Anyone ever learn a foreign language? - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

strelnik · #6 06-09-2009, 02:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DieselAddict

Absolutely. At the beginning of my 8th grade, I spoke virtually no English even though I had been learning it for years. Then I was immersed in a school where everything was taught in English and everyone spoke English. 3 months later I was fluent.

I spent years running language training programs, went to grad school in the area and speak 5 languages well enough to write this forum in any of them. So here's my 2 cents, because I hate fake claims for language schools as much as the CL claims for 50 mpg W126 vehicles!

As children, humans are mental sponges that pick all this up super fast and integrate mental concepts from any other human language.

Once you hit puberty, your brain literally changes due to chemical changes and it's harder to learn like you did as a kid.

HOWEVER, by the time you reach puberty, you have a basic logic system created by your initial language experience.

This means:

1. Young Kids (under 12-13) learn no matter where they go unless they are forbidden to learn through lack of contact/isolation. Which is why Arab girls learn slower than boys, less contact outside the home.

2. Older people learn faster if someone gives them a guide that shows relationships that compare/contrast with the things they already know.

Examples:

Dr. Robert Di Pietro's books from Georgetown and Univ of Chicago teach you how to develop a native-like accent in a foreign language, the same way that speech therapists work with adult victims of stroke. They help them "re-learn" the old ways, based on what they still know.

I used to use something similar to teach the Russian alphabet in an hour:

- "these are the letters that are EXACTLY the same"
- "these are the letters that are SOMETIMES the same"
- "these are the NEW letters to learn"

All based on adults' frame of reference with the English alphabet.

As an adult, the best way to learn a language well is to start with the Dartmouth-Rassias method of training, which mixes lots of immersion practice with explanations that treat people as adults when they explain things. This method is used by

The Defense Language Institute (DoD)
The Foreign Service Institute (DoS)
Middlebury College (OGAs)
Harvard

and of course, Dartmouth!

Programs like Rosetta Stone will only give you a few phrases.

The only other one that's worth it to the average person would be The Encyclopedia Britannica's now discontinued program, which you can sometimes find used. It's pretty good.