Comment by wallflower | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wallflower | Hacker News Reader

Language learning is kind of like raising a child. As my sibling say, it is all theoretical until you actually do it.

So if you really want to learn a language, just start vomiting out words with a teacher one-on-one. Just like with child rearing, vomit and messiness is always involved.

There is no magic technique. If there is a magic technique, it is like this article alludes, to use many techniques. Some may work, some may not. It is up to you to find those techniques that work for you. You are the only one who can do that.

Don't take SHIT classes. I took a Spanish class once where the teacher spent 15 minutes of a 45 minute class by having each one of the students go through their homework answers.

Don't confuse activity with productivity. There are many things that you might think are productive, and they are not. Sometimes it depends on where you are in your language learning process. For example, listening or watching to a TV show in your target language with subtitles in the target language can be counter productive if you barely understand the sounds, let alone the meanings and grammar. Also, subtitles are not 1 to 1 to the audio.

In my experience, if it is painful to you, you won't continue doing it. Most of language learning can be a pain. One of the best ways to get around the pain is to find a teacher (iTalki is a great site for that) who you find fits your needs and meet regularly with them. At the minimum, twice a week. You'll probably find that, over time, you'll develop a friend-type relationship more than a teacher-student relationship. How else are you going to talk for an hour? And if you are paying someone for their time and not relying on your friend who speaks that language it is a clear-cut transactional relationship. Patience can be bought. By paying a teacher, you are paying for their patience and your accountability to them.

It is like going to the gym. If you go to the gym once a week, don't expect a lot. However, if you go to the gym 3 times a week, you can definitely expect some improvement. You can expect even more improvement if you work with a personal trainer who gently pushes you, as you get better.

EDIT: Updated and refined my argument about taking classes

> Don't take classes. I took a Spanish class once...

I STRONGLY categorically disagree with your "don't take classes" statement.

I would rephrase your statement "don't take shit classes".

Don't waste your time on "My name is Bob" classes looking at cartoons in textbooks.

But good classes. With proper structured tuition. Given by a true native teacher. Not an opportunity to be sniffed at.

Why do I say this ? Because I've done it. It was bloody hard work at the time and I hated every minute of it. But the outcome in terms of my fluency, including finer details like pronunciation etc without needing to think about it ? Unmatched. As far as I'm concerned there's no substitute for supervised learning.

If you want to learn a language properly, you need someone not afraid to tell you you're wrong (rather than just being nice and saying "that's good" all the time, or turning a blind eye to your abysmal pronunciation). You also need someone to push you and challenge you, especially with technical aspects which again is not something you'll find with friends.

Classes that don't focus on the painful, difficult conversations the parent mentions are worthless, so the point still stands. These classes can be detrimental because they are learning theater. They give the mere appearance of language comprehension.

>For example, listening or watching to a TV show in your target language with subtitles in the target language can be counter productive if you barely understand the sounds, let alone the meanings and grammar. Also, subtitles are not 1 to 1 to the audio.

This apparently is how language acquisition works. I do speak five languages, and not in a "polyglot blog post" way. I've tried to learn Spanish, German, Hebrew, and Russian.

The difference lies in the exposition part. The very process I used to learn English was to watch movies with barely intelligible dialogue, and subtitles that weren't 1:1. This was to "train my ear". I have also read a lot of books and content on the internet, and made sure to do it out loud. The muscles involved in English are different and it hurt at first. This was to learn idioms and acquire vocabulary.

I haven't bothered to learn grammar in any of the languages I speak but inferred the rules from consuming content. Granted, sometimes you explicit a rule, but the bulk of the time was consumption.

I discovered Stephen Krashen's work a few years ago. It is centered around "comprehensible input" for language acquisition as opposed to "learning", and stresses the fact taht input (listening, reading) was more important than output(speaking, writing) for language acquisition. It matches my experience and the experience of people I know who actually do speak multiple languages.

I've also made attempts at a bunch of other languages. Although I understand things here and there, the "input" is insufficient.

One interesting fact: I learned English out of necessity. I was interested in a field and read practically all that had been written about it in French. My only option was to learn English to access many more books.

After seeing real gains after hiring a personal trainer (partially due to the obligation of showing up and not skipping), I realized I needed to do the same with my language learning. It's tedious and by brain hurts after our lessons, but I've made a lot more progress than from my self learning.

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