Learning has called out for a quick pace in a rapid ever-changing technology industry. You got to learn fast. The skills you have today may be ‘outdated’ or ‘obsolete’ the next birthday. If you are looking for courses that won’t change rapidly, either you study a religion or a language.
My focus is Language because it is the Gateway of Communication among human beings. The market is wider with you having more language capabilities. How fast can you really learn a language and how well can you communicate it with good understanding?
Here I share with you some of the experiences I picked up while in the midst of learning a foreign language.
1# : Languages comprise of different segments.
As an example, I speak English Language. It is just a communication segment, for me to be able to relay messages and be understood since young. The exam format back then in the 80s to 90s were: Comprehension, Composition, Listening Comprehension and Oral Communication.
However if you ask me to teach, I may have to enrol myself in British Council or CA International first. Lord…After 30 years over?…
I need to re-learn and revise what these are: grammar, vocabulary, noun, pronoun, suffixes, present tense, past tense, present continuous tense, past continuous tense, verbs, phrases, and so on. These areas are necessary in order to teach English.
How many of us were aware that we were learning only to understand a passage and answer the questions correctly? How many of us breeze through our grades just to get to the next level, so we learnt to create stories of not more than 800 words, listened to remember and understand the audio in order to attempt for correct multiple-choices questions, and to prove ourselves confident in fluency of speaking during oral picture reading exams?
In between the words, we do not pay attention to the rules of the language. If I do ask some bachelor degree graduates today, I am sure a handful of them will say “I am not a language teacher.”
Then we will realise: hey! why didn’t we pay attention to these details back then in school? Noun, Pronoun, Suffixes and so on. During this pandemic offering language courses online is part of side gig and a new avenue of creating more job opportunities for everyone. There, we missed it.
2# : Learn with the Native speaker to pick up faster.
“Arabic Language can take you 10 years in order to be able to speak if you do not have a friend to converse with. If you want to pick up fast, you should go to the middle east where majority of the citizen speak the language. To master the language takes a longer time.” — Ustadh
This was what several teachers told me when I was trying to juggle between Islamic studies and Arabic Language concurrently. How much can a part-time study gives? We are busy with our daily working schedule and thus the advantage of learning once a week is: Less stressful about revision.
When I left to Yemen, I had a dictionary in my hand. All the vocabulary words I learnt before, ran through my head like a Javascript running continuously. I could not put it into sentences nicely. I was on the a long journey with a born-Yemen scholar and another Indonesian girl. It was then I forced myself to speak with full of mistakes. Sometimes the scholar did not understand me.
However it took me 3 months to speak a decent speech to be understood and understand their local standard Arabic conversations, compared to 4 years of doing it part-time in my homeland but not being able to speak totally.
So if you were to learn from a native speaker and your teacher speak totally in the foreign language, do not be discouraged. Just listened. When someone teaches you by translating in your comfortable language, you will not likely pick it up fast. You might even quit after the basic level. You will learn better by not being in your comfort zone.
3# Intention of Learning is Top Most Importance
Learning has different strategies. In languages, you got to listen, speak, read and write. Often we jumped into a course without knowing exactly why we are doing it except following the trends of movies. Korean movies are a big hit in the market now, isn’t it?
For example, the only idea people hop into fast track foreign language is because they wanted to go for holiday in Korea. YouTube videos offer many varieties of languages “Sentences, Phrases and Words helpful for Tourists in XXXX country”. That will be all the surface-level knowledge you get. If that is the only intention you have, such programs’ portion served the right purpose.
However if you really want to speak a foreign language well and use that at an international level of business interactions and communications, you got to put in more effort. That’s why, before you learn something, write down all the Intentions or Goals you want to be able to achieve.
People learn without giving attention to their intentions. Let’s say, I listened but, what is my intention in listening? Most of us listened with the intention to answer or ‘healthy debate’. Very little do we listen with the intention to understand. We won’t be attentive. When we are not attentive enough, we don’t remember what we learn.
Learning but not Remembering is NOT learning. So how do we remember? That is then, another area about Focusing. That involved the State of Mind.
4# Go Extra Mile and Put Extra Effort in Learning from Different Platforms
This is where a class of newbies who knew zero of a language is differentiated between having a passion for what they do or just unsure why they are learning it in the first place.
Aside from waiting for every weekly sessions online classes, spare 30–45 minutes daily for revision and learning new words. One area which you need not wait for your teacher to teach you, is building up a vocabulary word bank. List down Names of Animal, Plants, Kitchenware, Places, Occupation, Colors, Days of the Week and so on are easily available online. Use the technology for a good purpose by learning.
As I write these, I am still learning to figure out too, how to create the spaces between what I am typing in Medium. Imagine each time I saved and reviewed, I had several unbelieving freaking out moments over the alignments between paragraphs. Sometimes, the early letters of Big sizes or Bold did not even appear. However, as I write day by day, I discovered strategies I could use. Learning also has its strategies. When your teacher teaches, pay attention to how he/she teaches.
Reading this far, how much can you recall what I’d shared? Let me summarise here:
1 — Understand the Different Segments of the Language.
2 — Learn from a Native Speaker to pick up faster.
3 — Write down all your intentions why you wanted to learn the language for and pay attention to it.
4 — Make extra effort to learn from more avenues, aside depending on the days with your teacher.
Language is also a skill. Take advantage of this. It is not too late to pick up something new. Even if it is meant for a hobby. We do not know what purposes it serve us in future however when we put our heart in it without giving up, the purpose will reveal itself, one day.
