Stop Learning Spanish, Acquire It
I always hear people talking and see people writing about trying to learn some freakin’ language or, when they’re serious, learning it.
The slogan of this blog is Learn How to Learn Spanish. Man, even I’m making this mistake. Learning a language… Ha! Officially, babies don’t learn a language, they acquire it. It’s thrown at them and they absord, that’s all they do. They don’t put effort in it, they don’t worry and are not even thinking about learning something. And they’re good. They end up speaking the language, even though it takes them several years. But again, that doesn’t matter, because they’re more fluent than most language learners will ever get.
I talk a lot about babies and language acquisition, but that’s because I think we’d make our lives easier if we’d all be “learning” a language like they do. I mean, people became fluent in a language without learning it. They understand and speak it because they acquired the darn language. They put no real effort in it, they just absorbed and had fun. Schools and colleges just destroyed that idea of absorbing a language. They think you have to learn it. Even when you try to just acquire a language, they come up will all kind of things to supplement your “learning”.
Lately I’ve been reading this blog of an ALG student. ALG stands for Automatic Language Growth, and like the name suggests it’s all about language “growing” inside you. You’re not learning it, but rather absorbing it, acquiring it, because of which it starts growing in you. Just read the blog and you’ll see how amazing the system is.
ALG pretty much works like this: a student enrolls in a course for which he has nothing to do except for attending class and listening. There’s no homework, no textbooks, no speaking. Just listening to some teachers for several hundreds of hours. And because of all that comprehensive listening (even though it’s not that comprehensive at first), the language starts growing in you.
Later on, the student learns (yes, as in studying a bit) how to read and write. Even speaking is covered, but only after more than 800 hours of listening. You see, after that many hours of listening the language has grown in you, making it an “adult”. You’ve acquired the language, but maybe not perfectly yet. There’s room for improvement, but that’s covered with more input and practice.
As this student proved, you don’t need to learn a language to actually speak it. Acquiring it is the goal, learning is just a way to do it. You see, the student in question had lived in Thailand for several years and learned some Thai, but didn’t speak it. So he decided to move from learning to acquiring it, and he succeeded.
Unfortunately, the ALG program is only available for a limited number of languages in Thailand. But we can replicate it and apply it to our own environment. Keith has been a great advocate of the TV method and has shown how far it can take you. But just as with ALG it takes diligence to keep going and to finally succeed.
I strongly believe we should stop talking about learning a language, because that implies that we use some kind of tool to learn it, and that’s not the most effective way to learn a language. Instead, just absorb and let the Spanish language grown in you. That’s how you learned your native tongue, and now that’s how you’re going to learn Spanish as well.
Further reading:
- Reasons why NOT stop studying Spanish
- Immersion is the way to go (and stop looking for excuses)
- Learning a Language Is Like Running a Marathon
Further
View full post on Spanish Only
Weekly Newsletter #3
Last week I didn’t publish anything, because I was way too busy being depressed (yes, I know, I’m weak 
) and working on the newsletter. So far it has been going strong, and because some of you aren’t receiving the newsletter yet, I’m publishing the third edition here. I hope you sign up, simply because it’s worth it!
Further reading:
- Weekly Newsletter #4
- Spanish-Only.com Launching Weekly Newsletter
- Weekly Newsletter #6 and #7
Further
View full post on Spanish Only
Should I Read Out Loud?
It seems popular to think that reading out loud it a good way to get better at certain things. Things like fluency, pronunciation, and don’t forget that the student is getting some more input. I haven’t seen many bloggers saying that reading out loud is a good idea, but many teachers think it is. After all, it sounds good. Right?
As someone who studies a foreign language, linguistics, and didactics, I find these ideas extremely interesting. I’m one of those people who always believed that reading out loud in a foreign language is a good idea, especially when there’s a teacher to correct those nasty pronunciation errors. But then I read a book about modern foreign languages and how we teach them by the Dutch linguist Erik Kwakernaak.
Kwakernaak is one of the few people who don’t say people learn because of language teachers, but despite those annoying people that tell us what to say or what to do. Only because of saying that I think he’s cool, but he had some other cool things to say. One of those being about reading out loud.
First I want to get something straight: I’ve used reading out loud to become better at… reading out loud. I even dare to say that it somewhat helped me at speaking faster because of reading some tongue twisters, but I’m not sure how much it helped me with my pronunciation. After all, there wasn’t someone to correct me and I already had a pretty good pronunciation because of all that listening I did before.
Kwakernaak rightfully says that we can only pay attention to one thing at a time. If we read something out loud, we either concentrate on the content, or concentrate on our pronunciation. The first thing is actually a bad thing, as it can cause us to get a bad accent. The latter isn’t as bad as the former, but it still doesn’t guard you from getting a messed up pronunciation, and it still doesn’t prove to be a good way to get some more input. At its best reading out loud is a good way to get better at reading out loud. It’s possible that you need that skill, but not very likely.
My advice is to first listen a lot to get an idea of what you should sound like. I’ve said this countless times, so I guess that’s something you already know. To get a better pronunciation reading out loud is an option, but certainly not the best. I’m still not sure what the best method is, but practicing individual sounds and putting them in words and sentences when I spoke to actual people helped me the most. Now, it’s not always possible to find something to talk to that actually understands you, but recording yourself is an option.
So, should you read out loud? Only if that’s a skill you want to master. If you want to get more input, you better watch some more TV or read a good book. If you want to gain fluency, you listen and speak. If you want to get a better pronunciation, you listen to yourself, correct yourself and ask people for corrections. In all those cases reading out loud is not the way to go.
Still, I’m curious: do you use reading out loud to become better at something? If so, what do you use if for, and is it helping you?
Further reading:
- How to Read Spanish
- Don’t Worry Too Much About Your Accent
- How to treat the rules: read about them but don’t learn them
Further
View full post on Spanish Only
Weekly Newsletter #5
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View full post on Spanish Only
Newsletter #9
Don’t worry, I’m still here. A bit less active, but still here. The newsletter (which I post ridiculously late) should explain the most important things. Long story short: I need 30 hours a day, but only have 24 
. This weekend will be the tenth newsletter, and today or tomorrow I’ll post an article on the blog.
Further reading:
- Weekly Newsletter #4
- Weekly Newsletter #6 and #7
- Weekly Newsletter #3
Further
View full post on Spanish Only
Weekly Newsletter #6 and #7
Starting this week, the newsletter will be synced. That means that the day I’m sending out the e-mail, it will also appear on the blog. I’ve noticed that the newsletter is a good way to start discussions, so I want to have feedback as fast as possible after sending it out.
Here are both newsletter number 6 and 7.
Newsletter #6
Newsletter #7
Further reading:
- Weekly Newsletter #4
- Spanish-Only.com Launching Weekly Newsletter
- Weekly Newsletter #3
Further
View full post on Spanish Only
Newsletter #8
Further reading:
- Weekly Newsletter #3
- Weekly Newsletter #4
- Weekly Newsletter #5
Further
View full post on Spanish Only
Why Using a Dictionary Isn’t Important
In the past I’ve written quite some posts about dictionaries, why they’re useful, how I use them to collect sentences, and what to look for in a good dictionary. So maybe you think I’m a big fan of dictionaries and that I always have one near to look something up. Truth is, I’m not a fan, I don’t use them a lot, and I think they’re not important at all. Let me explain you why.
Why I’m not a fan of dictionaries
Paper dictionaries are often big and heavy, which means that you can’t carry them around if you want to. When I have a writing exam I almost break my back because I have to carry a bag, containing several heavy dictionaries.
Electronic dictionaries are a better solution, but not accepted at my college to use in exams. When used for personal use, electronic (let it be on the internet, a computer program or a physical electronic device) dictionaries are the way to go. And still they’re not ideal, because they often don’t contain slang and most example sentences are just ridiculous and not really natural language.
Last but not least: bilingual dictionaries make you lazy and keep you translating stuff instead of thinking in concepts, and especially keep you from switching over to a monolingual environment.
Why I don’t use dictionaries
Time. In the time I’m looking up a specific word or expression, I already lost focus for the thing I was doing. That’s why I only use a dictionary when I’m writing something and can’t come up with a word in Spanish. Only then I’ll look up the English or Dutch word that comes close to the word I had in mind, and will often find the word I’m looking for.
However, when looking for that word, I find more Spanish words with more or less the same meaning, but not quite. Only because I speak Spanish well I’m able to notice the nuance between words. A beginner can’t, and will often choose the wrong word, burning this wrong choice in his brain.
That’s why I don’t use a dictionary when being a beginner in a language. That’s why I just get input and don’t bother if I don’t understand something; I have no reference to see if something is correct or not. Chances are I’m learning something that in theory is correct, but in practice makes no sense at all. I can look up but, and find mas and pero, only to find out waaaaay later that mas is a word used in literature and pero is used when speaking or in less formal writing. A beginner doesn’t know that, I do.
Why dictionaries aren’t important
By now I hope you see dictionaries can actually be an enemy instead of a friend you always thought they were. But why aren’t they important? We’ve already seen that they’re useful in some cases, but now I’m saying they’re not important?
Everything you can learn from a good dictionary, you can learn from getting immersed in the language. A kid doesn’t know how to read, and still he acquires new vocabulary. Every day we learn new words in our native language, and most time that happens verbally or while reading the paper or a book. No dictionary to save us here, and still we seem to do fine. Weird, huh? It’s just how our brain works.
Dictionaries aren’t important, but teachers and other people like to let us believe that they are. Of course they have their place, but you shouldn’t give them more credit than they deserve. They’re bundled dead trees, who cares.
They’re expensive, keep you translating stuff, force you to think about words, take up time, take up room in your bag, are heavy, unnatural at times, unclear about what word to use, want to let you believe they’re important, aren’t important, smell weird, keep you from getting some more input, are incomplete, often lack example sentences, often lack natural language, prevent you from using real language, let you think everything is translatable, and do thousands of other things wrong.
A good dictionary has its place, can serve you well at times, but should never be considered important or indispensable.
Photo by machimon
Further reading:
- What Spanish Dictionary to Use?
- Online EsPasa dictionary for free
- What Is The Most Important Part Of a Language?
Further
View full post on Spanish Only
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Word of the Day
- (la) hebilla = bucklePronounced: eh-bée-Yah Type: noun Example: Algunos zapatos tienen hebillas pero sólo son de adorno. Translation: Some shoes have buckles but they are just decorative. Copyright 2010, GB Blanchard - Start learning Spanish with StartSpanish: http://www.braser.com/start-spanish.html […]
