A Few Brief Suggestions on Studying a Foreign Language:
You need, then, not only to memorize and understand, but also to practice!
Here are a few brief suggestions on effective practice/study techniques. See your instructor if you have questions, or need help in developing an effective study technique.
- Make your mouth or hand do what your mind is learning Study out loud. Do go to the lab and work on the tapes. Study with a friend, thus involving yourself in speaking and listening. Try to write sentences or a short paragraph using the skills you have practiced orally.
- If you study by reading silently, you draw only upon your visual memory.
- If you study out loud, you double your efficiency by adding auditory memory and you make your mouth work, helping with pronunciation and speech.
- Augment your learning potential even further by writing what you have read and spoken.
- Study day-by-day. You cannot get by in a foreign language course by cramming at the last minute. You may be able to `learn' vocabulary items that way, but you cannot teach your mouth to use them in sentences. (Can you cram for a swimming test or a piano recital?)
- Occasionally go back and review `old' topics and vocabulary. Language learning is cumulative. You learn new skills on the basis of old ones. The more you `recycle' familiar information and skills, the better you will be able to integrate new ones.
- Instructors usually present and test new language skills in a somewhat segmented, chapter-by-chapter approach, as a matter of administrative convenience. However, actual learning is not segmented at all, but cumulative. You add new information and skills to the old without superseding them. Your instructor will incorporate `old' information and vocabulary in the presentation of new skills; you will benefit from doing the same thing when you study. (For example, practice new grammar concepts with familiar vocabulary, we well as with new words.)
- Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Self-consciousness can be a mighty obstacle to learning a language. Perhaps part of the reason small children readily acquire languages is that they are not afraid of making mistakes: their egos do not restrain them from acting like `little clowns'.
- If you are prepared to goof from time to time, or even frequently, you'll feel much less restraint in practicing and trying to speak.