Foreign Languages for Studies and Fun

By Mariya Heinbockel

This book has nothing in common with academic texts on how people learn foreign languages. Written from the rich experience of a polyglot, it is a guide that shows how to approach foreign languages in a creative and entertaining way.

The author generously shares the secrets for successful preparation for foreign language tests, applying for fellowships and grants to pursue academic studies in the USA and Germany.     

The book is full of useful time-saving resources on learning English and German in a record time and on a budget, scholarship programs and the specifics of application process to win them.

Stories and humor make this book an entertaining and easy read.

This book is for high school and university students, and for all who want to improve their communication skills, either for studying or working abroad or for travel and fun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mariya Heinbockel
• Release date: Feb 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393375319

Book preview

Part I

Traps

1

What you don’t need

Before talking about what you need to learn a foreign language, let’s clarify what you won’t need.

You don’t need to enroll in a private language school, where students spend many hours each day studying languages, at the expense of other subjects. I often hear: Sure, those students will win all the prestigious competitions that require an excellent command of a foreign language. We will never measure up to them. And I say: It’s not true. Even though 75% of the fellows who went to the USA with me majored in English, the other 25% studied economics, law or journalism. My alma mater was Kryvyi Rih Technical University, where I specialized in management and economics. Before that, I graduated summa cum laude from a public high school. While in high school, I competed in a city English language contest and won a third place. In fact, I shared it with a guy who had already spent a year in the USA. If you still have doubts whether you are talented enough linguistically, I suggest that you drop them now. You need neither a private language school, nor a college degree to learn a foreign language or win a prestigious competition.

If you can afford to travel, I encourage you to see the countries and experience the cultures that communicate in the language you want to learn. But you need not travel extensively, while starting on a foreign language. You don’t even have to leave your room during the first months of committed studies. After building a good command of a foreign language, you may consider applying for fellowships, scholarships and grants to support traveling. For example, my first big trip was to the USA as an UGRAD fellow. While learning German, I applied for and received a scholarship from the University of Vienna to participate in a summer school in Austria. Studying Czech in Munich, I went to the Czech Republic on a fellowship from the State of Bavaria. As you see, there is always a way through financial blocks.

Eventually, you will have to invest in the best language books and dictionaries. But you can start with used books and online dictionaries right now.

Finally, you don’t need an expensive computer to support your learning. Any computer is good enough for typing and surfing the internet. If you are comfortable using paper dictionaries, you will learn even faster without a computer.

What you need for your studies is any computer with an internet connection, pens and paper, one hour a day, and a burning desire to speak a foreign language.

2

Learning types

It seems to be a common practice to find out your personal learning and memory type — verbal, visual, or physical — before starting the actual learning. Almost every self-help book on foreign languages contains dozens of pages with psychological tests and descriptions of each memory type. While researching this book, I invested many hours in those tests. I was curious: What if I learn something new about how I learn? Alas, the test results made me feel betrayed. Instead of giving me new insights into myself, the results acted as a disclaimer: note that all people adapt their learning approach to different situations.

What does it mean? It means that all of us are simultaneously verbal, visual, and physical learning types. The truth is: Neither another person nor a standardized test can tell you for sure how you learn and process what you’ve learnt. You constantly change and evolve in your learning techniques, adapting them to your goals. It is possible that you have found an approach that you can call your own. But maybe you keep experimenting and picking up new methods, and it’s OK, too.

Learning techniques that work for others could also work for you. For example, some students learn languages better in a classroom. They need to hear and teach the material to their peers (the verbal type). Still, other students feel comfortable learning from a textbook and taking notes. They mark keywords with different colors, which helps them memorize their material effortlessly (the visual type). Finally, there are students who learn by doing. They act out dialogues, produce stacks of index cards with new vocabulary, or write real emails containing every new word they memorized a moment ago (the physical type).

You need not take another test to find out how you learn. You already know how you learn. Instead, free yourself from any limitation about how you should learn. Go beyond any established category. Rely on your two eyes, two ears and two hands. Activate all types of memory at each learning session. Try to use your whole body, because it is your body — resisting or cooperative — that determines the speed of your progress.

3

The right side of the brain

Please, don’t fall into the trap of fun and effortless learning, where all you need to do is to activate the right side of your brain. The only way that feels fun and effortless is always down. In that case it won’t matter anymore which side of the brain is in charge.

Because you can read these lines, I assure you that both sides of your brain work properly. Take this piece of advice: while learning, don’t chase the right side of the brain. Activate more brain power instead.

4

Passive learning

How nice would it be to rest on the couch and learn a foreign language at the same time? Those who advertise passive methods of learning promise you big results in no time. All you need to do is relax. Sounds good? However, there are conflicting points of view about what passive learning is. Some say it is listening. Others say it is reading. One definition describes passive learning as reading and reading aloud, whereas active learning is doing grammar exercises and memorizing new vocabulary. I don’t see any major difference between the active and the passive method in this definition. If you just think about it, you will see that both methods require active work.

For me, passive learning boils down to this: I don’t need to hold my attention.

This means that you can do something else, while listening to dialogues or movies in a foreign language. You don’t have to check in constantly with yourself whether you understand the context. So what you do is create the environment that influences your subconscious in a desired way.

However, the passive method alone will only bring limited results. You will train your ear for the melody, the rhythm, and occasional words in a foreign language. That’s all.

I recommend that you go for active language learning, if you want quick results. Use the passive method, if you feel too tired. It is always better to keep the ball rolling somehow than to find excuses to skip learning sessions.

Part II

Coach

1

Do you really need a language coach?

Answer the following questions:

Are you a polyglot? Can you speak two, three or even four languages?

Do you learn a foreign language for entertainment?

Are your stakes so low that it doesn’t really matter how quickly you progress?

If your answer to all three questions is a no, and you have a burning desire to make quick progress, you should hire a language coach. Yes, you will need to invest into private learning sessions, but believe me it’s worth it. Go for it, if you aim to speak fluently or take a foreign language test. A weekly session of forty-five to sixty minutes is more than enough to propel your learning to the next level in the shortest period of time.

How did I come to this conclusion?

2

My experience

When I was in high school, I decided to spend one hour a day learning English. At that very moment, I was sure that I would speak fluently in a couple of months. In our home library, I pulled out the textbooks that dated back to the seventies, picked a lesson from the elementary level, did all the exercises, and went through my notes in the evening. The next day I repeated the whole process. I had been learning on my own for several months already, when mom noticed my commitment and bought modern textbooks that arrived per mail once a month. So now there were two sources for me to learn from plus a teacher somewhere who would correct my homework. Day after day I did the exercises, learned new words, and put thick envelopes with my homework into the mailbox. Each time I got my homework back, the pages were all covered in red. There were numerous mistakes in every sentence, and it seemed to get worse. Despite being frustrated, I could see that my approach wasn’t the best one.

After learning English every day for several months, I wasn’t even able to construct simple sentences. Help was what I needed. And it probably wouldn’t arrive per mail. The help had to be real. And I had to get real and look for a competent teacher of the English language.

When I found the right coach, my learning turned around. After only two months of work with the coach, I could score high at two language rounds of the FLEX Program of the U.S. Department of State, make a conversation with an American, and translate brochures for a local travel agency.

So now I can give a fourteen-year-old version of myself the following advice: don’t try to do it all on your own. Stop wasting your time with approaches that don’t bring results. Start looking for a coach now.

3

What to expect from a coach

My English language coach had a remarkable career as a teacher. His students won prestigious fellowships and prizes at the National English Language Olympiad. He was the first to buy the newest teaching materials. He knew by name all English native speakers who worked in political and business projects in my hometown.

His training sessions were very intense. There was no chance to relax, because he always gave more exercises to fill every minute. During our second learning session he told me to buy the level B2 English language textbook, ignoring that I was at level B1. Looking back, I’m grateful for this challenge because otherwise I would have been bored. Whenever I see a potential to get better, I fire up and want to show that I can improve quickly.

And it worked. I took part in English language contests and showed incredible results: I scored third in the district and fifth in the town. It was the biggest achievement that any student of a public high school had ever manifested. Acting upon advice of my coach, I took part in the FLEX Program of the U.S. Department of State. Back then I didn’t win, but I passed the language tests. It was only my sixth month of learning English with the coach.

I used this approach for German, too. I booked one-hour weekly sessions with the best German language coach in town. He was an expert in German literature and he traveled to Germany twice a year. He used a completely different strategy to put me on the fast track. He declared German grammar and culture the top priorities. I had to memorize poems by Friedrich Schiller and prose by Heinrich Heine. Every week I articulated whole sentences and dialogues until they came out perfect and I turned in forty pages of grammar exercises. No wonder that I could speak German in less than a year.

I applied for a fellowship from DAAD and took a German language test. The results were amazing: 110 points out of 112. This is how I won the fellowship to enable my master’s studies in Germany.

Start today to look for a