How to prepare best for language tests 1

This will be one of my most controversial articles. Usually, formal tests are surrounded by lots of trepidation, fear and mystery. After many years of schooling, and often university studies, we associate tests with intense emotions. Most often, with negative ones. Because this is a highly emotional topic, we will have very strong opinions on anything related to that.

Before I give you some advice on how to prepare for language tests, here are some mistakes I often observe among students:

·        They prepare only in the last minute.

·        They do not pay enough attention to the actual questions and to the explicit conditions of the test.

·        They try to survive by memorizing phrases and sentences by heart.

·        They prepare focusing on grammar exercises.

First, we need to understand that most modern-day (!) language tests try to test whether you are capable of assimilating into real life in that language, or not. Because for most test-takers this means or studying or working in that language, the tests try to mimick the basic compentencies you need to have. And, they not only language-related. Many test topics are similar to what native speakers would have in a philosophy or „civics” test at school.

Most tests include the following four components: listening and reading, and speaking and writing. Let us analyze this as a bit.  The first two components boil down to decoding and understanding speech, the other two to organizing your thoughts and producing speech. We could also say that half of the test is about being passive or input, and the other half about being active or output.

In all components, there are several levels of proficiency. For optimal preparation, you need to analize the concrete test you are preparing for, and you need to assess yourself. Which levels are the most difficult for me? At which levels do I commit the most mistakes?

Then you need to ask yourself, what is the best training method for each one of those levels, and where do I get the best training materials?

We can break down the listening component into:

·        Being able to discriminate between sounds (When does a word or sentence begin and end? What if there is background noise, if there is more than one person speaking, if one of them has an accent, speaks unclearly or at various speeds? What if there is noise in the actual testing room – by other students, construction work, etc.?)

·        Decoding language (vocabulary, understanding grammatical structures)

·        Understanding the logic and/or intentions (What are people talking about? What is the context of the conversation? What background information that is only implied should I know?)

Typically, many students will have difficulties with the first point because they will have trained in optimal conditions, and they usually select audio material to listen to that is easily understandable for them. On the other, many students master the first levels, but fail in correctly understanding the meaning. This should not surprise us: did you really always understand your teachers and professors on a more difficult topic?! Most probable not, and that, even though you are native speaker.

To be continued

If you like the attitude of these articles, please check out my online courses : at the moment, German for Russian- and Romanian-speakers, as well as on goal-setting.

If you are interested in improving your English in the area of business presentations, I know of no better address than Tom Antion. Please check him out following this link.

Stay tuned!

Gerhard

About the GO Method

The GO Method applies research in psychology as well as principles of quality management to the language teaching process. It conforms to key elements of the ISO 9001 standard, while being more specific on teaching-related issues. Customers get access to easily adaptable document templates.

Check us out at The GO Method.

About me

Psychologist and polyglot from Hamburg /Germany (*1979). Married with children. MA in psychology from the University of Hamburg. More than 15 years of experience as a university lecturer in psychology as well as a consultant for UNICEF, Terre des Hommes, IOM, the EU and private companies. Coordinator of the GO Method network, with representatives in more than 90 countries worldwide.

Connect with me on Linkedin or send me an e-mail.

The native speaker fallacy

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This is one of the most beloved myths for language learners: I just need to have regular contact with a native speaker, and then I will become perfect, automatically.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with interacting with native speakers. Although, if you are learning English for professional reasons, the vast majority of worldwide interactions in English are not with native speakers, but with non-native speakers. This is a phenomenon the language teaching industry still needs to become fully aware of. If you are playing to do business with Central Asian countries in English you better train for their way of pronouncing, using and understanding English, than to be highly colloquial for certain regions of Great Britain.

Of course, the more opportunity to train with competent speakers the better. The problem with many students that hold the native-speaker fallacy is that 

·        They believe that success ensues automatically and almost effortlessly, just by being “exposed” to native speakers

·        They reduce their efforts in all other possible areas of language training.

Most human beings long for shortcuts. It is a sign of intelligence to look for ways to reduce our efforts while maintaining or even increasing results. I am no proponent of a “work hard” study ethic in foreign languages, but of a “study smart” one. The “exposure theory” of language acquisition can be contradicted quite easily by looking around your home town or country. What percentage of native speakers there you would find linguistically competent enough to be employed as anchors or moderators on national radio or TV, journalists for major newspapers or magazines, high-level negotiators in business or international relations, copywriters or public speakers in general?

My conservative guess is that much less than 50%?

What percentage have a firm grasp on grammar and spelling? Again, my guess is that you will answer much less than 50%.

Now, why are the numbers not higher, if the exposure theory would hold true?! All of them have been exposed to their native language from early childhood on: in the family, education system or via national TV. 

Then why should the theory work for non-native speakers who are in a much more disadvantageous position, since native speakers have been exposed to the respective language in their formative years, where their brains are expected (!) to be more malleable than later on?!

Adherents to the exposure theory, when meeting native speakers, often do not use the situation to its full potential. Instead of treating it like a high-level lesson and taking notes, analyzing their partner’s and their own speech, asking targeted questions, they let themselves be “showered” upon by the native speaker. What do I mean by that?

Especially if the native speaker is of the opposite sex, the goal of getting linguistic value out of the situation is soon forgotten, and it becomes a semi-flirt. We stand there, mesmerized by that glorious native speaker, smile and smile. Naturally, reinforced by our smiling, he or she is encouraged to speak longer and longer. In the end, many such interactions turn out little more than a live stream on Facebook or Youtube, with the non-native speaker occasionally throwing in some questions or one-word-sentences like “Nice”, “Great” or “Yes!”. 

Apart from, by accident, meeting native speakers that do not speak the desired standard variety of the language you intend to learn, or picking up informal or even vulgar speech, without noticing and storing it as such!, some native speakers may give you very bad advice.

The typical anti-coaching I witness falls into the “is not important” category. Non-native speaker A asks native speaker B something related to grammar. Either B does not know the answer (which due to the public school system and the decline of literacy is highly probable) or does know it. In both cases, B may say something like this: “This does not really matter. We …s (fill in the nationality) really don’t pay attention to grammar.”

Most often, this “advice” is given by young native-speakers that are at the very beginning of their professional careers.  I have seldom met native speakers above 50 that have made a considerable career for themselves give that advice. On the contrary, most will tell you that at a certain level, there is a “glass ceiling” for those individuals that are not ripe for prime time language-wise. While there are certainly known exceptions to that, most companies will insist to have CEO representing them to have a “respectable”, impeccable speech, too.

Since most you language learners are young or youngish, and will have more contact with younger counterparts, and you will be more likely to be exposed to this anti-grammar attitude. And, psychologically, we tend to believe more what attractive individuals say than non-attractive ones. Consequently, if we need to choose whether to believe that grumpy 60-year old grandpa or that highly attractive international volunteer we know, it is predictable whose advice we will follow.

And, even if people say something does not matter, it may still matter to them. Or they already have the necessary level to function well in most situations, whereas the non-native speaker does not.

Use encounters with native speakers as learning and training opportunities. However, the decisive factor for success will be your personal training routines at home. This is the explanation why you have answered above below 50%: because most native speakers do not systematically work on their own language.

If you like the attitude of these articles, please check out my online courses : at the moment, German for Russian- and Romanian-speakers, as well as on goal-setting.

If you are interested in improving your English in the area of business presentations, I know of no better address than Tom Antion. Please check him out following this link.

Stay tuned!

Gerhard

About the GO Method

The GO Method applies research in psychology as well as principles of quality management to the language teaching process. It conforms to key elements of the ISO 9001 standard, while being more specific on teaching-related issues. Customers get access to easily adaptable document templates.

Check us out at The GO Method.

About me

Psychologist and polyglot from Hamburg /Germany (*1979). Married with children. MA in psychology from the University of Hamburg. More than 15 years of experience as a university lecturer in psychology as well as a consultant for UNICEF, Terre des Hommes, IOM, the EU and private companies. Coordinator of the GO Method network, with representatives in more than 90 countries worldwide.

Connect with me on Linkedin or send me an e-mail.

I just need to do some more grammar exercises …

Who doesn’t know them? Textbook exercises for practicing your grammar where you have to find the missing word, chose the right answer or but scrambled words together into a legitimate sentence.

From my experience, many students have become hooked to completing such exercises. Many smartphone apps just offer a better platform to do countless of such exercises than a traditional textbook.

So, what is the problem?

First, we need to remind ourselves that the learning process is more successful, the more it reflects the reality somebody trains for. Pilot trainees that have access to a simulator are expected to have superior results than (hypothetically) those that would complete exercises on paper alone. Analogously, imagine someone wanting to become a word-class soccer player or pianist, and not playing on an actual field or practicing on a real piano, but working on a desk with a soccer or piano textbook. Those situations seem outrageously exaggerated and absurd. Nobody would expect outstanding results from that.

However, much of the language learning industry and actual practice at home is still in that mode. What are you training for? In reality, professional and private life, we use language mostly in audio form (speaking and listening), and our output are sentences crafted by ourselves spontaneously, fitting a specific situation.

Students practicing with grammar exercises mostly do this visually, they rarely use their own voice while completing them, and they almost never construct their own sentences.

The outcome of this is students spending hours over textbooks and apps, delegating actual speech production to a minor role in their practice.

Why is this so?

·        Exercises on paper or on a smartphone screen create the impression of doing something “serious” and “legitimate” – compared to just generating your own sentences;

·        It is much easier to check your answers in those exercises, than controlling grammar in “free” speech;

·        Because millions of other language students engage in them, you may feel that you are not alone: millions of other human beings cannot possibly be wrong (... especially if we are oblivious to history);

·        The publishing house or app company gives them an aura of authority: “developed by leading language experts from the X Institute for Y language”;

·        It offers a feeling of closure. You actually “finish” a concrete task, experience the pleasure of completing 10 out of 10 exercises. In our day to day speech, there rarely is this feeling that we said 10 out of 10 necessary sentences in a conversation. Even in our native language, we most often leave a conversation with the feeling we could have said so much more, or things so much differently;

·        Especially apps offer reinforcement: “Great. Everything was correct.” Or: “You now move to level XYZ”. As in lab experiments with small animals where they repeat behaviors desired buy the experimenter after being rewarded for pushing a lever in their cage, we sit there mesmerized longing for more and more reinforcement by the app. 

The same mechanisms are at work here, that make other smartphone apps and social media sites so addictive. Their goal is to keep you glued to the screen as long as possible, while you keep losing precious time to actually practicing your own speech spontaneously.

I do not want to say that those exercises are entirely without merits, that, as a byproduct, you do not learn a number of useful words and phrases. The greatest fault is losing time to do more meaningful exercises, and to have your learning process being directed by someone else, of studying reactively instead of proactively.

If you like the attitude of these articles, please check out my online courses : at the moment, German for Russian- and Romanian-speakers, as well as on goal-setting.

If you are interested in improving your English in the area of business presentations, I know of no better address than Tom Antion. Please check him out following this link.

Stay tuned!

Gerhard

About the GO Method

The GO Method applies research in psychology as well as principles of quality management to the language teaching process. It conforms to key elements of the ISO 9001 standard, while being more specific on teaching-related issues. Customers get access to easily adaptable document templates.

Check us out at The GO Method.

About me

Psychologist and polyglot from Hamburg /Germany (*1979). Married with children. MA in psychology from the University of Hamburg. More than 15 years of experience as a university lecturer in psychology as well as a consultant for UNICEF, Terre des Hommes, IOM, the EU and private companies. Coordinator of the GO Method network, with representatives in more than 90 countries worldwide.

Connect with me on Linkedin or send me an e-mail.

Time management and language learning

One of the most common pain points in learning a foreign language is a lack of time. (Or imagined lack of time.) In reality, we just have other priorities. Instead of doing our daily routine for studying our language, we often “invest”, hours a day, in news consumption, hanging out on social media sites, watching Netflix or chatting with friends.

All of that is perfectly legitimate. However, if we want to have some success in foreign languages, we need to rearrange our daily schedule a bit.

There are lots of books and online courses on time management. It will certainly be useful if you peruse one or more of them.

Let us focus on some basic principles, applicable to learning languages.

The 80/20 rule
Most of you have heard about the 80/20 rule already. There are many applications for it. In principle, it states that some activities have a disproportionate impact on results, compared to others.

Applied to language learning we can state:
• 20% of all grammar rules account for 80% of our communication;
• 20% of all words are used 80% of the time.

Such statements will surely provoke much protest among language scholars. After all, there is much debate as to what is the precise proportion, how to operationalize or measure this. Etc. etc.

Nonetheless, nobody denies that some words are used disproportionately more often than others, and that we use some tenses more often than others (say present continuous over future perfect).

If you had unlimited time, you would surely want to learn all the words in a target language, although you would have a hard time finding a complete dictionary on the market. You would learn all grammar rules you could find in the literature.

However, since in our earthly existence time is a limited resource, we need to prioritize. Which words and rules to learn first, second, and so on. And to determine which techniques and strategies will yield the greatest result.

Exercise: interview native speakers and update your grammar folder
Ask a native speaker of your target language, which grammatical tenses he uses most often. Show him or her the content table of a grammar book and ask him or her to put ordinal numbers of perceived importance to the various rules and tables.

Alternatively, do research on Wikipedia or language forums. Also, try to find out what aspects of your target grammar are particularly difficult, especially for native speakers of English.

Update your grammar folder, arranging the material from very important to negligible.

Make sure to include difficult topics right from the start. Remember: “Eat that frog!” Thus, you can be sure that you will not have any unpleasant surprises in the future. Instead, you attack the greatest linguistic difficulties head on. After that, everything can become only easier.

The same goes for vocabulary. There are many word lists with only the most frequently used 100 or 1000 words. You can find similar lists for your areas of interest and personal expertise. For example, legal or technological vocabulary.

Exercise: decongest your day
Make a list of three daily activities that you could either shorten or eliminate.

During the last six months, what did I reduce or eliminate?
• news consumption: from 2 hours to 10 minutes;
• listening to music: from 2 hours to 30 minutes;

I transitioned from haphazardly reading several books at the same time to just two books: from 1 hour to 30 minutes.

If you detect more, do not stop at three.

In fact, there are many moments during a typical day when we could be learning a language. On our commute to university or work, we could listen to some audio material; while waiting for the bus or metro, we could pull out our pocket dictionary and repeat our daily number of new words; we could close our eyes and just think in another language.

Those of us using the Pomodoro technique or just taking small breaks can then enjoy entertainment in our target language.

Recommended readings

Brian Tracy’s ”Eat that frog!”
David Allen ”Getting things done”

If you like the attitude of these articles, please check out my online courses : at the moment, German for Russian- and Romanian-speakers, as well as on goal-setting. 

If you are interested in improving your English in the area of business presentations, I know of no better address than Tom Antion. Please check him out following this link.

 

Stay tuned!

Gerhard

About the GO Method

The GO Method applies research in psychology as well as principles of quality management to the language teaching process. It conforms to key elements of the ISO 9001 standard, while being more specific on teaching-related issues. Customers get access to easily adaptable document templates.

Check us out at The GO Method.

About me

Psychologist and polyglot from Hamburg /Germany (*1979). Married with children. MA in psychology from the University of Hamburg. More than 15 years of experience as a university lecturer in psychology as well as a consultant for UNICEF, Terre des Hommes, IOM, the EU and private companies. Coordinator of the GO Method network, with representatives in more than 90 countries worldwide.

Connect with me on Linkedin or send me an e-mail.

Language learning myths: The best period for quickly and efficiently learning a foreign language is during childhood.

While this seems to be a very plausible argument, with many studies apparently supporting it, there are quite a few issues here.

Children learn their native languages in a fundamentally different way than most adults approach foreign languages. Have you heard of anyone who learned first to read and then to speak in his or her native language? On the other hand, who first memorized the alphabet and then produced sounds? Probably not. Children are granted yearlong periods of experimentation with sounds and grammar before “correct” sentences are expected from them. Adults are impatient and want perfection right from the beginning, becoming nervous when they cannot produce ideally structured sentences after “only three months”.

How can we then compare two completely different methods of learning?

Moreover, even if it were true, that the human brain is more malleable during childhood and adolescence: what are our options? Should we give up, or use it as an excuse for a lack of results? Maybe the latter stems not so much from our adultness, but from the fact that we approach language learning the wrong way, that we do not use suitable strategies and techniques.

Worldwide, there are millions of students, quite unsuccessfully spending years and years of language instruction in public schools, or in what John Taylor Gatto would call, “weapons of mass instruction” committed to “dumbing us down”. On the one hand, there are many adults who achieve mastery of a foreign language later in life. One of my violin teachers started to learn Polish and Ukrainian in his late sixties, just to be able to travel to Poland and Ukraine and to give presentations on old instruments in the respective languages.

And, should we wait for a “definitive” scientific study on the matter before deciding whether to commit or not to a foreign language? Or should we rather heed the advice that the best moment to start something new is gone, and the next best moment is now?

If you like the attitude of these articles, please check out my online courses : at the moment, German for Russian- and Romanian-speakers, as well as on goal-setting.

If you are interested in improving your English in the area of business presentations, I know of no better address than Tom Antion. Please check him out following this link.

Stay tuned!

Gerhard

About the GO Method

The GO Method applies research in psychology as well as principles of quality management to the language teaching process. It conforms to key elements of the ISO 9001 standard, while being more specific on teaching-related issues. Customers get access to easily adaptable document templates.

Check us out at The GO Method.

About me

Psychologist and polyglot from Hamburg /Germany (*1979). Married with children. MA in psychology from the University of Hamburg. More than 15 years of experience as a university lecturer in psychology as well as a consultant for UNICEF, Terre des Hommes, IOM, the EU and private companies. Coordinator of the GO Method network, with representatives in more than 90 countries worldwide.

Connect with me on Linkedin or send me an e-mail.