This Language Pool, however, will be a place to relax and to laugh. You will find links to humorous language related articles as well as own articles here.
Learning a New Language – Between Motivation and Frustration
You want to learn a new language. That is a great decision, really. Congratulations! However, there are many pitfalls on the way …
You have bought your learning materials and are highly motivated to begin. Enthusiastically, you put your nose into your books, lay the CD into the CD player and start with chapter one, only to notice that writing and pronunciation differ dramatically. Slightly put back, you turn a few pages back and start with the pronunciation guide. At the end of your first lesson, you know how the different letters and vowel combinations can be pronounced and that learning a new language is not as easy as you have thought before. Still, your motivation is high.
At the beginning of your second lesson, you review the pronunciation guide. Then you feel prepared to start with chapter one. You lay the CD into your CD player once again, press “play” and listen to the text while at the same time reading it in your book. Frowning, you check if you are really listening to the right track corresponding to the text. Finally, you end up reading the pronunciation guide yet once again to find out why you haven’t understood the text on CD. Motivation and frustration are eying each other suspiciously.
In the third lesson, you don’t use the CD at all. Instead, you read the text silently and check with the vocabulary pages after every sentence. You notice that the correct pronunciation of each word is written in brackets on the vocabulary pages. Why haven’t you checked before? Now you start the text anew and look up each word so you can read it to yourself. After having gone through the whole text like this, you realize that you still don’t know what the text is about. So, looking up pronunciation and meaning at the same time doesn’t work for you. Frustration is teasing your motivation.
The next day, you skip your language lesson and spend your time tidying up the house – a task you normally loathe.
You give it a last try. This time, you only focus on understanding the text. After turning back and forth between text and vocabulary page for half an hour, you eventually know what the text is about. You feel proud. You actually made it. You stand up and go to the fridge to get the champagne out for celebrating your success. Then you remember that it was only the first of twenty texts …
At this moment, motivation and frustration are fighting a raging battle. Which one will win your battle?
(c) Saoirse O'Mara
Top 5 Reasons to Learn Foreign Languages
Learning a new language in itself is rewarding. If you still hesitate, here are five persuading reasons why you should start learning a new language:
1) You have a reason to hang around in bookstores and libraries all day. Your excuse: You are looking for new language learning resources. In addition, you now have an excuse for buying new books – as long as they are in the language you are learning.
2) If you love watching movies, you can do so whenever you want. Switch the subtitles and / or the language to a foreign language. When your sweetheart complains that you watch too many movies instead of spending time with him, tell him you are learning a new language.
3) The faces people pull when you tell them how many languages you speak are certainly worth the effort. (Believe me, the faces can be hilarious!)
4) You can eavesdrop on foreign people on the train, the bus or at restaurants. Many people will talk about the funniest things when they think nobody can understand them.
5) When you are on vacation and you meet a sweet girl or a nice guy, you can flirt with them and impress them with your language skills instead of watching them from a distance and being mortified that you cannot talk to them.
You see, learning a new language can make your life so much more interesting and better that it is certainly worth the effort. All you have to do is choose a language and get started!
(c) Saoirse O'Mara
