I found this post “How I learned Chinese in only 2 years” through Kelly’s site, so please give her a visit too…  The writer, a Mr. Jason Sharp, in his retelling of his own story of Chinese language acquisition, wittingly or otherwise lays bare some of the principle axioms of language learning.

I made a pact with myself to avoid speaking English and eating western food at all costs. I never joined the other students at McDonalds, and when we had conversations I always initiated with Chinese. I spent my meal times in the school cafeteria with locals or wandering about the city. This was too much for most people, so they branded me instead of learning from me.

They should have learned from me, because my language level jumped quickly. At the end of the summer I was already able to hold basic conversations with only a little trouble, while the rest were still stuck at basic introductions and body language for communication.

This was due to more than just meal time conversations: I was quick to root myself in the city and culture. The best way to learn a language is to constantly be around people who speak the language, and the best way to do that is to find a girlfriend. I found a girlfriend within the first two months abroad and spent nearly everyday with her for hours on end. This kept up my motivation, besides being in a situation that I was forced to learn, as I was much happier with a girlfriend than those who were still having trouble adjusting to the culture.

The key factor that he exemplifies as being integral to language learning success is motivation.  Motivation can be internal or external.  Internal motivation usually comes from a sense of closeness or connectedness to the language/culture being studied, whereas external motivation is caused by the perceived rewards of language acquisition and/or external pressure to perform in the language by specific people.  In this case, he apparently had both.  He describes an unusually high affinity for Chinese language study even while still in the U.S. (which, from my own observations, and the comments of my Chinese teaching peers, is pretty rare…  usually by about the end of the 3rd week, students excitement for the new language starts to fade as they realize just how difficult and different Chinese is).  This leads him to the rather draconian decision of limiting his contact with English-speaking classmates and friends once he goes to Beijing, and, in effect, building a Chinese “bubble”to operate out of.  This is indeed a crucial step towards accelerated language learning.  As I’ve noted many times, the language we learn is merely the sum of our experiences in using it.  The more time one spends using one’s native language in lieu of the target language one is trying to acquire, the more one, in a sense, delays the eventual acquisition of the target language.  By taking full advantage of every waking moment, Mr. Sharp is able to advance in terms of fluency at a rate far beyond the average which is slowed by frequent “respites” from L2 use.  It’s worth noting that this approach is not always feasible.  First, the psychological strain of essentially divorcing oneself from one’s mother tongue can only be withstood if one’s motivation to learn the target language is unusually high.  Second, economic and social realities can often prevent one from fully taking advantage of one’s time in a foreign country.  Many people working in English-teaching jobs in other countries initially plan to tackle the language of the area only to discover that their progress is slowed considerably by the fact that their job essentially causes them to spend 30-40 hours (or more) per week in an all-English environment.  In addition, until one hits a certain threshold level of foreign language competency, it can be extremely difficult to foster any real relationships with natives that would give one the ability to practice anything beyond daily routines of ordering food and the like.

The girlfriend…  Well, this has become rather axiomatic across the world.  Amongst foreign students in other countries, the most frequent advice given is to find a boy/girlfriend.  What can I say?  It works…  I’ll freely admit that a great deal of the reason I learned Chinese so much more easily than some of my other languages is because I met my wife just as I started studying.  This offers to key benefits: 1) it increases motivation as the language becomes personalized; and 2) one simply has more opportunities to speak and across broader domains of use when you are in a committed relationship with someone.  When I was a young(er — I’m still only in my early 30’s, dangit!) newbie to Taiwan I was struck by how much faster I was progressing in Chinese compared to my classmate.  When I started investigating possible reasons for this discrepancy in rate of progress, one of my classmates hit the nail on the head when she said that, everyday after work, I would go home, meet up with my girlfriend (now wife), and spend the next 4-6 hours speaking largely in Chinese about any/every topic under the sun.  Most of my classmates would go out to eat, and then either go back to an empty apartment or meet up with their fellow ex-pats.  Either way, they weren’t getting much in the way of language reinforcement.  Of course, relationships don’t have to be romantic, but there are few other human scenarios that entail voluntarily spending so much time together.

Classes…  Next time I won’t waste my time with class at all. Even compulsory socialization isn’t a good reason to go. Past the basics, getting yourself into real life situations is the best way.  I can’t really agree here.  While “real life situations” are often the best teacher, it is normally quite beneficial to have the support of a focused language class.  While Mr. Sharp makes the oft-true observation that much of what we learn in classes is quite arcane, I’ve found that we’re often exposed to more arcane language than we’re really aware, and without previous background in these subjects, we often can be completely oblivious about things that come up.  Also, certain grammatical and conversational forms can be rather complex in terms of function and/or use, to where, barring explicit instruction, the foreign student may misuse or misunderstand the form for years (all with no correction from natives, who will usually still understand the intent) before discovering the error.  Essentially, at the more advanced levels classes are less about language acquisition than refinement.

Language Success Stories: People who have learnt languages in a limited amount of time…

Learning languages in a limited amount of time - is it possible? Well, some people do it. Here I want to collect a small list from the web of personal stories of people who have done this. Here goes:

French in One Year - this guy seems to have learned…

That is a fascinating analysis of the immersion approach to language learning. That guy’s approach certainly seems to have worked for him but many people on a year abroad are not only concerned with improving their language skills. It is easier to make friends with other foreigners and you see this behaviour replicated in every country with foreign students grouping together or expats hanging out complaining about the locals. Finding a boyfriend or girlfriend is without a doubt the golden ticket to language acquisition but it is not the only ticket.
This total immersion technique works if you are focused on one language but it is not necessarily the best way to go if you are maintaining other languages. By going forward in the target language you may fall back in the other languages. The main languages I am learning now are Japanese and Spanish but I have to spend time listen to and reading other languages or I find my myself slipping. My wife is Polish and I speak it well enough but I have never been motivated to get really fluent, in the case of Polish it was never really a target language I learn it by default rather than through effort. Living in Holland I use Dutch all of the time so I do nothing special to get any more fluent.
I agree with you that classes can provide a framework and a focus so they are certainly not always a waste of time. Moreover, I believe that speaking to other learners of a target language gives you a chance to dry run your language skills before using the language with natives. Most native speakers are not so willing to spend time talking with somebody who can barely express themselves in the target language. Language circles in your home country or even in the country where you are learning the language are a great forum for practicing even if the other speakers are non-natives.

Jason here,

Very interesting analysis, FL Doctor! Thanks for the pingback, or else I probably would have never found your site. It’s very well done. I’ll be adding you to m

A point about classes and arcane language:

There are many online language resources that teach idioms and common expressions that might go over your head if you don’t learn first from paper. Confucius Institute Online (http://www.confuciusinstitute.net/) is one that I learned idioms from. They use media (cartoons + voice) and a story to convey the meaning of an idiom. I never got the same understanding of idioms from any classroom.

Language learning is either an exciting lifestyle change or an awkwardly excruciating memory game. For high level mastery one should stop using other languages as soon as possible. This moment of change will be a little different for everyone but it’s very unlikely to become highly fluent (good grammar usage/good accent/big vocabulary) without it.

I also agree that writing off taking a class is throwing the baby out with the bath. Most people I know who are entirely self taught lack refinement in their language and sound obviously foreign. Getting the “street experience” described in this post and the polish of working with a good teaching professional is a killer combination. If you have only one or the other then you’re going to come up short in the end.

yes i love languages and i would like to know what is the fastes way to lear chinese and russian. i know they are quite hard because they do not use normal alphabet??

cheers
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I can relate, I started learning Polish because it’s my wife’s native language. Now I am on to Chinese because I am living there.

One thing about having a limited amount of time each day or week to learn a language is that it can force you to get down to the meat of the material. If you match that up with consistency (a long period of time) then your on the right track.