How to Learn Any Language 14
The Multiple Track Attack
So is there really a magic way to make learning a foreign language painless?
Yes and no. We have some magic, all right, tricks and tactics that literally shovel the language into your head, as opposed to your high school Spanish class that teaspooned it in or didn’t bother getting it in at all. The system, however, won’t work unless you do. There’s going to be pain, but you will have something – plenty – to show for it.
The promise here is not gain without pain. It’s the most gain for the least pain.
If you suddenly decide to get physically fit (just as you’ve decided to learn another language) you wouldn’t sit around and wonder, “Let’s see. We’ve got aerobic exercises, free weights, stretching, high tech gym machines, jogging, swimming, vitamins, and sensible nutrition. Which one shall I use?”
Obviously, you’re going to use a mix of some or all of the above. And that’s the way to approach learning another language. The multiple track attack simply parts from the absurd notion that you should choose a grammar book or a cassette course or a reader or a phrase book; instead, it sets you up with all of the above – and more – simultaneously.
You will fail or you will succeed. If you fail, your books, cassettes, dictionaries, and scattered flash cards will litter your drawers and closets like so many unlifted barbells, unswallowed vitamins, unsoiled workout suits, and unused jogging shoes. They will mock you every time your embarrassed eye falls upon them.
Succeed, and you’ll be the proud owner of another language.
Charles Berlitz says that saying a word or phrase aloud ten to twenty times is more effective a learning technique than merely reading the same item fifty to one hundred times. Likewise, seeing a word or phrase in your grammar book fifty times does not secure it in your memory as effectively as seeing it two or three times and them coming across that same word or phrase by surprise in a newspaper or magazine or hearing it on a cassette or in a radio broadcast or a movie or in conversation with a native speaker.
It may be hard to explain why the multiple track attack works, but it’s easy to prove that it does. It’s somehow related to the excitement of running into someone from your hometown on the other side of the world. You might have ignored him back home or dismissed him with a “howdy,” but you’ll be flung into each other’s arms by the power of meeting unexpectedly far from home.
The rub off effect kicks in nicely almost from the beginning of your effort as words you learned from a flash card or cassette pop up in your workbook or newspaper. Sure, you will eventually conquer the word even if it occurs only in your grammar book or your phrase book or on your cassette, but that learning involves repeated frontal assault on a highly resistant unknown. Let that same word come at you, however, in a real life newspaper article and your mind embraces it as an old friend.
Attempting to master a language with a grammar book alone is too boring; with phrase books alone, too superficial; with cassettes alone, too fruitless (except with Pimsleur!); and with dictionary and newspaper alone, impossible. The multiple track attack makes your work pay off.Getting Started
Open your grammar to the first lesson. Do you understand the first paragraph? If so, proceed to paragraph two. If not, reread paragraph one. Can you determine precisely what it is that’s blocking you from comprehension? If so, take a pencil (not pen) and underline the word or words that are tripping you up. Run a wavy pencil line down the left hand margin of whatever confuses you. That paragraph will never change. The grammatical point that the confusing paragraph seeks to make will remain as immutable as Gibraltar until your mind decides to open up to it. Comprehension frequently clicks on like a light switch. No rush.
Try to summarise what you don’t understand. Pretend you’re writing a letter to your aunt complaining about this ridiculous new language you’re trying to learn and, using as few words as possible, encapsulate your confusion in writing. Take that note and put it in a Sturdikleer holder and carry it with you in your pocket or bag. Get into the habit of writing down everything that confuses with you and carrying it with you. You will try to find informants or mentors – either native speakers or others who’ve learned your target language well enough to answer your questions. Befriend the Korean grocer, the Italian waiter, the Albanian at the pizzaria, your dentist’s Romanian secretary. You don’t need such people, but they’re extremely helpful and easier to locate than you might think, and getting easier all the time as America becomes an international mixture of peoples. Your informants will usually love being asked to help you learn their language.
Let’s suppose you’ve stubbed your venturesome toe on paragraph one or two or three or whichever, and no comprehension clicks on. At this point you must consciously overturn the rules of misdirected American language teaching and do something radical. You must wave goodbye to your unsolved puzzle and keep moving ahead.
If you don’t understand it, skip it for the time being. Chances are excellent your confusion will clear itself up as you progress through more and more concepts that you do understand. You will have the pleasure of looking back on earlier lesssons in the grammar, seeing your wavy pencil lines beside a now clear paragraph, and saying to
yourself, “How could I have ever been derailed by this?” It’s fun erasing those wavy lines!
Continue through five lessons of the grammar before you so much as glance at any of your other tools. Leave the cassettes wrapped in their packaging. Don’t be tempted to look at the newspaper or magazine in your target language. The more of a language lover you are, the tougher it will be. Plodding through grammar while friendly cassettes and real life newspapers await will make you feel like a child who has to finish his homework before he runs out and plays baseball. And that’s exactly the point. You are a child in that new language, and like all children, you have to learn to put first things first. Grammar comes first. Build a little character by slogging through five chapters of it. You will build up a head of steam that will send you charging headlong into more pleasant terrain.
Cassettes, newspapers, flash cards, and phrase books will cut the boredom out of waiting for buses and replace it with growth in another language; these will be your reward after you make an honest beginning in the grammar. Sustain your spirit during the grammar study by reminding yourself how soon you’re going to be allowed to go out and “play.”