Study Hints for Learning a Second Language

We want you to learn your modern language as efficiently and as thoroughly as possible. Learning a second language is not difficult. It is easy if you go about it the right way. But you must be willing to do some steady work for a few minutes each day. We are offering the following study hints to help you make this easy work and fun.

A language is a set of habits. Our own language is a set of habits which we acquired and mastered about the age of five or six. We had to listen to other people ever since our birth, and in order to communicate we copied or imitated what the people around us said. You need to do the same with this second language of yours.

You Must Learn to Listen and Imitate. We are no better than children at this stage of the game. In fact, it's worse since our own language habits keep getting in the way.

You Must Memorize. To learn this set of new habits you must practice, practice, practice until all the sets of new habits become automatic responses. It's as simple--and as hard--as that!

Study Out Loud. You double your efficiency when you add auditory memory to visual memory. You quadruple your efficiency when you add motor memory. Your friends will think you are crazy when they see you mumbling to yourself but don't pay any attention to them!

Divide Your Materials into Small Units for Memorization, Then String Them Together. Divide your study time into small units of fifteen minutes of work. Do some other work, then go back to another fifteen minutes of work. Do your modern language study just before you go to bed. When you are dressing in the morning try to remember and repeat what you learned the night before.

Make Full Use Of Your Class Hour. Students are usually classified as dumb or smart in a language class by the way they make use of their class time. The dumb ones sit back and dream, the smart ones pack 50 minutes of practice time into each class hour. When someone is reciting they are doing it right along with him.

You Cannot Cram in a Foreign Language Class. Foreign language study is steady, day by day work. You cannot cram for a swimming test. You do not learn habits and skills that way. Language learning is a cumulative process.

You Need To Think. Because you are more mature than when you were a child learning your own language, you have the advantage of being able to analyze the materials you are memorizing. You will discover the way your second language changes endings. You will start making your own observations and rules accordingly. This can speed up your learning process considerably. But the only use for this "structural analysis" is to help you imitate more successfully.

Guess Intelligently When You are Learning to Read the Foreign Language. If you are ever going to read quickly and for content, figure out what a word must mean because of the context in which it is used.

Never Look Up a Work in the Dictionary Until You have Read the Context in Which It Occurs. Assume you have read along until you come to the first word you can't seem to guess. Underline it. Look it up. Put a pencili dot in the margin to show that you have looked it up once. Reread the phrase in which the word occurs and try to fix its meaning. Go through the paragraph this way and tackle the other paragraphs in the same manner until you have read half of the assignment. Take a break. Reread the pages you have just done. Then tackle the last half of the assignment, ending up with a rereading again. Then reread the whole assignment rapidly. Avoid writing English meanings in your text. Make a dictionary of new words you are learning.

Trouble Spots. Idioms cause trouble because they are groups of words that mean more than "the sum of their parts". Handle them as you do the single words. Do not waste time on passages you do not understand. Put a vertical line in the margin and go on reading. Sometimes the passage will clear up for you when you reread. If you cannot get this meaning then ask your teacher.

If you proceed in the above manner, your reviewing will be much easier and your nuisance words, words which don't seem to stick, will stare at you until you get them out of the way. Foreign language study boils down to a constant process of learning, forgetting a bit, relearning, forgetting a little less, and then relearning again and again until the language becomes a habit. If you learn this way you will not forget a language, even if you don't use it for a considerable length of time.

Back to info