Why studying will never help you speak a language ppt

Teachers and linguists are going to hate me for this, but it has to be said: You can never speak a language by just studying it, no matter how much you study Yes, you read that right..

Why studying will never help you

speak a language

| 1 2 1 C O M M E N T S | CATEGORY: LEARNING LANGUAGES

This post has been a long time coming

Teachers and linguists are going to hate me for this, but it has

to be said:

You can never speak a language by just studying it,

no matter how much you study

Yes, you read that right Studying is the wrong thing to do if

you want to speak a language I’m totally serious

Last night I ran into some English speakers and heard the

same thing I’ve heard thousands of times about other

languages: they have been studying German for years and

don’t speak it yet, even though they now live in Berlin

Every day, I get dozens of e-mails from aspiring language

hackers sharing their tales of woe with me; they’ve spent a

small fortune on workbooks, CD audio courses etc and have spent probably thousands of hours locked up in their rooms studying tables of rules and vocabulary lists And they still can’t say anything

Most people think the reason that this happens is because the material/teacher isn’t good enough Or perhaps the language really is impossible and it’s the “hardest one in the world”

I get asked all the time what my study method is, and

precisely what books I buy If our study materials were better

then surely we’d finally speak!?

No

There is only one thing study is good for

The purpose of this post isn’t to tell the world to stop

studying However, you have to realise that studying a

language has a very specific purpose and if you are not aware

of this then you may end up stuck in the vicious circle

of never speaking: Studying will never help you speak a

language, but (as long as you do it right) studying will help

you speak a language better

Most people don’t see the difference here That one crucial

word changes absolutely everythingyou need to take into

consideration

If you already speak but your conjugations aren’t great or you need to quickly increase your store of vocabulary about a

specific topic, then by all means study Need to pass a test in school? Sure, study for it When the goal is to pass a test or improve your grasp on something specific, then study is the way to go

But if you don’t speak the language confidently right now,

then it’s time someone broke this news to you: studying is not the way to get this confidence!

But I’m almost ready!

When you study, you acquire vocabulary, you improve your grammar and you do exercises Logically enough, your level

improves With time, your potential increases and you can understand more and you can theoretically join in on a wider

scope of conversations “One day”, when you’re ready, you can

finally start speaking confidently Not today though – maybe you just need to study a little bit more

Theoretically & Maybe

Based on my experience and accounts from thousands of

learners I’ve met who need their language in the real

world (not tests), “theoretically and maybe” translate

to never The academic system seems to have drilled into us

that studying is the way to speak a language Studying helps

you improve (and to pass a test you do indeed need to know

your grammar/vocab better… because that’s what the test is usually about) but it is an artificial means of acquiring or

improving the language Some artificial ways are quite useful, but they are still artificial

When you look at a language the same way you look at

geography or history or other subjects in school that can

be tested, then you simply don’t know what a language

actually is

Stop looking at conversations with human beings as a test

that you have to pass (so, every time you make a mistake you get a big red X and if you make a certain amount of them, then

you fail) It doesn’t work like that!!

A language is a means of communication It’s not a table of

grammar rules in some dusty old book, or a piece of paper

that you have to spread ink across in the right way for your teacher to be happy German isn’t a rough sounding collection

of Datives and Accusatives, it’s families sharing what they did that day Czech isn’t a frustrating collection of consonant

clusters, it’s young couples flirting with one another and

someone buying his morning bread

These are not things that you can put under a microscope They are people living their lives and sharing experiences with

one another That is what a language is for When you are

locked away in your room you are avoiding this contact and

that’s why so many people never speak They still think

about everything they don’t know and see the world that

speaks their target language as one big test that they are

doomed to fail

How do you learn to speak then?

So, if studying isn’t how you learn to speak a language, then what is? I’ll tell you, and it’s going to blow your mind

Are you ready?

Are you sitting down? Brace yourself!

You have to speak it! Yes, I know – it sounds absolutely

crazy, doesn’t it! To speak a language you have to actually speak it

It will be hard at first – you won’t know how to say things, it

will be embarrassing, you’ll hesitate a lot and feel frustrated that you can’t say things precisely the way you want to This

will happen even if you study for decades Until you actually

use the language in its natural context (or at least in a course

that gets you to speak to people) you will always have this

barrier to get through You simply have to break through it If you practise often enough and enthusiastically enough you

will get to the other side quite quickly You can do this in

person if there are natives or other learners close by, or over the Internet with millions of natives

However, you can’t study to get this confidence Confidence isn’t hidden somewhere on page 182, it’s getting into an actual

conversation and proving to yourself (Obama style) yes you can

Too many people study to gain confidence – this is an oblique

way of going about it You have to simply get used to speaking

the language Know how it feels to have the words come out of you rather than in an artificial test in which you have several minutes to think about things

Last night with the English speakers I had the almost magic ability to turn them into German speakers with nothing more than a 5 minute pep-talk to boost their confidence and give them some language hacks I didn’t teach them any actual

German or tell them to study in a particular way They had the potential to speak the entire time, no matter what their level was

You haven’t learned enough to say anything yet? Hogwash! In many European languages you have thousands of

words before you even start In all languages you can study

for a couple of hours (rather than years) to get basic phrases and then use them Use what you know and go from there Then you will see what you do need to work on (usually it will

be something very specific and relevant to your situation

rather than “chapters 1 to 7″), and then very specific study will

help you improve how you are speaking so you will be able to

express yourself a little better But you already have the ability

to say something right now

There are a LOT of ways you can speak a language in the first

weeks even if you didn’t study it much yet So many ways that

I had to write 30,000 words to describe them

So what do you think? Picking on the academic system is such

an easy target because it does such a miserable job in so many

places and wastes the time of millions of people when it comes

to language conversing ability There are exceptions, and

there are great courses to take, but that is usually because they

have students converse in as natural a way as possible Once

the focus changes from studying to actually using the

language to communicate with people then the road to

speaking well, and doing it quickly, is opened up

Don’t have this attitude of Leave me alone! Can’t you see I’m learning your language?

A language is a social tool and being locked up in your

room studying it is, frankly, antisocial You can’t avoid

studying to improve your language skills, but if you want to

speak then stop studying and just speak already!!

————

Of course, I wrote in depth about how I learn to speak

languages with as little study as possible in the Language

Hacking Guide If you are a blogger check out information

about becoming an affiliate

I’m sure you can all understand how passionate I am to get

this message out there – speaking a language does not have to

be a chore! When I hear so many people complain about

grammar I feel like they are looking at their language wrong and focusing on the wrong things Stop complaining about

it and just start speaking! You’ll make mistakes, but you will get over the barrier and start on the path to fluency

Looking forward to your comments! Feel free to call me crazy (as always…), but offensive or irrelevant comments will be

eaten up by the Smoke Monster from Lost

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This article was written by Benny Lewis

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