Observations on Learning a foreign language

Learning a foreign language means changing the words you customarily use to express your thoughts for another set of words to express the same thoughts.

To do this you have to memorize the words so that they are available to you automatically and instantaneously whenever you want them.

The smallest unit of language is the sound attached to meaning. This is commonly called a word. It can also be a part of a word in the form of a suffix or prefix. But this unit does not express a complete thought. In order to express a complete thought one must combine a group of words. This group of words that expresses a complete thought is called a sentence.

A sentence is formed by using other groups of words that do not express complete thoughts. They express only a part or portion of the thought. These groups of words are called phrases.

Dictionary definition of a sentence: A group of words that tells something or asks something.

Learning a foreign language, thus, means replacing one set of phrases for another set of phrases and combining them to form a complete thought.

There is no complete thought in a single word.

When words are combined, they follow a pattern or structure. This pattern or structure is unique to each language and differs from the pattern or structure of any other language.

To speak correctly, this pattern or structure must be internalized and available at will. The pattern or structure is repetitive throughout the language. Observing this pattern or structure gave rise to what we call grammar.

Grammar is only an observation of this pattern or structure codified into rules and regulations. But like all rules and regulations, they are frequently broken for both known and unknown reasons. Therefore, grammar does not form the best way of learning a foreign language because of all the exceptions to the rules.

And all these exceptions must be learned individually.

We learned our first language by exposure to an humongous amount of language and intensive memorization of the elements that make up the language. We did this memorization at school in order to pass examinations and to move from one grade to another. We also did this memorization through repeated viewing of favorite movies, plays etc. Actors excel at learning lines created for them by playwrights. We might think of ourselves as actors as we go about memorizing the necessary texts when learning our new language.

To develop a "gut" feeling in our new the language similar to the one we have in our own, an excellent way is to literally memorize poems and simple stories. " gut feeling" means that the foreign sounds take on meaning of their own just as they do in our native language without any need of translation.

From this point onward it is just a question of building an extensive vocabulary. And this is best done through stories and other texts.

W.B. Pettus of the California College in China expresses the procedure of learning a foreign language in the following way.

"To master a language, memorizing is essential. The student is advised to memorize one or more sentences from each of the lessons. It is not sufficient to learn individual words and grammatical rules and hope to combine the two. The only Chinese we are sure is correct is the Chinese we have memorized. During the study the student should pass to memorizing paragraphs and stories. Such memorizing had best be done from the lips of a native speaker of Chinese or from good phonograph records." W.B. Pettus "Hua Wen Ch'u Chieh" California College in China Foundation 1943

The Bottom Line for Learning a Foreign Language is "exposure-memorize, exposure-memorize, exposure-memorize" of an endless numbers of texts. Stories make this memorization more interesting. That is why Quintessential Language Systems ^SM emphasizes the use of stories.

We are only trying to do in a shorter period of time that which we did over a long period of time when we learned our first language. Once you develop the habit, you will find great pleasure in your foreign language learning and will never be intimidated by the so-called difficulties of any language on earth. If you follow the above advice, no language will be difficult for you.