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| Photo by Aleksejs Bergmanis from Pexels |
“I don’t need systems” is the war cry of
many new language students: “I just learn spontaneously”. Especially today,
where we have so-called “millennials” or, now, “Generation Z”, for which much
of what I will talk to you about will sound very old-fashioned.
Let me set things straight from the
beginning. I am an avid reader and collector of language textbooks and an student
of all learning methods I can get hold of. What I am going to propose to you
has definitively not been a standard in “good-old language school days”. On the
contrary: most of what happens today in language classrooms is exactly the same
as one hundred years ago: a teacher administrating and students regurgitating a
textbook. Plus some “games” and technological gimmicks around the book.
Secondly, spontaneity needs order to
appear. What do I mean? If you study the lives of highly creative people, who
will discover that they carefully prepare for that “spontaneity” to happen.
Most of them have routines they follow religiously and create special “spaces”
in their life, where they have the best conditions to become spontaneous. It is
not so that most successful writers wait until inspiration strikes them. Most
of them have developed habits of writing whatsoever on a daily basis, and, with
time, let great ideas surface in their daily writing routine spontaneously. It
is the amateur in music or arts, that does nothing but waiting until he or she
is “in the right mood”.
What would a system for language learning
include?
·
Written
goals. What am I going to achieve, specifically? What am I learning that
language for? With what categories of people do I want to be able to converse
freely and on what topics? How many new words do I want to learn per day, week,
and month?
·
A road
map, or a routine. How am I going to achieve that? What small steps can I take
each and every day to come a bit closer to my goal? Learning new words,
producing sentences, consuming content, learning new grammar rules, etc. What
are the best techniques to do that?
·
My
hard- and software: What resources do I need to achieve that? Dictionaries,
textbooks, tables and lists, aps, courses.
·
An
accountability partner: someone with whom I share my goals and whom I am
accountable to.
·
Regular
testing and collection of success indicators.
·
Monitoring
mistakes and analyzing them. What systematic mistakes am I making, and why?
What do I need to do to uproot them completely? What are my main problems and
obstacles in learning that foreign language?
Once you have established your first
system, you should
·
Assess
all elements on a regular basis (e.g. once a month) whether they work, or not;
·
Improve
specific elements;
·
Incorporate
feedback and expert advice into your system.
While this may seem complicated, at first,
it actually saves you lots of time and effort. You will be much less frustrated
on the way, and, whenever you will feel a lack of motivation, you will have a
process that carries you through those dark moments.
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
The GO Method
The GO Method
applies quality management and psychological science to the study of foreign
languages. It helps students establish individual and clear goals, build
learning routines, overcome psychological obstacles, monitor progress and
systematize the learning process.
It is the
perfect approach for high performer students that need to speak as closely as
possible to a native speaker. From lesson one, it focuses on building your own
sentences bottom-up, and not memorizing phrases like a parrot.
Gerhard J.
Ohrband
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.
Contact
If you want to save time in learning a foreign language
without a teacher, please check out my book “The GO Method” on Amazon.
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