Brought to you by Swiss French School.
Most language schools won’t tell you these things for fear you will never start. However, unless you know these things up front you are likely to fail.
1. Learning takes a long time
Most know this but teachers don’t like to discuss it. Let’s face it it’s not a great sales pitch. This rarely discussed reality leads many to assume the language learning dropout rate is high because learning a language is difficult, and that the few who succeed must have a gift for language. Both of these assumptions are wrong. Those who succeed are persistent. We have all successfully learned at least one language before, we’ve just forgotten how long it took.
Language learning is a marathon not a sprint – © Dirima | Dreamstime.com
The US Foreign Service Institute, which trains US diplomats, has classified languages based on how much time it will take an English speaker to learn them. The good news is that French is in the “easy” category. The not so good news is that general professional speaking and reading proficiency requires 575 to 600 hours of training. That’s 6 hours a week for two years or 12 hours a week for one year.
Parents are sometimes surprised how quickly their children learn the local language at school. Some are fluent after 6 or 12 months. However, a full school year adds up to around 800 hours of classroom time. This is longer than the US Foreign Service Institute’s guideline of 575 to 600 hours for an adult to learn French. If you went to school for a year with your children you would be fluent too!
2. Spending one hour a week won’t work
Many language schools sell these types of courses, not because they think they will work but because people are busy and such courses fit their busy schedules. However, a minimum intensity is required. Any skill that requires “automation” like speaking or swinging a golf club requires intensive and sustained repetition.
New words are like young plants – © Ruud Morijn | Dreamstime.com
Over the summer break, school teachers worry about summer learning loss. Numerous studies that have given children the same test before and after the summer holidays show significant learning loss. Language learning is no different. Lesson length and frequency is a subject of great debate however most educators would agree that one short class a week is unlikely to deliver much. New words are like young plants: without regular watering they don’t survive.
3. You will feel stupid
In the early stages of learning you will feel stupid. You can’t have a conversation, nothing you read makes sense and your writing is often incomprehensible. This is normal. Babies spend years uttering broken sentences and mispronounced words but we don’t think they are stupid.
Get comfortable feeling stupid – © Kati1313 | Dreamstime.com
Best selling American author, Josh Kaufmann in his book on how to learn anything says that the major barrier to skill acquisition isn’t intellectual, it’s emotional. We’re scared. At the beginning we need to go through a frustration barrier. This makes us feel stupid, something Josh refers to as “the grossly incompetent and knowing it part”. His advice is to make an up front commitment that will take you through this inevitable period of frustration and out the other side, and stick to it. Also, practice feeling “stupid” with your new language at home or with close friends. Try to do this until it feels normal.
Language learning is about ambiguity and making mistakes. Being comfortable with this allows your mind to operate in an alpha state, aiding learning. If children have an advantage over adults it is here. So try to be more like a child.
For more information on how to accelerate your language learning check out course options at at Swiss French School.
This article was brought to you by Swiss French School.
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Jeremy says
The US Foreign Service Institute??? Love or hate it, nobody would ever accuse America of being a nation of linguists. Is this the best institution to reference on the subject of language teaching? Classifying languages by difficulty is a nonsense. If you have to learn a language then you have to learn it. The Dutch, the Scandanavians, many African cultures and others are brilliant at languages – let’s find out how they do it.
Le News says
Hi Jeremy, You are right that it’s true that necessity is the key to learning. Just look at children trying to fit in in the playground. Language learning difficulty does vary though depending on your mother tongue starting point. For example English speakers who have learnt both French and Chinese will tell you that Chinese is much harder and more time consuming. In the same way that someone who speaks French and Spanish will find Italian relatively easy. This is also true for Scandinavians learning English. Also there are a lot of bilingual people in the US. Half of those between 18 and 35 in the Los Angeles area speak a language other than English at home – mainly Spanish. And having lived in Hong Kong for many years it always seemed to me that the Americans spoke the best Chinese. I knew a lot of Dutch and Scandinavians there but never met one who spoke Mandarin – possibly random. If you have any research from any of these countries I’d be keen to see it and include it.