So You Decided to Learn Another Language: Now What?: A Practical Handbook for Navigating a New Language

By Haydn C. Griffith

This book is dedicated to those of you who have decided to learn a second language on your own. It will get you started by helping you to select the tools you will need, then it will lay out a roadmap for you to follow as you learn, and finally it will provide you with some tips about the whole process to both inform and motivate you. This book is intended for first-time language learners but can still be of great benefit to more experienced language learners as well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781105001260

Book preview

reality.

Introduction

As globalization continues to spread rapidly across the world, and more people migrate to new countries to work, study and live, the acquisition of an additional language is quickly becoming a necessity for many people. Not only that, but it can also make a job candidate more marketable and result in higher pay and expanded responsibilities. This is due to that individual’s increased value to the organization, given that increasingly more companies are operating globally nowadays and communication across borders is becoming more critical. As a result of all this, not only has the number of persons learning new languages increased, but also the number of organizations offering language programs and language-learning materials.

Despite this increase, however, I have found that, in many cases, contemporary language instruction does not adequately prepare students to be able to communicate effectively in their new language. So oftentimes students will become frustrated and abandon their language study. This can occur for a number of reasons e.g.

- The teacher focuses too much on grammar and not enough on vocabulary, so students are still unable to make useful conversation.

- Memorization is a problem from the beginning and no alternate methods are suggested.

- The students are not adequately engaged to become excited about learning the language. (Maintaining your motivation throughout the whole process is key!)

- Students do not get enough practice speaking the language and having to use the words they know to respond and make conversation.

It is with this in mind that I am writing this book, to hopefully provide a more useful and practical framework to assist you in learning your new language.

Let me emphasize that this book is not language-specific so it should be used in conjunction with the language-specific tools you have already chosen or will choose (These are discussed in greater detail in Chpt. 1). What you will gain, after reading this book, is a more natural approach to learning a new language. This method will, from very early in the process, enable you to make simple conversation and as you continue through the process, help you to gradually expand the range of what you are able to say. At the end of each grammar/vocabulary sub-section you will see an At this point you should be able to: self-test. You should use these self-tests to ensure that you know how to use the material from each section before moving forward.

Let me also state that I am not a professor of language or linguistics, but rather someone with a passion for learning new languages who has applied the techniques presented in this book to learning Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Turkish, and most recently, Polish. Whether it has been for formal education (Spanish and French), brief country visits (Italian, German and Turkish), a wedding (Polish) or pure curiosity (Portuguese), I have spent the last 14 years searching for effective ways to maintain and improve my command of each language. I have tried to lay these techniques out as best I could to provide you with all of the information you should need to set you along your way to learning your new language.

You should find the actual paragraphs of the book fairly quick to read and should