{"id":961,"date":"2013-04-22T10:00:57","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T14:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=961"},"modified":"2020-10-02T13:48:08","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T17:48:08","slug":"self-guided-language-learning-book-excerpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2013\/04\/22\/self-guided-language-learning-book-excerpt\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-Guided Language Learning (Book Excerpt)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Karen Barbarossa is a lover of languages and an avid student of language, culture, and context.\u00a0 She understands more than a dozen languages, and has learned them through a combination of traditional classes, independent learning, and traveling.\u00a0 She has also taught English as a second language.\u00a0 Her experiences learning new languages both in and out of school settings are explored in the following excerpt from Karen’s interview in Kio Stark’s new book, Don’t Go Back to School: A Handbook for Learning Anything<\/a>.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

I think part of why people teach themselves things is based on fascination or passion or some other internal force that drives them to it.\u00a0 For me, it’s the drive to know and experience the whole world.\u00a0 To really understand a language and how it works also means understanding the history of the language, the history of the land, the people, and the geography.\u00a0 If I could spend all my time wandering around in the world, spending months at different places learning languages, I would do that.<\/p>\n

There is a lot of literature on the best language-learning process but no one taught me that, not really, not when I started absorbing languages.\u00a0 Later I found out that what I learned matched a lot of research on language learning.\u00a0 But for me, I figured it out on my own.\u00a0 It’s not the same for everyone, and that’s important.\u00a0 You have to try different ways and see what sticks.\u00a0 For example, I found that I can’t learn a language I can’t read.\u00a0 So I have had to learn all kinds of alphabets, whereas my brother doesn’t need to read, he can learn by hearing.\u00a0 I know I will have to put in extra time, in the beginning, because if I can’t see the language I can’t seem to store it in my head.\u00a0 But the basics of learning a language seem pretty similar for most people.<\/p>\n

It’s easier to learn a language in a place where it is spoken, whether that’s another country or an enclave in your town.\u00a0 There are parts of language learning that I do use textbooks for.\u00a0 Word order, verb order, does the language have declensions, are there masculine and feminine words, and so on.\u00a0 Gendered words are not the same gender across all languages.\u00a0 It’s not as though if you know the moon is feminine in one language, she will maintain her femininity everywhere.\u00a0 It doesn’t work like that, which is a shame.\u00a0 Each one has to be memorized separately.\u00a0 After the textbooks, I talk to everyone who will talk to me.\u00a0 I listen to everyone who is speaking.\u00a0 The radio, the television, train announcements, anything.\u00a0 This is where a fluent speaker can make it more pleasant.\u00a0 Then you just turn to them and ask questions.\u00a0 Strangers are nice about this too, if you are sitting in a cafe and ask someone to explain a word to you, that helps.<\/p>\n

Really, the best possible way to learn a language for me is to have someone at my beck and call who’s fluent in that language.\u00a0 Because basically I’ll pester them, “So how do you say this?\u00a0 Is this right?\u00a0 What if I wanted to say this?”\u00a0 And I often ask how to say very absurd things because if I can do that, then I really understand the structure.\u00a0 The absurdity is part of the fun, as well, the laughter at the ridiculous things that are grammatically correct but silly.\u00a0 When I was learning Hebrew<\/a>, I was talking with a friend about hamburgers and meat, and the different ways of talking about meat in Hebrew.\u00a0 I asked, “If I wanted to say that I wanted an elephant hamburger with ketchup, would I say it like this?”\u00a0 He just looked at me funny and said, “Yes, it’s exactly like that.”\u00a0 So I knew I understood it, I understood the structure well enough to use it.\u00a0 Once I understand the framework, I can plug in the words, but without the framework, the grammatical model, you’re just throwing words around willy-nilly.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I listen to a lot of radio, often in languages I don’t speak.\u00a0 They start to make sense after a while.\u00a0 It’s a very passive type of learning, the intonation and structure float into me, the music and texture of the language, even if I am not understanding what is being said, yet.\u00a0 It soaks around and it’s really useful when I start speaking, because I’ve been listening to the accent.<\/p>\n

…I think the biggest thing though, is that this is fun.\u00a0 Every language is\u00a0a\u00a0new mystery, so it’s completely exciting when I get to embark on another one.\u00a0 Even thinking about it now, I can’t wait to start on a new one, to get out there, to begin again.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Kio Stark<\/a> is\u00a0a grad school dropout, a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and a passionate activist for independent learning.\u00a0 She also teaches as an adjunct in a graduate program at NYU and runs a learning initiative for the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews<\/a> project.\u00a0 Don’t Go Back to School is a handbook for people who want to learn\u00a0outside of school, with strategies and stories from dozens of people talking about the subjects and skills they’ve taught themselves and how they’ve done it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"Don't

Karen Barbarossa is a lover of languages and an avid student of language, culture, and context.\u00a0 She understands more than a dozen languages, and has learned them through a combination of traditional classes, independent learning, and traveling.\u00a0 She has also taught English as a second language.\u00a0 Her experiences learning new languages both in and out…<\/p>\n

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