{"id":1421,"date":"2013-09-18T07:30:20","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T11:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=1421"},"modified":"2020-10-02T13:41:14","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T17:41:14","slug":"my-late-life-language-learning-part-3-shifting-gears-acquiring-a-new-language-gets-serious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2013\/09\/18\/my-late-life-language-learning-part-3-shifting-gears-acquiring-a-new-language-gets-serious\/","title":{"rendered":"My Late-Life Language Learning, Part 3: Shifting Gears \u2013 Acquiring a New Language Gets Serious"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve put myself on display as what the mathematicians call an \u201cexistence proof\u201d that an old guy can<\/b> learn a new language, even when it\u2019s tough. That was Part 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve owned up to my own personal main motivators, three of them that drove me to start actually doing<\/b> something about language learning. I mentioned my really fun first dip into the \u201cgo-to-the-country-and-survive-in-the-language\u201d water.\u00a0 And I described my morning in our caf\u00e9, over coffee and croissants, when I made the big commitment.\u00a0 That was Part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"FrenchClass01\"<\/a>

mon professeur de fran\u00e7ais<\/p><\/div>\n

So where was I now, along the path to really knowing the language?\u00a0 Well, I had plowed through the first year of classroom French instruction at the Extension School, so I knew some vocabulary and grammar. I could read quite well most of the headlines in the Paris newspapers, and I could deal with the full stories, too, but at a comprehension level of maybe 60-ish percent.<\/p>\n

But really annoyingly, when I would laboriously grind out a letter or a short essay, diligently working with a dictionary to try to make it perfect, I would still produce a product\u00a0 that was invariably sprinkled with (mostly minor) grammatical or structural errors.\u00a0 (Full disclosure:\u00a0 I\u2019m a lot better at the language now, but that kind of thing still happens in my writing.\u00a0 Grrr.)<\/p>\n

Even worse, could I carry on a conversation in \u201cstreet French\u201d at that stage?\u00a0 Forget it!\u00a0 We had not done much about speaking and listening in my classroom work, and most of what people said to me in the caf\u00e9s<\/i>, the magasins<\/i> (stores), and in the M\u00e9tro<\/i> (subway) was an incomprehensible blurt until I asked for mercy and the speaker slowed down.<\/p>\n

When it was my turn to speak, the first sentence usually came out more or less OK, but that was only because I had spent the previous minute mentally assembling the proper string of words, with the right genders (I hoped) and the correct conjugation endings (I prayed!).\u00a0 But after that opening salvo it was too often \u201cstumble and mumble\u201d as I attempted real-time sentence manufacturing, face-to-face with a native speaker.\u00a0 <\/b>That situation is intimidating at first, but you\u2019ve got to do it.\u00a0 <\/b>And they really do want to help you \u2013 first by speaking English, of course, which you have to squash immediately<\/b>.\u00a0 \u201cEn fran\u00e7ais, s\u2019il vous plait; je dois l\u2019apprendre\u201d<\/i> will work \u2013 \u201cIn French, please; I have to learn it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So there I was, functionally reading and writing French, but not quite speaking it or comprehending what I heard. But before I talk about how I addressed those failings (a Part 4 is in order), let me give you some tips about approaches to first-stage language acquisition.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how you work, but for me, the first and really essential thing I have to do to give myself any chance of succeeding in a voluntary, self-motivated undertaking like this is to commit to it \u2013 very formally<\/b>.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t, all the other things that crowd into my everyday life somehow manage to squeeze it off the end my priority queue.\u00a0 I decide how much time I will spend each week, and I block time on my calendar.\u00a0 I set reminders, so that I get a beep when one of those blocks rolls around.\u00a0 How much time per week?\u00a0 That\u2019s your decision, but as a thinking point, remember:\u00a0 eight hours is only 7% of the nominal 112 waking hours in a seven-day week.<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019re committed, what should you do with those chunks of time?\u00a0 If you are starting from scratch, as I was, there\u2019s a lot to be said for signing up for a \u201cLanguage 101\u201d course at some nearby university extension school or community college.\u00a0 For one thing, doing that assures that you will have some externally-supplied motivation to keep going. As I have said, I did that for both \u201c101\u201d and the second-semester \u201c102\u201d courses.<\/p>\n

But even if you are a total beginner, it is still possible to fly solo if you have the will to stick with it (you\u2019re committed, right?).\u00a0 There\u2019s plenty of free material available on line to help drive the essential base-building task of acquiring vocabulary \u2013 a basic reservoir of words and short phrases. But you probably already know this, if you\u2019ve heard of Transparent Language.<\/p>\n

After you have built up some level of vocabulary, and if you have a language-learning partner, as I did \u2013 AND if you don\u2019t get over-ambitious, as I was \u2013 you can try something that didn\u2019t<\/span> happen to work for me:\u00a0 the \u201ctotal-immersion-at-home\u201d game. Consider the following dialog (or almost dialog) between my wife and me as we tried to obey the \u201conly-in-French\u201d rule:<\/p>\n

Demaris: Connaissez-vous \u00e0 quelle heure commence le film?<\/i><\/p>\n

Dick (breaking the French-only rule):\u00a0 Shouldn\u2019t we be using the informal \u201ctu<\/i>\u201d?<\/p>\n

Demaris (also fudging on the rule):\u00a0 Rats!\u00a0 OK…\u00a0 Connais-tu \u00e0 quelle heure<\/i>… \u00a0wait a minute; it should be \u201csavoir<\/i>,\u201d not \u201cconnaitre<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dick (by now the rule is out the window):\u00a0 No, it shouldn\u2019t…<\/p>\n

\u00a0Well, you see what kept happening.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty hard to argue about… er, discuss… language details, in the language, when you don\u2019t yet really know enough vocabulary to communicate effectively in the first place.<\/p>\n

By the way, I was wrong \u2013 it should have been the verb \u201csavoir<\/i>,\u201d which means \u201cto know\u201d in the sense of having knowledge, not \u201cconnaitre<\/i>,\u201d which also means \u201cto know,\u201d but in the sense of to be acquainted with (someone).\u00a0 At least I was right about the \u201ctu\u201d instead of the formal \u201cvous\u201d!<\/p>\n

Back to the specific to-dos I\u2019m trying to give you:\u00a0 for me, tutoring, which comes in several flavors, ranks very high.\u00a0 But my experience with tutors will have to wait \u2018til next time.<\/p>\n

Until then, au revoir<\/i>!\u00a0 Meantime, grit those teeth, and keep on crunching!
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

The adventure continues in Part 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

I’ve put myself on display as what the mathematicians call an \u201cexistence proof\u201d that an old guy can learn a new language, even when it\u2019s tough. That was Part 1. I\u2019ve owned up to my own personal main motivators, three of them that drove me to start actually doing something about language learning. I mentioned…<\/p>\n

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