Key points in learning a new language
The
idea of being able to speak in a different language sounds exciting and
fun. Yet, many stop moving forward in the halfway when they struggle
with the learning process. As a native Mandarin speaker, it took me
over five years to overcome the obstacles in learning English.
Obviously, the two languages have different pronunciation systems,
grammars, and writing formats. But these were not the only
difficulties. The major reasons to slow me down in making progresses was the environment. Today, looking backward, I find it the same issue which English speakers face in learning Mandarin.
The environment does make a difference!
I
started to become exposed to the English language at a very young age
because schools in China all had English classes. Even though, my
ability to use the language was very limited. Having mastered all the
sentences and words on the textbook did not give me the confidence to
order in an American restaurant. The reason is simple--not every
sentence we use in daily life is on the textbook. Reading a textbook
will not give you what you need to survive in a different country. The
only thing that can help you with that is to submerge yourself into an
environment where you will be forced to deal with all situations in
another language. And that's what I did.
I
became a loyal customer to the neighboring video store to get authentic
Hollywood movies, no matter what the titles were. I thought to myself,
if I learned twenty useful sentences in a movie, and if I watched five
movies a week, I would be able to use 500 new sentences in a year.
The
other methods that went alone well with my first strategy was to talk to
real people who were native English speakers. I randomly roamed around
the downtown area of Shanghai, and talk to virtually every American
person I met. I tested the sentences I learned from the movies.
Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. When they did not work, I
was able to find out the reason from the American traveler I talked to. Gradually, I got to understand why certain expressions were used in
certain ways, and how often and in which situation they were used.
Success, in my opinion, is to find out what the right move is, and repeatedly execute it. I believed my strategies were correct, because the results were remarkable. When I first started to talk to strangers on the street, our conversation was at the "How are you"- and "I'm fine, thank you, and you?"-level. After one year of practice, I was able to chat with American traveler about nearly everything. Some of them asked me to become their guide. Some even offered me jobs to assist their HQ with local operations in Shanghai. I made many friends. When many Chinese students were struglling with English exams in high school, I was able to score high on the TOFLE exam and receive welcome letters from American universities.
A few years ago, a research study showed that the effectiveness in learning a new language is proportional to the time exposed to the new language, and inverse to the time exposed to the native language. Thus, my strategies were verified by scientific mothods.
