Топ-5 правил для успешного изучения иностранных языков

 «Важность мотивации в изучении иностранных языков», «Топ-10 основных причин, по которым стоит изучать иностранные языки», «Топ-10 способов быть успешным в изучении языков» - на эти и другие подобные темы, связанные с эффективным изучением иностранных языков, уже написано немало популярных книг и статей. На своем блоге я обычно пишу специализированные статьи, часто нацеленные на достаточно узкую аудиторию. Зачастую эти материалы касаются различных аспектов китайского и других экзотических языков и вряд ли заинтересуют широкую публику, поэтому на этот раз я решил немного разнообразить содержание блога и осветить более универсальную тему.

Рассуждая об эффективности в изучении языков, я пытался как можно более упростить свою задачу и свести ее к вопросу: «Если бы мне нужно было выбрать пять основных пунктов, которые суммировали бы мои стратегии в изучении языков, пять пунктов, которыми бы я постоянно руководствовался, изучая языки, какие бы я назвал?». Разумеется, вопрос оказался непростым, и даже после долгих размышлений я пришел к выводу, что выделить лишь пять пунктов совсем непросто.

Тогда я решил немного переформулировать исходный вопрос. В результате я пришел к выводу, что на моей памяти все сложности в изучении языков возникали тогда, когда я пренебрегал каким-либо из следующих пунктов:

Мотивация

Инпут (входящая информация)

Аутпут (исходящая информация)

Последовательность

Повторение

Мотивация

Независимо от того, почему вы учите языки, мотивация является, пожалуй, важнейшим фактором, который позволит вам достичь высоких результатов за достаточно короткий период времени. Самый простой способ выучить что-либо – это по-настоящему увлечься. Полностью согласен с известным мнением, согласно которому, если вы занимаетесь любимым делом, то:

а) вы можете уделять ему столько времени, сколько хотите, не чувствуя ни усталости, ни скуки;  

б) время, потраченное на любимое дело, не рассматривается, как работа; 

в) изучая то, что вам нравится, вы будете запоминать материал значительно быстрее. Безусловно, способность говорить на языке – это сложный навык, и само по себе умение запоминать что-либо быстро не позволит вам заговорить на языке хорошо. Тем не менее, эффективная работа памяти значительно облегчит вашу задачу.

Когда речь заходит об изучении языков, многие люди говорят о таланте. Талант, безусловно, немаловажен, однако в итоге именно желание и интерес к языку являются определяющими факторами успеха. Даже талантливый человек будет медленнее продвигаться к цели, быстро потеряет интерес и разочаруется в своем начинании, если будет заниматься исключительно ради самого процесса учебы или чтобы следовать учебному плану.

Сохранять высокую мотивацию, особенно при изучении сложных языков, может быть непросто. Несомненно, каждый может порой впасть в уныние, чувствуя, будто упирается в непробиваемую стену. 

Вот несколько факторов, которые могут помочь вам сохранять должную мотивацию даже в критические моменты:

Неподдельный интерес. Выберите язык, к которому вы испытываете тягу и неподдельный интерес, само по себе это уже значительно облегчит все ваши дальнейшие занятия.

Желание знать больше. Найдите то, что будет стимулировать вас хотеть знать язык лучше: возможно, вы хотите общаться на безупречном уровне, хотите, чтобы вас приняли за носителя языка, хотите читать книги, понимать кинофильмы или читать статьи в оригинале. В конце концов, возможно, вы хотите быть лучше других, произвести впечатление на друзей или окружающих – ведь если вам это помогает, то почему бы и нет? 

Посетите страну, где говорят на языке, который вы учите. Побывайте в стране, где говорят на изучаемом вами языке, причем как можно скорее. Осознание того, что вы можете выражать свои мысли в различных ситуациях на новом языке, повысит вашу мотивацию в разы.

Не откладывайте! Если вы из тех, кто любит откладывать на потом, разделите время занятий на меньшие отрезки времени (10 минут) или назначьте себе дедлайны (закончить урок/книгу/список слов, к примеру, к 4 часам). Придумайте себе задание, более важное для вас, чем занятия языком (например, поиск работы), и попытайтесь заставить себя заниматься им. Поскольку вы любитель откладывать, вы скорее всего захотите перенести более важное дело на потом, и наверняка займетесь языком. Не бойтесь своей импульсивности и делайте то, что хочется в данный момент времени. Самое главное – действуйте и двигайтесь вперед.

Ведите дневник занятий и регулярно записывайте аудио/видео того, как вы говорите для того, чтобы отслеживать свой прогресс. Пересматривая видео пятимесячной давности, вы сами удивитесь тому, как многому научились, что, в свою очередь, мотивирует вас и придаст сил для дальнейших занятий.

Большое количество входящей информации (инпут)

Как бы банально это ни звучало, для того, чтобы заговорить на языке, нужно максимально окружить себя им. Мы получаем информацию из всевозможных источников, причем учебник среди них по эффективности далеко не на первом месте.

Учебники хороши в самом начале, они могут дать нам первичный толчок и помочь понять, как устроен язык, если мы не можем почувствовать структуру языка сами. В то же время, учебники никогда не научат нас говорить.

Читайте и слушайте то, что вы понимаете. Полностью поддерживаю высказанное ранее мнение: для того, чтобы научиться более эффективно понимать языковые структуры, необходимо слушать и читать понятные тексты. Если вы слушаете понятный вам текст, вы можете «заглянуть в головы» говорящих и понять, как сделать вашу собственную речь более качественной и похожей на речь носителей языка.

Берите количеством. Конечно, чем больше информации вы получите, тем лучше сможете понять структуры изучаемого языка. Определяющую роль здесь играет возможность читать и слушать как можно больше интересных и понятных вам текстов. На начальных стадиях изучения языка аудирование может вызывать затруднения. Возможно, вы захотите создать собственные учебные диалоги и попросите ваших друзей-носителей языка начитать их для вас. Вы можете работать с одним и тем же материалом многократно, чтобы основательно усвоить употребляемые в нем структуры. Или же вы можете брать каждый раз новый материал, и последний вариант я как раз нахожу предпочтительнее. Слушая новые тексты, вам придется каждый раз прикладывать дополнительное усилие, чтобы понять то, что вы не слышали ранее.

Читайте больше. Несомненно, лучший способ улучшить ваши навыки устной речи - это чтение. По сравнению с чистым аудированием и техникой echoing (простой техникой, заключающейся в повторении услышанного одновременно с говорящим), преимуществом чтения вслух является то, что прикладывая дополнительное усилие, чтобы озвучить текст, вы дополнительно концентрируетесь на каждом произносимом предложении. Таким образом, сознательно и подсознательно ваш мозг создает ассоциации между звуками и значениями, структурами и значениями, ситуациями и выражениями и т.д.

Слушайте политические ток-шоу. Для развития своих языковых навыков слушайте новости или политические ток-шоу, желательно с несколькими участниками. Таким образом, вы научитесь не только говорить в одиночку (копируя монологи, ответы на вопросы участников), но также и вести общение с собеседниками (обращая внимание на особенности речи участников во взаимодействии).

Повторяйте или переводите синхронно то, что слышите. Слушать что-либо на иностранном языке, который вы не до конца понимаете, поддерживая высокую концентрацию внимания, может быть весьма утомительно. В таком случае, вы можете или повторять услышанное за говорящим, или же стараться синхронно переводить прослушиваемый материал. В обоих случаях, вам придется максимально концентрироваться на том, что вы слушаете.

Большое количество исходящей информации (аутпут)

Опять же, как бы просто это не звучало, говорить на иностранном языке – это навык, как и любой другой, поэтому, для того, чтобы говорить хорошо, нужно много практиковаться. Большинство изучающих язык делают это вне страны, где на этих языках говорят, поэтому найти себе постоянного партнера для общения непросто, особенно если речь идет о более экзотических языках. К счастью, благодаря современным средствам коммуникации эта проблема может быть в значительной степени решена.

Онлайн-чаты и видеочаты. Зайдите на сайт sharedtalk.com или другой подобный сайт и найдите себе партнера для языкового обмена.

Говорите с самим собой. 

Пробуйте описывать только одну тему. Говоря с кем-либо или с самим собой, пытайтесь описывать только одну тему и не менять ее в течение разговора. Не стоит недооценивать эту задачу: поскольку вы ограничены доступными вам ресурсами иностранного языка, справиться с задачей вам будет нелегко, и «сползание» на другую тему покажет, что ваш мозг пытается найти легкий выход из ситуации. Пытайтесь оставаться в рамках одной темы как можно дольше. Задача повышенного уровня сложности: описывать запутанные правила настольных/карточных игр.

Говорите в течение пяти минут без перерыва. Если вы разговариваете по скайпу, пробуйте говорить самостоятельно в течение примерно пяти минут. Это метод способен творить чудеса. Если вы стеснительны, то где-то ко второй минуте вы почувствуете себя более раскрепощенно и осознаете, что говорите, в общем-то, не так и плохо.

Постоянство

Однажды я слышал, как тренер по спортивной гимнастике говорил, что если атлет пропускает один день тренировок, ему требуется неделя, чтобы наверстать упущенное. На восстановление прежнего уровня после пропущенной недели может уйти месяц. И, наконец, если гимнаст не практикуется в течение месяца, он может начинать все сначала. 

Как и в любом деле, при отсутствии постоянства в занятиях большая часть ваших усилий будет сводиться на нет, и вы будете чувствовать, будто каждый раз начинаете с нуля.

Особенно верно это утверждение, если при изучении языка вы не пережили так называемый момент "прозрения" (epiphany point). Момент "прозрения" в изучении иностранного языка можно сравнить с моментом, когда вы впервые поняли, как ездить на велосипеде и удерживать равновесие в движении. Если вы прошли эту точку, то даже если вы полностью оставите занятия языком, сможете быстро выйти на прежний уровень, вернувшись к изучению языка в будущем.

Суть постоянства в занятиях заключается в том, чтобы постепенно достичь пункта, где язык станет частью вашего мышления, а предложения и отдельные структуры начнут проявляться у вас в голове будто из ниоткуда, пока однажды вы не достигнете момента «прозрения». Вот несколько советов, которые могут помочь вам оставаться последовательными в своих занятиях языками:

Сформируйте привычку. Даже если вы не очень настроены заниматься, попытайтесь делать понемногу каждый день до тех пор, пока это не войдет в привычку. В противном случае, отсутствие мотивации может растянуться на дни и недели, и вы можете быстро вновь оказаться в начале своего пути.

Вносите разнообразие. Попытайтесь найти как можно больше разных видов деятельности, связанных с изучаемым языком, читайте книги, смотрите телевизор, говорите с людьми, пишите статьи, переводите, готовьте эссе/выступление для школы/университета/работы, пользуясь материалами изучаемого языка и т.д. Составьте список таких видов деятельности и прикрепите у себя в комнате на видном месте, чтобы в случае, если у вас нет настроения работать, вы могли выбрать, чем заняться.

Занимайтесь как минимум три раза в неделю. Мой личный опыт говорит о том, студент – если находится вне страны, где говорят на изучаемом языке – должен заниматься иностранным языком как минимум три раза в неделю (не считая повторения пройденного материала помимо уроков). Занимаясь меньше, я испытываю ощущение, будто каждый раз начинаю с нуля. При изучении более трудных языков я бы всерьез задумался о том, чтобы уехать в страну, где говорят на этом языке, для того, чтобы полностью погрузиться в языковую среду.

Повторение

Я рассматриваю повторение как способ обхитрить свой мозг, заставив его думать, что материал является важным, повторяя его снова и снова. Когда мозг рассматривает информацию как важную, он запоминает ее. Техники повторения материала в последние годы вышли на новый уровень, и существует несколько прекрасных SRS-программ, основанных на методе интервального повторения (например, Anki), которые помогают студентам лучше организовать процесс повторения. Однако, как бы хороши они ни были, они все равно остаются лишь инструментом, а работу по усвоению материала осуществляет наш мозг.

Несколько способов улучшить эффективность повторения пройденного:

Создавайте словарные списки, написанные от руки. Создавайте старые добрые словарные списки, написанные от руки во время своих занятий и при общении на изучаемом языке. Я предпочитаю списки слов на бумаге, поскольку по сравнению с SRS-программами они не так "стерильны", и я могу запоминать слова, используя различные мнемотехники, недоступные SRS-программам (запоминание по расположению на странице, почерку, в связи с предыдущими/последующими словами и т.д.) 

Повторяйте прочитанное. Во время чтения обводите в кружок слова, которые вы не знаете, выносите сноску на поля и пишите там перевод незнакомого слова. Повторяйте эти слова после каждых десяти прочитанных страниц. Такие обозначения помогут вам быстрее найти слова на странице, а запись перевода на полях, а не рядом со словом, поможет вам вспомнить слово самостоятельно. Если вы не можете вспомнить перевод сходу, прочтите предложение, в котором это слово использовано, целиком. Таким образом, в девяти случаях из десяти вы вспомните значение этого слова.

Слушайте подкасты или смотрите записи ток-шоу онлайн на иностранных языках и помечайте незнакомые слова. Пользуйтесь паузой/перемоткой, работая над текстом, а затем слушайте запись заново. Повторяйте отмеченные слова каждый вечер и/или слушайте/смотрите тот же самый подкаст снова и снова.

Learning how to learn a language - Interview with David Mansaray

Learning how to learn a language

An interview with David Mansaray

Listen to MP3

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of my podcast. My guest today is a very special person. I’m sure a lot of you know him from his presence online, he was born in Sierra Leone, spent most of his life in London and currently lives in Spain. He is a lover of knowledge and a very knowledgable person, has his own website and a youtube channel, is the awe inspiring, the super positive, the one and only David Mansaray.

Some of you might  know, that a couple of months ago, David interviewed me for his website and I've always had the thought of interviewing him for my blog in the back of my mind as well, I just couldn't come up with a suitable topic.

There were several things that I was considering, but because David is a fantastic, talented learner in many different fields and it so happens that he has decided to start learning foreign languages, I thought we could discuss something related to language learning in general.

David has read lots and lots of materials on the subject and talked to a lot of people and I always wanted to ask him what his own personal observations and opinions were, so I thought it would be great if he could share some of that wealth of knowledge with us. Hope you enjoy.

Vladimir

Top 5 things to observe in order to learn languages successfully

There have been several popular articles and books written about the importance of Motivation in Language learning, Best Language learning techniques, Top 10 most important reasons for learning a foreign language or ways of becoming a successful language learner. On my blog, I usually write articles that are quite specific and are often aimed only at a fairly narrow audience. I usually talk about various different aspects of Mandarin Chinese and other languages, which might not be that interesting to everyone, so I thought I could try to work a bit on topics that are more general just to make my blog more diverse.

I tried to keep things as simple as possible and asked myself the following question: If I had to choose only five things that would sum up all of my language learning strategies and have these five things in mind during my language studies, what would they be?  As you can imagine, this was quite a complicated question and even after giving it a lot of thought I realized that naming only five was still very challenging. 

I had to turn the question around a little bit. In the end I came to the conclusion that in my experience whenever something was going wrong in my language learning process, I was neglecting one of the following:

Motivation

Input

Output

Consistency

Review

Motivation

Whether it is your daily study routine or the sheer reason for which you are learning languages, motivation is the key and probably the most important factor in order for you to achieve good results in a relatively short amount of time. The easiest way to learn anything is to become completely fascinated by it. It has been said many times before and I completely agree that if you love what you do then a) you can spend as much time doing it as you want without feeling bored or tired b) the time you spend on doing what you love doing is not work c) if you study something you love you will remember things much faster and although speaking a language is a skill and only being able to remember something fast will not automatically make you speak the language well, it helps an incredible deal.

A lot of people talk about talent when it comes to language learning and while it is important too, it is the drive towards the language of your interest that is decisive in the long run. Even a talented person will achieve his goals slower, get bored soon and will end up being frustrated when studying just for the sake of studying or keeping up with a study plan

Being and staying motivated especially with more difficult languages is not an easy thing to do. Inevitably you will get into a situation where you’ll feel down and feel as if you’ve hit a wall. Here are some things can help you be and stay motivated:

1. Genuine interest. As a basis, choose a language that you are driven to and are genuinely interested in, everything else will be much easier this way.
2. The will to learn more. Find something that makes you want to learn more of the language: a will to be able to flawlessly communicate, be mistaken for a native speaker, the ability to read books, understand movies, write articles in that language, be better than others, impress your friends or the general public (if that’s what helps you) ect.
3. Visit the country where the language is spoken. Go to the country where the language is spoken as soon as you can. Finding out that you can communicate your thoughts in a whole variety of situations with no help in a new language can be a huge motivational boost.
4. Fight procrastination. If you suffer from procrastination, separate your study time into smaller time units (10 minutes), set up deadlines (try to finish a lesson/book/word list say by 4 pm), invent a task that you need to do that day that is more important than language learning (say look for a job), try to force yourself into doing it, but since you are procrastinator, you will avoid that new task at all costs and will probably study languages instead. Be impulsive and do only what you feel like doing at that very moment, but always try to do something. You can find more useful tips on how to fight procrastination here.
5. Create a study log and frequently record yourself speaking in the foreign language to monitor your progress. Often when you’ll look back at your levels from 5 months ago you’ll be surprised at how much you've learned, which in turn will give you a little motivation to boost.

Lots of input

As simple and easy as it sounds, in order to learn how to speak a language, you really do need to be exposed to it, learn it from someone/somewhere and that somewhere will not be a textbook. Textbooks are a great way to get you started and help you understand the rules of a language if you can’t figure them out on your own, but they will not teach you how to speak.

1. Read or listen to something you understand. It has been said before and is something I fully agree with, that you need to read or listen to something that you can understand, in order to learn language patterns more efficiently. If you listen to something you can understand you will be able to get into the minds of the speakers and realize how to produce the language structural patterns on your own more efficiently.
2. Quantity. Naturally the more input you have, the clearer the patterns of a language become to you so reading and listening to as much material that you can understand is the key. This is often a problem in the beginner stages and will probably require you to create your own study dialogues or ask your native speaking friends to record them for you. You can either work on the same material over and over to internalize the structures that are in it, or work on new material every time which is something I prefer, since you are pushed more to give that little extra effort to understand something you never heard before.
3. Read more. By far the best way to improve your speaking skills is reading. If you compare reading to pure listening or echoing (a simple technique where you repeat everything you hear word by word simultaneously with the material you are listening to), the advantage of reading is, that when you vocalize everything you read (either orally or in your mind only), making that extra effort in producing the sounds, spending a little more time and focus on each sentence will help you consciously and subconsciously make associations in your mind between sounds and meanings, structures and meanings, situations and expressions ect.
4. Listen to political talk shows. To perfect your language skills, listen to news or political talk shows preferably with several participants, so that you can learn from them not only how to speak on your own (monologues, direct replies to questions by the participants) but also how to talk to someone else (listening to the participants interact).
5. Try to repeat or simultaneously translate what you hear. Listening to something in a foreign language that you don’t quite understand can be tiring and it can be a challenge trying to stay focused. In this case you can either repeat what you hear along with the speaker or try to simultaneously translate the material you hear. In both cases, you’ll be forced to keep paying attention to what you are listening to much more.

Lots of output

Again as simple as it sounds, speaking a language is a skill as any other and to become good at it you need to practice it. Most language learners are learning their foreign languages outside of the country where these languages are spoken so finding someone to talk to on a regular basis can be a challenge, especially with more exotic languages. Luckily with modern communication this problem can be solved to a large extent.

1. Online voice and text chatting. Go to websites like sharedtalk.com and find a language exchange partner.
2. Talk to yourself.
3. Practice describing one topic only. Whether talking to someone or talking to yourself, try to practice describing one topic and one topic only and do not drift away in your conversation. It might seem easy, but since you are limited in your foreign language it is actually a very challenging thing to do and the ‘drift’ is basically your brain trying to take an easy way out. Try to stick to one topic for as long as you can. An especially difficult thing to do is to describe rules of complicated games.
4. Talk without interruption for 5 minutes. If you have an exchange lesson over skype, try talking on your own for 5 minutes. It works miracles. If you are a shy speaker, somewhere by the second minute you will start feeling comfortable and realize that speaking is actually not that bad. 

Consistency

I heard a gymnastics coach say once that if you skip one practice, you’ll need one week to make up for it. If you miss an entire week’s worth of practice, you’ll need a month to make up for it and if you don’t practice for an entire month, you can start all over again.

As with learning anything, without being consistent a lot of your effort will be put out in vain and you will feel as if you’re constantly starting over. This is especially true with for language learning before you’ve reached the so called epiphany moment. Think about the epiphany moment in language learning as that moment when you first realized how to ride a bicycle and that feeling you had when you knew what exactly to do to stay on two wheels. After having reached this point, even if you stop learning the language completely, you can get the hang of it easily should you start learning it again in the future.

The whole point of being consistent is to get to a level where the language will resonate in your mind and sentences and structural patterns will appear out of nowhere until eventually one day you will reach that epiphany moment. Here are some tips to help you stay consistent with language learning:

1. Build a habit. Even if you don’t feel like it very much, try to do a little bit of something every day, until it becomes a habit. Lack of motivation can easily extend for days and weeks and you’ll be right where you started in no time.
2. Diversify. Try to find a lot of different things that you can do in the language, read books, watch TV, talk to people, write articles, translate, read about your school project in a different language ect. Have a list of these things posted on your desk where you can see them so that when you don’t know what to do or don’t feel like learning, you’ll have things to choose from. 
3. Have at least 3 lessons a week. In my case the absolute minimum study time outside of the country where the language is spoken was 3 lessons a week without additional review. Anything less than that and I felt like I was starting over again. With more difficult languages I would consider completely leaving everything behind and going to the country where the language is spoken from day one for a complete immersion. 

Review

I see review as a way to trick your brain into thinking that something is important by going through it over and over again. Once the brain thinks a piece of information is important, it will remember it. Review techniques have improved significantly over the years and there are several great SRS programs (Anki ect.) out there that can help students better organize their reviews, but as great as they are, they are only tools and in the end the work has to be done by the brain.

Some things you can do to improve your review:

1. Create hand written word lists. Create good, old school, hand-written word lists based on your language conversations and review them every evening. I prefer hand written word lists to SRS because they are not so ‘sterile’ and I can remember words by a lot of memory aids that SRS does not provide me with (their position on the page, the way I wrote them, by the preceding/following set of words ect.)
2. Reading review. When reading, circle-in words you don’t know, pull a line to the side of the page and write the translation over there. Review every ten pages. The circles will make it easier to find the words on the page and the reason for the translation on the side of the page far from the word is that you just won’t see it right next to your word. If you can’t come up with the translation for the word, read the entire sentence it is in. Nine times out of ten, you will remember what the word means.
3. Listen to podcasts or watch recorded talk shows online in foreign languages and take notes of words that you don’t know. Pause/rewind yourself through the entire recording and then play it again. Review every evening and/or listen/watch to the same podcast over and over again.

Learning an intermediate language - Italian

Hello all,

On my blog I have written articles about difficult and simple languages before and I realized that I didn’t write anything about intermediate languages yet, so I will try to dedicate an entire post to them now. As I mentioned earlier, there are probably much better divisions of languages based on their difficulty. I do not challenge them, but I find that up until now, all the languages that I’ve learned fall into three simple categories: simple, intermediate, difficult – depending on how far a language you already speak at a native/advanced fluency level is from these languages.

For me an intermediate language (or a language that I find to be intermediately difficult to learn) is:

• A language that is outside of my native language group, or outside the language group of a language that I already speak well, but still within the same general family[1]
• The grammar is at least 50% identical with the languages I already speak at an advanced/native fluency level
• Another 30% of concepts present in the grammar are concepts that can also be found in the languages I already speak but are used rarely or formulated in a different way
• At least 10% of grammar concepts are completely alien to me
• There is a large number of cognates in the language, but different pronunciation might leave them unrecognized at first
• The sound system is at least 50% identical[2] with the languages I already speak
• Literal translations are often possible
• Cultural difference is not a substantial issue

From a strictly analytical point of view, if you look at English and Italian for instance, you almost can go as far as saying that they are two distant dialects of Indo-European. They both share large amounts of Latin or Greek based vocabulary, Italian vocabulary has received a lot of influence from English, there are numerous grammar concepts that overlap, a lot of expressions in Italian can be directly translated into English, often literally.

The problem is that there are still way too many differences to allow flawless communication, differences which for instance two people speaking Spanish and Portuguese to each other wouldn’t encounter. In my opinion a more than 20% difference in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation makes a language an intermediate one.

Italian

Italian is the first intermediate language that I’ve learned to advanced fluency and I will try to base my explanations around it.

In 2005 I went to Italy on an exchange study trip and stayed there for 5 months. I had only a very basic knowledge of Italian when I went there and I know this claim will sound outrageous, but me and all of my friends who really wanted to do so have learned Italian to advanced fluency in 3 and a half - 4 months. I know this exactly because we had oral university exams in a number of university courses where we had to speak and answer questions for 30 minutes each exactly after 3 and a half months after arriving to Italy.

I tried to analyze how we/I did it and these are some of the key reasons:

• We were in Italy, living with Italians, speaking in Italian most of the time
• I personally had no internet connection at home to get me distracted
• From almost day one I bought books in Italian and started to read them with a dictionary, looked up every word, wrote its translation into the book itself and reviewed the new vocabulary every day
• I watched a lot of TV
• We had a great university course that introduced the complete Italian grammar to us in 10 lessons. I think the course was designed to perfection for foreign exchange European students living in Italy. It would’ve been too fast for anyone else
• I learned the grammar tables by heart at the beginning of my stay
• Achieving flawless passive fluency as soon as possible was the key

Achieving passive fluency

Basically what I tried to do in the beginning was to build myself a basic structure in the language that was based on all the cognate words that I figured out how to recognize, plus the grammar tables that I memorized and used this structure to start communicating and understand what people around me were talking about or what was written in the books that I was reading. After lots and lots of practice and daily input/output this artificial structure eventually shaped itself into real language.

When I came home, I tried to figure out whether there would be any shortcuts to the whole system. I found out that I learned mostly by listening to what other Italians were saying and learned from the expressions they used. In order to be able to do that I had to first understand what they were talking about and to do that, I necessarily had to have a larger vocabulary base.

I started to read books and translate and note down every single word I didn’t know and reviewed new vocabulary every day, which was very effective in the long run, but also very tiring and this is where I think a shortcut can be made. What I realized later was that after I had figured out how to recognize cognates that were masked by Italian pronunciation or spelling, I wasn't left with that many words that I had to learn (words that were completely alien to me) and I started to type all of these words into an excel file. The file is almost useless to me now, because I wrote it after I have learned Italian, but could be possibly very useful for an English speaker studying the language.

I know there are several methods that incorporate wordlists and unfortunately I am not very familiar with them and might be repeating what someone already wrote somewhere else but what I think makes the difference in my word list is that it is not a simple excerpt from a dictionary or a course book, but is based on my personal living Italian language and words that made it necessary for me to communicate and understand advanced fluency Italian. In the list, there are no cognates (or only a minimum), only words and expressions completely different that I had to learn. I realized that even at advanced fluency, there was only a limited amount of vocabulary and expressions in Italian that I use daily and that is what is in the excel file. I know that the list is not complete, but I tried to write it over several months after I had returned back home and it more or less should be 95-98% of the vocabulary that I had to learn as a speaker of English and Slovak in order to speak Italian the way I do now. Now in the recording that I did, my Italian isn’t all that great, but I haven’t been in Italy since 2005 so you’re going to have to take my word for it, that I spoke it much better back then :)[3]

If you are an English speaking student of Italian and you memorize this list, you should have a passive vocabulary base necessary to understand everyday advanced fluency conversations and learn from native speakers by observation. I think observation and imitation is the best way to learn almost anything, but in order to be able to do that you need to understand what you are observing and I think this word list might be a very good starting point.

Pronunciation

The sounds of intermediate languages are generally very close to the languages you already speak well so learning them should not be a problem. As far as I know, words in intermediate languages are relatively long, so even if you mispronounce something, you should be able to get your point across in the beginning stages. 

In order to get better and work on the details, I would recommend going online and look for some good pronunciation practice websites. If in country of course, practice with natives as much as you can, try to visualize them as you speak and imitate a lot.

Grammar

A lot of people go against learning grammar and instead suggest learning an entire language by feel or other methods completely excluding grammar explanations. I am an advocate of this approach when it comes to learning very difficult languages, but as far as easy and intermediate languages go, not learning what we call ‘grammar’ would be a big mistake. I think what we really do while we learn ‘grammar’ is mostly learn to understand the 30-50% portion of the target intermediate language that is different from our native languages.

Apart from the fact, that speaking correctly requires the knowledge of grammar (Italian children also need to learn what is correct and what is not) learning the grammar of a different language is a great shortcut to being able to understand the language sooner and allows us to start improvising in the language sooner as well. When it comes to speaking, after memorizing grammar, I was still very far from being fluent or being able to understand people right away, but I could listen for these grammar patterns in other people’s speech and then try them out daily in my conversations.

There are many approaches to studying grammar, but what I personally did was, that I memorized the Italian grammar tables by heart. I roughly familiarized myself with the basic concepts to have an idea what I was memorizing and while I was reading books and looking up words in them, I was also looking for these grammar patterns that I memorized before. Reading books is a wonderful way of learning because if you listen to radio for instance, the speech is often too fast, but in books, the sentences stay in one place, you can compare grammar patterns that occur in different places of the book and have the pleasure of reading a hopefully interesting story as well.

Grammar instruction for our western languages has evolved close to perfection and with the diversity of available methods today, almost everyone should find what he or she finds suitable. As I mentioned our university course in Italy for instance was based on a course book with only 10 lessons that explained the Italian grammar perfectly, so learning grammar is not necessarily a tiring task.

The vocabulary list

This list is only for English speakers learning Italian, but as I said, I have it translated into 8 other languages and I am adding more. Today, I will only post the Italian verb list and see what people think. If it is workable I will post nouns, adjectives, proverbs and grammar lists as well.

The vocabulary list is very easy to work with. The light green color indicates that the word is not a very frequent one in my opinion. In case the verb is irregular, I wrote the corresponding past participle next to it. 

Download Italian verbs list

---

[1] ex.: I speak English and Slovak, an intermediate language for me is Italian

[2] All percentages are based on my rough personal estimates

[3] I have later added Spanish, Portuguese, Slovak, Russian, Mandarin, German, French and Hungarian parts to the file and I will try to post the whole list in a series of posts later.

Short tips on learning how to speak native-like Mandarin

Hello all,

some of my friends have been asking me to provide a more detailed explanation on how I learned Mandarin but at the time I didn’t feel competent enough to give any advice because I wasn’t fluent enough myself and I had to wait to find out what actually worked for me and what didn’t.

There is unfortunately no step-by-step manual on how to become fluent in Mandarin, but I will try to write down in brief what I think worked for me. Goes without saying that what worked for me might not work for the next person and this is really only my personal opinion based on my own experience and the experience of other students I know.

In this article I am often using the imperative mood “you should, you should not” and similar expressions but the purpose is not to sound commanding of course, it is just that it is much easier for me to write in English this way rather than adding “in my opinion” after every sentence.

Without any specific order of importance, these are the key points that helped me learn Mandarin to Advanced fluency (almost advanced to be really honest):

• Your learning process should follow this following pattern, whether it comes to your overall learning strategy or learning of new single words or expressions:

1. understand
2. speak
3. read /type
4. handwrite

• Move to a Chinese speaking country for at least one year
• Find a Chinese speaking girlfriend/boyfriend
• You should not learn how to hand write characters in the first one or two years of your studies, only learn how to hand write the 50 or so most basic ones to learn the writing basics. It is an incredible loss of time and energy in the beginning. If you love characters, learn as many as you like, but if your goal is to speak as fast and accurately as possible, learning how to hand write characters will cost you an incredible amount of energy whether it comes to learning how to write them, memorizing them or because of the interference they cause in your brain when you speak. 
• Listen to people who have voices similar to your own
• Imitate people with voices similar to your own
• Try to find sort of like a “soul mate”, someone who has similar life values and copy his Mandarin. His/her Mandarin speech will probably be something very similar to your speech in your native language. I had a Japanese friend who learned to speak almost native like Mandarin in one year without a pen and paper or going to classes only because he literally “became” the copy of his Taiwanese roommate. The problem was that he was no longer himself when he was speaking Mandarin and talking to him was almost like talking to his roommate. 
• Find a conversation partner who has a similar voice to your own. If you’re a girl, find a girl, if you’re a boy find a boy. Chinese pod for instance is great but has unfortunately very few male native speakers and thus could not help my pronunciation negatively influencing it a little, because as previously mentioned I was artificially trying to raise my voice to match the height of the host's tones.
• Talking to 2 people is better than talking to only one person, because you can see how these two people interact and learn a lot from that.
• When you talk to a person, try to look at his/her mouth a lot. I think you can consciously or subconsciously learn a lot about pronunciation this way. Maybe little babies do the same thing, because the mouth is the only thing that moves on a persons face and must be very interesting for a small child.
• Try recording yourself regularly as you talk to other people and analyze the recordings later. Compare your pronunciation to the person you were talking to. You should be able to notice a whole deal of things that you usually wouldn't.
• Text chatting on Skype or MSN is great exercise too. It can help you solidify your spoken Chinese and give it more structure.
• I was so tired and demotivated by constantly learning and forgetting new words and expressions  that I decided to stop writing down new vocabulary altogether and decided to see what would happen. I rarely remembered new words after hearing or repeating them only once or twice and this approach didn’t seem to work at first but it unexpectedly started showing results. When I heard a new word, say 尷尬 and asked what it meant, after people explained it to me, I probably forgot it in about 5 minutes, maybe later that day I asked how to say “embarrassing”, again people told me it was 尷尬, but I forgot it again. The next day I heard 尷尬 in a discussion and it sounded more familiar, however I still didn't remember what it meant, but this time, when told what it was the sound-meaning association somehow “clicked”. My explanation for this is that the brain makes records of everything you hear and selectively decides which sounds/expressions it will keep and which ones it won't. Since the word in question 尷尬 kept popping up and I was honestly interested in remembering it (since it sounded so familiar and was a bit annoying that I still didn't know what it meant), the association was made. After this moment I could recognize the word automatically in real time speech and since I associated the sound with its meaning directly and not through pinyin, the association was very direct and fast. Learning how to say the same word happened in pretty much the same manner. I was in a situation where I wanted to say “embarrassing” in Chinese, but couldn’t quite remember how to say it, someone helped me and I said.. damn why can’t I remember how to say this word when I know what it means is when I hear it? Believe it or not, this is actually a very important moment, because that is when the brain realizes that this word really is important. After 2-3 situations like this, the word became a part of my active vocabulary. On average one word or expression took me 5 days to get into my active vocabulary. It seems like a very long time, but when I was bulk learning vocabulary, when it really comes down to it, after a week of studies, I passively memorized maybe 300-400 expressions, but getting them into my active vocabulary was very difficult and often very unsuccessful. All I had to do was take a week off and I forgot two thirds of the expressions I have previously learned, not to mention the characters. If you learn 5 solid expressions per day and get them into your active vocabulary, you will literally “own” them, you will have a much better “new vocab per week” ratio in the end, sounding like a native (or close). Mandarin takes a long time to learn any way I look at it, so the way I see things is, that you will have to be spending a lot of time on your studies and you unfortunately will progress slowly. You can choose to spend this long time anyway you like, but in my opinion, since there is no bulk-learning shortcut to Mandarin, slowly but steadily learning 5 expressions per day will get you much further in the long run. You should also try to talk to as many different people as you can, as much as you can and use your “safe” expressions in many situations to solidify your active vocabulary learning slowly but steadily as you go.
• Whenever I didn’t know how to express something, I asked how it should be said and didn’t try to improvise, because I found out that as much as I tried in my improvisations, they never matched the Chinese set-phrase that should be used in this or that particular situation.
• After becoming conversationally fluent I started to read comic books in Chinese. They consist of 80% direct speech which is virtually the same as spoken Mandarin and will help you enhance your speaking abilities. The descriptive parts however are mostly different from spoken Mandarin, will not enhance your speaking abilities and are the reason why regular books are much harder to read.
• After being able to read comic books, I started to read regular books. For me, reading proved and proves to be the best way to broaden my vocabulary and helps make my expressions become more standard and educated. When I read, I don’t translate every word I don’t know, only the key ones that I cannot move on without. I circle in the word I don’t know with a pen, pull a line to the side of the page and write the translation there. After 10 pages or so I review. I circle in the words because they are easy to find when I review the pages and I write the translation far from the words in text at the side of the page, because if the translation is written right next to the unknown word, reviewing vocab is impossible. 
• After being able to read comic books fluently, I got back to characters and finally learned how to hand write them in detail.
• When it comes to tones, I tried to use my Sound-only method as much as possible. (For more information please see Mandarin Chinese tones - Sound only approach)
• When it comes to tones, it helped me a lot that I always learned syllable pairs and not single syllables. It is much easier to learn a syllable pair (basically most of Mandarin words 說話, 看書 and so on) rather than to learn isolated syllables like 我, 他, 去 and so on. Learning words this way, you have a relation of two sounds that are either in contrast or are the same and it is much easier to remember them rather than trying to remember the sound of a single syllable. Subsequently it is also much easier to isolate a syllable from a syllable pair and then use it in a different word remembering its sound (for instance you learn the sound of 說話, then isolate the 話 and use it in 普通話).
• While learning a syllable pair – if I have a problem reproducing it, I only try to listen out for which  one of the two syllables is higher and whether the tone of the syllable is flat or I have to “get up to it” in pitch in order to match it.
• The neutral tone is very important. I realized that a lot of my expressions sounded off because of a wrong neutral tone. For instance I always thought that I just could not correctly pronounce the Mandarin “a”, most notably in expressions like 真的嗎? Turned out it wasn’t the “a” sound that was the problem, but the pitch of the neutral tone in 嗎. A lot of foreigners, even though they are very fluent, still don’t get this one right.
• The best teacher is not a native speaker but a native like speaking foreigner. He will understand your problems much better and will point them out to you in a much clearer way. For instance I was trying to pronounce the word 茄子 in Taiwanese but couldn’t get it right for a very long time. I was asking my Taiwanese friends to tell me what I was doing wrong and they were always trying to correct my pitch and tones. It turned out that it was not the tones at all but it was the initial consonant that was off and a foreigner had to tell me that.
• When it comes to the pronunciation of difficult initials and finals in syllables, be very critical of yourself and never believe a Chinese person when he or she says your pronunciation is great. The native like speaking foreigner is the key again. If you can’t get the sounds down by purely imitating them, try hundreds of different positions of your tongue until you find something that you are satisfied with. Then memorize the position of the tongue, force it into that position the first couple of days until it becomes natural.
• There is also sort of a basic “starting mouth position” for Mandarin. It is the position of the tongue, lips and other speech organs before you even start speaking. If you find that position, keep your month that way, expand and get back to this starting position as you speak. It will be much easier for you to pronounce Mandarin sounds correctly, but it takes time to find this position. In Taiwanese Mandarin, in the starting position the tongue is slightly pulled back in your mouth (my explanation is that Chinese have naturally shorter tongues so you have to make your tongue shorter by pulling it back a little), the tip of the tongue is slightly  touching the hard palate right behind your upper teeth and lips are very relaxed. The mouth almost seems as if it were a bit opened, the back of your tongue is a bit higher, approaching the soft palate. It is very difficult to explain it this way, so you just have to experiment a little and try and try and try.
• Give each syllable its proper length. Some syllables are actually much longer and elaborated than I thought. The 先, 片 – ian final cluster actually almost seems like two syllables “-i+an” and not a monosyllabic “yan”.
• I didn’t want to talk about tones as a matter of my own policy, but as I said, height is very important, so concentrate on the fact that there are three high tones (as in the words 天, 明, 去 – deliberately not mentioning the number of the tone) and one low tone (as in the word 起). It is a good rule of thumb to set the天, 明, 去 group higher than the 起 group if you are a girl and set the 起 lower than the 天, 明, 去 group if you’re a boy. If you are a boy and start speaking too high you will sound funny (a lot of boys/men learn Mandarin from girls/women and they unfortunately end up speaking like them - that is with an unnaturally high pitch of their voice and a speech full of female expressions, which not only sounds strange but is also very tiring, since you have to artificially elevate your pitch every time you try to say something), that’s why it is better to go lower with the 起 and staying in place with 天, 明, 去. Also, even if the 去 group tones start high, they end very low and almost sound like a low tone so in order to get them right, the key is not to accent the syllable as much as you can as in 去!! , but rather start naturally and completely relax your vocal chords at the end of the syllable to achieve that low bass purring sound. But this is all very individual. The thing to do, as I said before is to concentrate on hearing and producing the sound only and forget about tonal changes. If you repeat what you hear it will sound much more natural and will be much easier to reproduce than having to consciously concentrate on how to adjust your vocal chords. This 天, 明, 去 Vs. 起 distinction is only here to help you if you think you are mispronouncing a word that has tones from both groups and you don’t know why. The reason probably is that you are not separating the two groups enough, so as I said just keep in mind that 起 tones should be low and 天, 明, 去  tones should be high.
• What helped me a lot was, that I only learned how to recognize characters for words that I already knew how to say. I saved a lot of time and could concentrate on other things instead. Learning how to read something you know how to say is much easier and faster. I remember that a long time ago I used to bulk learn characters and expressions and when I look back at my studies, I think that was one of the biggest mistakes I made. I thought I had a good memory and would sort of 'pre-learn' hundreds of expressions that I could later use in real life situations. It was very time consuming and very inefficient. Almost none of those expressions 'sticked', the ones that did I had to re-learn based on their sounds through my new method, because characters and not the sound of these expressions kept flashing in my brain whenever I was speaking which was very very tiring. Also, when I heard a sound and tried to recognize what it was, I had first the character pop up in my mind based on which I could remember its meaning. It all happened in fractions of seconds, but was very very time and energy consuming because of the number of occurrences in even the simplest of discussions. 
• Later I stopped learning new characters altogether, concentrated only on speaking and understanding, waited until I was fluent and then started to learn how to read and write.
• I stopped consciously concentrating on tones and started to concentrate on the sound and sound reproduction only. I was trying to imitate people as good as I could.
• I was learning whole expressions instead of just words
• I stopped bulk-learning characters.
• I stopped bulk-learning new vocabulary that I didn’t know how to use.
• I was learning vocabulary on the go without writing it down, only remembering it by the sound.
• I was/am trying to speak slowly.
• I was not using Anki or any other SRS programs.
• I was doing a lot of listening, preferably to a large variety of different types of voices that were as close to my voice as possible.
• I was listening to good music in Mandarin.
• I was watching a lot of TV shows in Mandarin.
• When I suddenly didn’t know how to say something, rather than asking for a direct translation of what I wanted to say, I asked for the expression that a Taiwanese person would use in that situation. The two were often very different.
• I tried to be able to understand as much of the Chinese pod intermediate podcasts as possible before coming to Taiwan. I pause-rewinded them looking up every unknown word by trying to guess it's pronunciation in a dictionary over and over again and listened to them over and over again until I could understand them at natural speed word by word.
• I was chatting a lot in Chinese on skype. This is very good practice actually. Sometimes even much better than talking to someone in person. On skype, you constantly have to talk, constantly have to describe concrete or abstract situations in detail. You have to talk in bigger chunks and describe everything with your words instead of just pointing to something. In person, sometimes you only drop a few sentences, use your body language to describe things, or just point at the thing you have in mind, on skype you often have to talk for minutes on your own, describing every situation or object without having your body language or environment helping you, structuring your speech and so on.
• I didn’t write down any vocabulary that I learned during the day, but it was a pretty helpful to wait until the end of that day and try to write down off the top of my head the words that I’ve learned during that day. Chances were that the words that I remembered at the end of that particular day were important and were already at least in my passive vocabulary.