much from what you say as what you hear.

·         You are a terrific speller and are often told that you use words that are too big or too complicated.

If these apply to you, then welcome to the club of the linguistic learner. Learning languages is not work for you; it is fun. You enjoy parsing sentences and working with words both aurally and in a written form. To sharpen your language skills you can...

·         Find lectures or debates in your community. Check at the embassies where your target language is spoken. Ask about events (which are often free).

·         Attend any type of group lecture or discussion in your target language. 

·         Enjoy finding books, written plays, poetry, and short stories. I recommend starting with easier literature, like children’s stories. However, many traditional fairytales or myths can use a less accessible language structure, or one that is different from the day-to-day structure of the spoken language. Don’t forget to read out loud to work on rhythm and intonation. Audio books are also a terrific resource for the linguistic learner.

·         There are several applications for smart phones that easily allow you to record your own readings. Take the time to do so, and then be sure to listen to your own words during those down times (such as riding on public transport or while sitting in traffic on the way to work).

·         Play word games, and find word puzzles in your target language.

For example: Foreign language Scrabble – http://www.gtoal.com/scrabble/details/ or http://thepixiepit.co.uk/scrabble/

While it isn’t a word game in the strict sense of the term, https://www.duolingo.com/ is a terrific site to practice a number of foreign languages free. It involves writing, reading and listening. There is a speaking component in the aps for smart phones, but I have found the voice recognition  to be quite inaccurate.

·         Keep a journal in your target language.

The linguistic learner was made for learning languages. This is not to say that if you don’t lean heavily toward this type of intelligence, you are not good at learning languages. Rather, it is important that you develop these skills. Remember that we all have many ways of learning. The linguistic learner is more apt to expose herself to word play and reading and listening to lectures in a foreign language.

Of all the forms of intelligence that we are discussing, this type of learner actually finds it fun to learn new languages. So, go out and have fun.

Keep learning –

Tim


Check out our book “The GO Method” on Amazon.