Success with Languages

Stella Hurd, Linda Murphy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134205905
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Success with Languages is designed to help all students develop the skills they need to become an effective language learner and to make the most of language study.

Written by experienced language teachers at the Open University, this book offers undergraduates and postgraduates crucial and practical advice on important areas such as:

• choosing a language and study programme
• setting personal goals for language learning and monitoring progress
• using ICT to support language learning.

Each of the ten chapters features a number of exercises in order to help students assess the ways they learn and consider where improvements can be made, making the most of the media available and how to use resources effectively.

1
Language learning and language learners

Tim Lewis, Christine Pleines and Stella Hurd

Welcome to the world of language learning! This book is intended for people studying a new language. It is aimed at learners in adult, further and higher education, but is also relevant to anyone learning a language in any situation. Whether you are completely new to language learning or have been learning for a while, you will obviously want to make a success of it. You may be following a course leading to a qualification, or learning entirely on your own with the help of audio-visual materials. Alternatively, you may be living abroad and looking for ways to get the most out of your environment in order to help you learn the language. Whatever your reason for learning and your chosen method, this book should help you to achieve your goals. Learning a new language as an adult is an exciting prospect which opens windows on other cultures, their people and how they live and think, the history of these countries, their literature, music and heritage. This book aims to keep alive that sense of excitement while giving you practical help and guidance in all aspects of language learning.

You will find the terms ‘L2’ (second language) and ‘target language’ throughout the book. Both these terms refer to the language you are studying as opposed to your mother tongue which is often referred to as ‘L1’ (first language).

WHY LEARN A LANGUAGE AS AN ADULT?

To start with, take a little time to think about your reasons for learning another language and what you hope to achieve.

Task 1.1 Learning a new language: why, what and how

Note down some ideas in answer to the following questions:

Why do I want to learn another language?

What do I want to be able to do in my new language?

How do I want to learn?

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It is important to take time to consider these questions, not just now, but also from time to time in the course of your study, because the reasons you have for learning a language will determine the kind of tasks you want to be able to carry out in your chosen language. These in turn will shape what and how you learn, the skills you want to develop, the strategies you use and so on. There is a link, in other words, between:

• your reasons for studying a language;
• what you want to be able to do with the language;
• what and how you learn.

The clearer you are about these three things and the connection between them, the more likely it is that you will stay motivated, be an effective and successful learner and fulfil the aspirations you had when you started learning.

Your reasons for learning a language may be largely practical:

• You want to be able to book hotels or concert tickets, order meals and buy things in shops and markets in a country you visit. This might include checking whether a hotel abroad charges extra for single-room occupancy or whether a concert hall has wheelchair access.
• Your work may involve dealing with speakers of another language.
• Proficiency in another language may help you advance your career, or gain promotion.
• You may live abroad or be planning to move abroad, and need to deal with estate agents, lawyers, tradespeople and the authorities.

Or they may be more personal or prompted by interest in the world around you:

• You may not have had the opportunity to learn a language at school and wish to make up for that now.
• You may have had a difficult time learning languages at school and be determined to ‘have another go’.
• You may want to be able to communicate with people from other countries for a variety of reasons, e.g. if you have a disability, you may wish to keep in touch with people across the world who have the same disability as yourself.
• You may want to learn (or relearn) the language of your parents if the language you mainly use differs from theirs.
• You may want to learn a language for pleasure or intellectual stimulation: for example to be able to read literature, or watch films in your chosen language.
• You may want to understand the language of the country (or countries) you visit during holidays abroad.
• You may feel that learning a language will enable you to understand better the countries and cultures in which it is used.

All of these are sound reasons for learning a language. They often overlap with and reinforce one another, and you may well find in the course of your learning that you develop new reasons for learning and ways of keeping yourself motivated that you hadn’t thought of originally.

Which language to choose?

If your motivation for studying a language is not based purely on academic grounds, such as enabling you to read a text in the original version, you will need to consider which language to choose. Do you opt for the language you have studied unsuccessfully at school or for a language you have no notion of at all, in order to gain insight into a culture you are unfamiliar with? Some people are attracted to the music and rhythm of a particular language. Others feel frustrated at not being able to pronounce certain sounds which are unfamiliar to them in their mother tongue. Each language has its own characteristics, some of which will attract you more than others.

Success in language learning and all that comes with it can differ from person to person, but research suggests that you are more likely to be a successful learner: (a) if you have a genuine interest in the country or community whose language you are learning, and (b) if you feel you are making progress in learning the language. These are both associated with the idea of self-awareness, in other words beginning to get to know more about yourself as a learner, what it is you are hoping to achieve and what you need to concentrate on in particular in order to reach your personal goals.

You may be learning for pleasure, or for more vocational purposes, or it may be a mixture of both. Task 1.2 asks you to focus in more detail on all your reasons for taking up the language, and which are the most important.

Task 1.2 Refining your reasons

You may now wish to reconsider and fine-tune the first question in Task 1.1: Why am I learning this particular language? and maybe add to your previous answer.

If you have a number of reasons, try to rank them in order of importance. This will help you concentrate on what is important to you.

WHAT DOES LEARNING A LANGUAGE INVOLVE?

Within the broad field of Second Language Acquisition theory, some scholars stress the key role of internal factors in learning a language, such as the innate capacity human beings appear to have for grasping the structure of language. Others stress the importance of our interaction with the world of language around us. Second Language Acquisition theory also draws on other disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology and increasingly information-processing, to explain what is involved in language learning. This all makes for a fascinatingly rich mix of ideas, insight and argument, but, as yet, no one has a complete explanation of what takes place when you learn a language.

Nonetheless, learning a foreign language does appear to differ from the study of other subjects, in that it involves not just learning something new, but also using that knowledge to communicate. This entails both conscious learning of language forms and spontaneous and natural use of the language.

The basic unit for conveying meaning in a language is the word. Among the questions you should ask yourself as a learner are which words you need to learn and how they are best learned. It may help to know that the 1,000 or so most frequently occurring words in a language will meet roughly three-quarters of your communicative needs. There are several effective ways in which you can expand the number of words you are able to use in the target language. One common technique is to memorize new vocabulary by jotting down new words and their translations. Once you have been learning for a while, reading can also help you to acquire vocabulary, provided that the texts tackled are not too difficult. Some other techniques are also thought to be particularly useful in vocabulary development. One is inferring or guessing the meaning of a word from its context. Another is using a dictionary in order to (1) identify or confirm the meaning of an unfamiliar word and (2) explore the meaning of the various terms that are related to it. Words come in families, and understanding the family relationship can be of great help in expanding both your comprehension and your ability to express yourself.

Grammar is the name given to the patterns followed by the smaller units of language (e.g. words) as they combine to form larger units (e.g. sentences). These patterns are often described in terms of ‘rules’, but such rules are actually based on descriptions of the way in which a language is used by most of those who have grown up using it. Grammar distributes words into categories (e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives). It also distinguishes between the role they play, in relation to one another, within a sentence (e.g. subject, verb, object). Grammar also charts the systematic ways in which words change their form when combined with other words to form larger units. The way in which grammar structures the language also has an impact on meaning. Consider the two sentences:

The man bites the dog.

The dog bites the man.

Both use exactly the same words. But the grammatical relationship between them is different. So too is the meaning of the two sentences. Learning grammar is therefore clearly important and not merely for structural reasons. It is probably best tackled by using the language as much as you can, for communicating and carrying out practical tasks, while at the same time paying attention to the structures you are meeting and using. Chapter 6, ‘Accuracy and fluency’, gives ideas for improving both grammatical accuracy and fluency. There are also books available which explain grammatical terms in English for English learners of other languages (see the series English Grammar for Students of . . . Hodder Education).

In addition to gathering and processing information, learning to use another language involves acquiring and practising four main skills: reading, listening, writing and speaking. The last two of these often strike learners as more difficult to master, because they involve putting into practice knowledge you may only recently have acquired. Your reasons for learning a language will determine which of these skills are of most value to you. If, for example, your main aim is to undertake work-based correspondence on behalf of an employer, you will put the emphasis on reading and writing. If, however, you just want to be able to converse with people you meet on holiday, your interest will lie in understanding and using the spoken language. However, all four skills are interconnected and developing one of them often results in greater proficiency in using another. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with developing competence in the four language skills.

However, learning a language goes beyond the acquisition of the four skills. It also implies gai...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• 1. LANGUAGE LEARNING AND LANGUAGE LEARNERS
• 2. GETTING STARTED
• 3. BECOMING AN EFFECTIVE LEARNER
• 4. REFLECTION AND SELF-EVALUATION
• 5. DEVELOPING COMPETENCE IN THE LANGUAGE (1): READING AND LISTENING SKILLS
• 6. DEVELOPING COMPETENCE IN THE LANGUAGE (2): WRITING AND SPEAKING SKILLS
• 7. THE WORLD AS A CLASSROOM
• 8. USING ICT TO SUPPORT YOUR LANGUAGE LEARNING
• 9. ASSESSMENT
• 10. MAKING THE MOST OF SUPPORT
• GLOSSARY