Maria Joao and Boni

Worksheets:  A Sigh of Relief

Maria Joao, from Portugal, and I were discussing how best to learn a language the other day.  She was remarking that she rationally understands that immersion learning is the best, and the fastest, way to learn English, but that she sometimes just really wants to have a worksheet in front of her.  As you know, we hardly ever use them, but on the rare ocasion that we do, she says she breathes a sigh of relief when she sees one in my hand!

That’s interesting, because virtually all of our clients claim to hate worksheets.  They find them tedious, boring, and generally not so beneficial.  They can learn the lessons on the worksheets, but find they don’t use the lessons in practice.  Yet, sometimes, as with Maria Joao, you can almost feel their relief when we hand a worksheet to them.

Most Adults Love Structure

I think that some of this has to do with our need for structure.  Adults, especially, like order, rules and structure.  Even when we say we don’t like it, I think that sometimes having structure forced upon us allows us to relax a bit.

We don’t have to think quite so hard with imposed structure.  Sometimes it is really nice to be told what to do.  It gets very tiring to be using all of our senses, thinking, working, trying to figure out what someone is saying, how to respond to them, how to generate a question. 

How lovely to fill in a blank on a worksheet!  It gives us a degree of security to know that all we need is one simple word to fill in a blank, and then we will be right.  We will have demonstrated that we have mastery over a tiny bit of the frustrating English language.

So, on occasion, to give our clients a break, we do a worksheet or two.  It is reassuring.  It is restful.  It allows them to stop thinking in English, and allows them to think about English.  It becomes an intellectual exercise instead of an intuitive exercise.

Feeling Good

A word of caution, though.  I think it is good to have a sense of the formal structure of the English language.  It gives you something to hang your hat on.  When all else fails, you can think about the language.  You won’t be speaking fluently, but you can stop, think, refer to a lesson, or a point of grammar, and then continue on.  It makes you feel good.

Feeling Better

What makes you feel better, though, is actually speaking English and understanding English.  This is only accomplished with many hours of practice listening to real English being spoken, and of speaking real English with a native English speaker. 

Feeling Best

There is really no short cut.  You just have to dive in, and listen and speak, and listen and speak, and listen and speak, until you think you can’t do it any more.  Then you have to do it some more.  And the more you do at one time, the faster you will learn.

So, use the occasional worksheet if you need to. We do here at the Lake Tahoe Institute of English.  But, focus the majority of your time on listening and speaking.  You will be a far better speaker of English if you do.

Passive Listening

Here is a simple idea that really helps.  Just have someone speaking English in the background of your daily life.  Keep the television or radio tuned to an English-speaking channel while you go about what you would normally do.  Don’t try to focus on what you are listening to.  Just let the sounds of the language wash over you and inhabit your brain.

Every language has unique sounds which are unfamiliar to other languages.  Every language has its own rhythm and flow that is unique to itself.  By passively listening to a language being spoken in the background of your life, you are training your brain to recognize distinct sounds made in the pronunciation of words themselves, and also in the speaking of an entire language system.

It will enable you, when you are actively engaged in learning, to better pronounce sounds, and to better mimic the flow of English.  You won’t learn to speak English just by listening to it in the background, but, having made a practice of passively listening to English, you will learn English more quickly when you bring your attention to it.

Active Listening

This is listening in order to learn.  Understanding normally spoken English is at the heart of really learning to speak the language.  The greatest problem virtually all of our clients have is in understanding what is being spoken to them directly or indirectly. 

Real, spoken English does not at all resemble phony dialogues in language books, or practice sentences spoken by teachers in classrooms.  The way to learn to understand real, spoken English is to listen to real, spoken English.  And, to listen to it over and over and over again. 

Some Resources for Listening

We’ve found at the Institute that a great way to practice listening is to find something very engaging to listen to.  We like to download podcasts from the educational section of  YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/edu, and Ted, http://www.ted.com/.  We also love podcasts from NPR (National Public Radio). 

You can download literally millions of free podcasts through iTunes onto an iPod or MP3 player.  Then you can listen to your heart’s content.  You can search for something that is interesting to you from a collection on virtually any topic you find interesting.  If it is interesting to you, it will be far easier for you to pay attention to the podcast.

With our clients, we often begin with Steve Jobs Commencement Speech at Stanford University, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc.  It is a very inspiring speech that is fairly easy to understand.  All of our business clients really enjoy listening to Jobs. 

How to Do It

What you want to do is listen to it over and over and over again, until you begin to understand 80 to 90 percent of what is being said.  You can listen all at once, or you can listen in little bite-sized pieces.  Listen on your way to work in the morning, listen when you are coming home, listen while you are exercising, but keep listening. 

Make sure you are listening to something you are interested in.  Listen to the same podcast for a week, or for two weeks, and then find another to take on.  You will be amazed at how quickly your understanding of real, spoken English will improve.

I know I’ve talked about Malcolm Gladwell’s books often with my clients.  Many of you have already read them, and put some of his ideas and observations to use in your businesses.  I read his book, “Outliers,” this past summer, and found it, once again, to be very thought provoking.  If you have not yet read it, I highly recommend it.

One of Gladwell’s assertions in this book is that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to gain mastery of it.  Of course, people have different levels of natural talent for things, and different abilities to learn, but, essentially, he asserts that anyone who spends 10,000 hours doing anything will gain a superior mastery of whatever it is.

Mastery of a Second Language

I started thinking about how this applies to learning a second language.  Of course, if any of us had 10,000 hours to devote exclusively to learning another language, we could all be fluent.  But, who among us has that kind of time?  We’re busy becoming masters at our professions, or other things.  Still, it is obvious that the more time spent with a language, the greater the learning.

One of the benefits of immersion learning is that it increases the hour count of exposure to a language.  If you take a class 2 hours a week, in a year you have only gained 104 hours of exposure to a language.  And, that exposure is probably 50% or more nullified by the amount that is forgotten over the week, and also by the lack of real listening and speaking that occurs in a classroom situation. 

In the typical immersion program, students are exposed to 12 to 20 hours of language instruction per week.  Again, assuming that a student studies for a month, he or she will have been exposed to only around 80 hours of language.  Better, but far from 10,000 hours.

It can safely be said that after 1,000 hours of immersion language instruction, a person could expect to speak and understand a language really well, nearly fluently.  At a normal school, studying 2 hours per week, that means you would have to study 500 weeks (assuming each 2 hours was full immersion, which it can’t be), or nearly 10 years! 

At a typical immersion school, you would have to study over a year to achieve 1000 hours.  At our school, the Lake Tahoe Institute of English, you would have to study for 10 weeks with no breaks.  Far better, but rarely practical for a working adult. 

There has to be another way to accelerate the learning.  And, of course there is.  See my next post to read about my ideas on how to gain 1,000 hours of immersion.

Trees on the upper Flume Trail

Exercise on Birdie Way

My Favorite Tree

Tahoe is a place of quickly changing and highly variable weather.  It can snow in the middle of summer, it can rain in the middle of winter.  We have more sun than is probably decent, with accompanying indecently blue skies.  Sometimes it just takes your breath away to look up into the deep, deep blue.  It is a very happy place.  But a changeable place.

Fall is a great time of year around here.  The nights are cold, but the days are plenty warm to play.  you might still need a sweater, and you won’t be going in the water, but still, it is generally very pleasant to be outdoors.  We’ve had 3 snows already this year, so maybe it will be an early winter.  It is common, though, to have the occasional snow between September and December, when winter really sets in.

Yesterday, Kim and I walked the nature loop up in the meadows, which many of you are familiar with.  Everything is shades of gold, from the grass to the trees.  There is plenty of water in the streams and marshy areas, so all is lush and beautiful. 

As we walked around the upper end of the loop, we startled a herd of deer grazing in the meadow.  They took off at a run, crossing the trail directly in front of us.  I wish I had had my camera, so that I could share it with you.

This month is prime bicycling month, too.  Not too hot, not too cold, and breathtaking views.  Today Kim is riding the upper Flume Trail with our son, Cole.  I’ll get a full report later.  Why am I sitting here working?

Now, at the beginning of November, I am sitting in my office looking out the window.  The sky is that lovely, deep blue.  The aspen trees are bright gold, and are shimmering in the breeze.  It looks like a wonderful day.

But wait!  As I am looking out, I see flakes of something in the air.  I can’t believe it.  It’s snowing!  And it’s sunny!  And it’s 30 degrees!  Only in Tahoe!  I’d better put on a pot of coffee for when the boys return.  They’re going to need it!

As they say around here:  “If you don’t like the weather, just wait 5 minutes.  It will change.”

I’ve been terrified of learning another language for a very long time.  It started with my first trip to Europe, after having studied French in high school.  As I traveled throughout France with my friend, who had a French grandmother, and so was fluent in French, I could not understand a single word of real spoken French.  I knew language wasn’t my strong suit, but, after all that study, this was ridiculous.

I could see how much richer an experience my friend had as we traveled, because she could talk to people, and understand everything that was going on around her.  I, on the other hand, had to rely on her interpretation, or remain in ignorance.  I was very, very frustrated, but was determined to learn the language, so that I could participate fully in my own travels.

So, I studied French in college, even getting a minor degree in it.  I knew lots of grammar, and could read and write it very well.  The trouble was, I still couldn’t speak it.  And, as I now had entered the working world, I didn’t have the opportunity to travel to France again for a long time. 

Too Old???

Given my situtation, I thought I would try to learn Spanish.  After all, even if I couldn’t go to Europe, I could easily get to Mexico, where I could practice.  Of course by then, I was pretty old.  I was 35, I think.  They say if you’re not a kid, you can’t learn another language. 

Not to be deterred by age, I went back to school and studied Spanish, taking two full years of language courses.  I could, once again, read and write, but couldn’t speak.  We did speak in class, but that isn’t real speaking.  Anytime I was confronted with someone speaking Spanish, I would just freeze.  I couldn’t understand it, and I couldn’t even think how to reply.  I felt that I would never be able to learn.

New Language Learning Theories

The newest second language learning theories say I learned all wrong.  Grammar, drills, worksheets, vocabulary lists to memorize – the theory is now that none of this will teach you to understand and speak a language.  It isn’t at all about age, it’s about the type of learning.

Well, duh!  I could have told them that.  It is completely intuitive that being immersed in a language is the best way to learn it.  That’s how we learn our first language as children, and that is also the best way to learn a second language.  Learning grammar and vocabulary teaches us about a language, but it doesn’t teach us to think in a language, or to speak a language.

The problem is that most people don’t have the opportunity to be immersed in a language, and most schools don’t have the facilities to immerse people in it.  Usually, schools have an hour a day, or maybe several hours at a time once or twice a week.  It is just too difficult, and too outside the box of traditional learning, to do much more than teach grammar and provide worksheets and drills.  And, all too often, the instructors don’t really speak the second language well.

Total Immersion is Best

If you are really determined to learn English, and it is at all possible for you, the best way to speed your language learning , and learn English well, is to totally immerse yourself in it.  Not a few hours a day, or 20 or 30 hours a week, but fully immerse yourself.  Be completely surrounded by English, and be prepared to speak and learn.  Remove all opportunities to speak your native language.  You need to eat, drink, sleep and breathe in English.

At the Lake Tahoe Institute of English, we have turbo charged all the latest techniques for learning a second language.  Total immersion in the language, in a secure and safe environment, makes it possible for adults to learn to understand and speak English quickly.  Plus, we teach you exactly the English you want to know, and we have fun while doing it.  No anxiety, just learning.