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| Photo by Andre Morgan from Pexels |
I have to make a confession. In most of the languages
I speak, and in some of which I did high-level translations and interpretation
for ambassadors and prime ministers, I had never completed a single exercise
before.
What do I mean by exercises? If you have learned a
foreign language, which you will have at least tried during your school years,
you will have completed countless of them. Mostly on paper. They come in all
shapes and forms. You need to complete a sentence with a missing word, to modify
a certain word in a sentence, to play “odd-man-out” with words, to match
pictures and words or texts, to choose between alternatives (multiple-choice-tests),
to put scrambled words or letters into the right order, etc. etc.
What is the problem with that? The main problem is
that you are training for something that, although it may correspond to some
school tests, will never, ever be part of your real-life usage of that language.
What about your native language? How often do you have to complete such exercises
at work, in your family and with friends? Do you go out on a date and sit in a café,
testing your English with multiple-choice tests, or do you give your future
partner words to put into the order?! Really?!
In reality, we will engage only in two activities:
·
Decoding speech by
others (listening and reading),
·
Producing speech
ourselves (thinking, speaking and writing).
The unit of our output is usually the sentence. As
humans, we tend to speak in sentences. Even if they consist only of few words.
So, what is the problem with conventional exercises?
·
We pay a high
opportunity cost, because of all of the more relevant things we could do during
the time we are consumed with those exercises.
·
Our fear of
producing our own sentences increases over time, because we know deep down that
we are training for something completely different. However, the longer we
learn a language, the greater the expectations of others that we speak
fluently.
·
We become
dependent on input from the outside. The main problem of the exercise-based
learner is to always find new exercises to complete. If he or she runs out of
exercises, the learning typically stops.
·
We let others
dictate our learning. Completing exercises we basically are a laboratory animal
presented with problems to solve. The animal does not have any choice as to the
problem itself. In our case, it means that words, situations and solutions are
given to us by someone else. Why is this problematic? In most real-life
situations, when producing speech, we have an almost complete liberty as to
what exact words we want to use and in what grammatical structure we want to
tell our story. Even in a restrained setting like a police interrogation, a
witness or suspect will be given the freedom to respond in his or her own words.
The only place where this is not the case are some language tests, where, quite
often, even objectively correct sentences are marked by the teacher as
incorrect, just because the latter “expected” something else.
What is the alternative?
Here is what I do. In a certain number of priority
languages, every day I write a personal diary/journal (stream of
consciousness), and I think and speak (if nobody is around, just to myself). I
read things that interest me (classical literature, Wikipedia, news) and listen
to podcasts and audio books. I look up one new word in all languages I learn
and write it down into a personal vocabulary book. From time to time, I look up
a grammar rule, which happens no more often than once a month and takes no more
than 10 minutes. And, I analyze my mistakes.
On some days, I play around with words in my head or
on paper, but this only for languages I cannot speak and write, yet.
That is it. No exercises books, no binge watching of
grammar explanations on Youtube, etc. etc. This will sound so basic and
unprofessional to most of you, that, if we were living in totalitarian times,
at least one would denounce me for not following the rules.
Even though I make a lot of mistakes, I know that I would
commit much more mistakes if I would just work with an exercise book.
Why do we still cling to exercises?
·
They have a status
of being officially approved.
·
You can show that
you engage in something serious.
·
Everybody else is
doing them (conformity, herd mentality).
·
They are easy to
check.
·
You get a sense
of closure and completion. Each time, your language app tells you “Congratulations.
You completed level X” some neurons in your head fire and you feel happy.
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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