How to learn a foreign language

We firstly need to dispel some deeply ingrained myths about how to learn a foreign language. Research has shown the following myths to be untrue.

Myth 1: It is impossible to learn a foreign language after a certain age.

Untrue. Whatever your age, if you want to learn, you can learn. The best time to start learning is now…

Myth 2: Children are much better at learning foreign languages than adults

Untrue. Children and adults learn languages differently. Research has shown that given the right language resources and language input, adults can learn just as well as children and, furthermore, in some aspects of language learning, outperform children.

Myth 3: A child can only be taught a foreign language by a teacher or a native speaker.

Untrue. Children can learn from a parent who is not fluent. The important aspect is that the parent is available to learn alongside their child and interact. Fluency is not necessary.

Myth 4: Learning technical grammar is a pre-requisite to mastering a foreign language.

Untrue. Children have learned a language perfectly well without ever knowing the technical grammatical components of it. Some experts believe that excessive focus on grammar can actually impede learning.

Often people are put off learning a second language before they even start. They think that they are too old; don’t have a gift for languages; don’t have a fluent teacher; or that they will get stuck on grammar. Now we know we these are phantom problems, we can set about establishing the best, quickest and easiet ways to learn a language. More coming soon!

The key is to use the right tools – or in the case of language learning, the right MFL resources.

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Family Board Games and why they’re still important

Mum  : “How about a game of Monopoly or KLOO after dinner tonight?

Daughter: “But isn’t ‘X-Factor’ on the box at 8 pm?”

TV v Traditional Family Board Game – that’s a complete mismatch, right? It’s a David v Goliath struggle – that Goliath wins hands down in nearly every household. We have more channels that we can possibly watch. We have PVRs in case we miss something. There is video gaming too. Not to mention the Internet. And what about Smartphones?……

It seems that, without really noticing or understanding the implications, we have become neurally plugged into a virtual world that even Captain Kirk would have boggled at. And why not you might ask? It is fun. And what harm can it do? Ah…funny you should ask.

Before we complacently switch on the box – perhaps we should consider these truly horrific facts about screen time and its affect on our physical and mental health – especially in children. Here is the latest research. It should stop us in our tracks.

* 8 – 18 year olds watch on average 4 hours a day with a further two hours of screen time on computers and video games.
* Reading, playing and socialising are getting squeezed to the margins by screen time.
* Homework is losing out to screen time by 12 to 1 in terms of time allocation.
* Kids who watch at least four hours a day are more likely to be overweight.
* Kids who watch violence on TV and on video games are becoming desensitised to violent behaviour and lacking in empathy.
* Children spend more time in front of screens than they do in the classroom!

Screen time can be good for us. It can be educational, entertaining and diverting….but the sheer quantity of screen time that we are consuming is becoming a monstrous problem. Dr Aric Sigman, an American expert on the affect of TV on children says:

“There is a definite relationship between the amount of time kids spend watching screens per day and a range of physical, cognitive and educational problems later on. These include severe problems like ADHD and milder but still worrying damage to their ability to concentrate, their attention span and performance in school.”

And if you think he’s American and that these problems haven’t reached the UK yet – think again. The problem is here – and it is big.

“Kids with a TV in their bedroom are less likely to be able to read by the age of 6,” says Dr Sigman. “This is one reason Britain has such a poor literacy rate. Also, 37 per cent of British ten-year-olds play computer games for more than three hours a day – one of the highest rates in the world. This has a profound effect on their attention span, their ability to read and concentrate in school.”

It gets worse for UK children.

“Just because something is called children’s television, don’t assume it’s better for your kids,” says Dr Sigman. “These claims are made by the people who produce the programmes, not by scientists. In fact, a Carry On film is probably better for your child than a lot of CBBC shows, because they lack the fast editing and bright colours that do all the damage.”

The USA, which is usually ahead of us in addressing these issues, is wrestling with ways to deal with this monster in the room. They have even started a series of charitable websites to help parents combat excessive screen time. One organisation www.tvturnoff.org provides an arsenal of ideas on how to reduce and create alternative ways to have fun, entertain and occupy the family. Significant among them is “Game Night” where they encourage families to switch off the TV and instead play games, board games, card games, any game! Why? Because they help children in all the ways that screen entertainment don’t. They provide interactive play time. They help children build their social skills and can be educational. They anchor us in the real world!

Board Games for Children

Board Games are the antithesis of the virtual world. They are social, fun, engrossing and stimulating. What is more (and here’s a little known fact) – today’s children love them! Teachers have written to tell me that their children are “going crazy” for KLOO Language games – they’re words not mine.

Best of British Board Games

KLOO makes learn French, Spanish or English board games. Just by playing you learn a language. In 2011 KLOO Games won the 2011 “Best of British Board Game” at the ToyTalk awards. So if you’re looking to buy a Great Family Board Game and Learn a language – try KLOO.

So I ask again – anyone for Spanish KLOO? What about Hide and Seek?

PS If you are looking for new games, try this board games blog. Good reviews by games enthusiasts.

How best to build our vocabulary in a foreign language

I am pretty sure that none of us had parents who, when we were very young, gave us lists of words to learn by next week. What generally happened is that we would point at something that we wanted to know the name of, such as a dog, and our parents said “Dog” and we repeated “Dog”. This is form of learning is called Discovery Learning  and it is the natural way we built our vocabulary when we were small.

Learning new words with Discovery Learning…Eureka!

Discovery Learning is when we discover what we want to know, when we want to know it. In these moments our minds are incredibly receptive to new information because they are actively seeking it. Some scientists call this the Eureka moment, or light bulb moment or Aha! moment. We have all felt it, perhaps when trying to crack a crossword problem or trying to recall someone’s name and it’s extremely powerful. But how can we harness it?

Learning foreign words with Discovery Learning

The power of Discovery Learning is widely accepted. The problem is that replicating Discovery Learning in the classroom is notoriously difficult. How do you hand over the initiative of learning to your students – so they learn what they want to learn – and it still coincides with what the teacher wants to teach them! It is tricky.

But not impossible!

Auto-learning Language Game uses Discovery Learning to build vocabulary

As a games designer, I was frustrated with how slowly my own children were learning new words. All of the language resources I had bought for them were ineffective and, if I am

honest, they didn’t enjoy them anyway. So I looked to build an MFL Language Game concept that would allow them to build their vocabulary and make sentences without the need for a teacher to sit in on the game. In essence I wanted to create a game that generated hundreds of moments where they needed to learn foreign words to score points – and then discovered them through playing. We played around with different game concepts with scraps of paper around the kitchen table – but the light bulb switched on when we played our first game of KLOO.

Vocabulary Building Game

How effective is it? In a single game of 25 minutes a typical player (child or adult), will learn 15 – 30 words without ever feeling they are studying or working. It just comes naturally. Many teachers will tell you how challenging it is to motivate some students to learn 20 words by next week or even next month through usual vocabulary building techniques. So to be able to build vocabulary by hundreds of words, just by playing a game is increasingly valued by more and more MFL teachers..

What foreign words would I learn?

The vocabulary for KLOO games are high frequency words (HFW) chosen by teachers to meet the needs of the curriculum and are also deemed to be most useful. With one deck of KLOO cards you can make tens of thousands of sentences in French or Spanish. You’ll have a lot of fun too. Watch this two minute video to see how it all works!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKLbd08Ttbo&context=C39b9208ADOEgsToPDskLHFFHY4tToR9QYBeGNhe9y]

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Context helps lock foreign words in the long term memory

I was struck by the recent news of a young man who is fluent in 11 languages. There is a lovely piece on him on the BBC where he does in fact speak in all 11 languages. It is significant that he said only one thing about what makes it easier for him to learn new languages and I wrote it down word for word. He stated:

“THE EASIEST WAY TO LEARN IS FROM CONTEXT. I REMEMBER WHAT I SEE OR HEAR MORE EASILY THAN WORDS WRITTEN IN A LIST”

This is something that I agree with and is in fact supported by research into language learning. It is all the more shocking therefore that this mode of learning is often ignored in favour of vocabulary lists (bottom of the class for performance).

So below I am re-posting a blog I wrote a year ago about this very point. Interestingly when I look back at my blog stats I can see that this post is one of my most popular. Maybe people have a sense of its importance.

Make It Meaningful – The Importance of Meaningfulness and Context in Learning  a Language

Research shows that words and phrases need to be learned in context in order to avoid the dreaded fate of “Systematic Forgetting”. At all costs, therefore,  you should avoid learning from random lists, phrase books, and vocabulary drills. It is a waste of time!

However if you learn words when you need them and then immediately place them in context with known words (i.e. make a sentence) YOU’LL LEARN FAST! By putting words into context you give your new vocabulary meaning. Meaningfulness is a central plank for getting words into your LONG TERM MEMORY.

Meaningful learning means connecting new information with information that is already known. This creates what is called a cognitive structure – in essence the new information is “hooked” in by the known information. And the more hooks there are, the more “anchored” the new information becomes.

Dr Brown says that this theory “provides a strong theoretical basis for the rejection of conditioning models of practice and repetition in language teaching. In a meaningful process like second language learning, mindless repetition, imitation and other rote practices in the language classroom have no place.” He goes on to expand the point: “Too many languages are filled with rote and practice that centres on surface forms. Most cognitive psychologists agree that the frequency of stimuli and the number of times spent practicing a form are not highly important in learning an item. What is important is meaningfulness. It appears that contextualized, appropriate, meaningful communication in the second language seems to be:

“THE BEST POSSIBLE PRACTICE THE LEARNER OF A SECOND LANGUAGE COULD ENGAGE IN”

So there yo have it. Have a meaningful relationship with words and they’ll love you and stay with you. KLOO is a language game that places new words in sentences to make sense. It is not surprising, therefore, that tests show people learn words 200% faster with KLOO – and often even faster than that.

Dr H. Douglas Brown is a professor of MA-TESOL at San Francisco State University and has written many books, articles and textbooks on language teaching.

Here is a lovely video that makes the same point – with animations!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKLbd08Ttbo&feature=g-upl&context=G2c998f5AUAAAAAAAFAA]

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When should we learn a second language?

On one level there is a simple answer to this frequently asked question and the answer is – now. That’s because learning a language bestows on the learner so many benefits – mental, social and even career – that it just makes a lot of sense whatever your age. So if you are reading this article and wondering whether it is worth learning a language or whether it is too late for you. The answer is yes – do learn a second language and, no – it’s not too late.

Do children learn a language better?

Many believe that the optimum time to learn a language is as a child – ideally under 7 and certainly before the teenage years. You often hear of parents of saying they have the missed the boat by not introducing a second language to their child at an early age. If we dig a bit deeper though, all is not as it first seems and they should not be despondent.

Children learning a language at home

When we compare child and adult language learning – we are often not comparing like with like. Let’s take a child in a bilingual home…well of course you would expect a child to become bilingual. They have been completely immersed in both languages. However, this language ability is not exclusive to children. Adults can do this too – no problem. So this does not really indicate a special ability on the part of a child….it’s just an environment that is good for language learning – whatever your age.

Families learning a language abroad

Sometimes we see a difference of performance when a family moves abroad. The kids pick up the language like magnets and the parents struggle. But if we dig a little deeper, we see that they are in completely different environments. The children often go to local schools

and are again immersed. The adults on the other hand are often leading a very different lifestyle. They go to classes for sure but otherwise are leading an essentially monolingual life. They can and do speak their first language at home; they mix with expats and friends from their own country; and, at work, if they are English speakers, they discover that everyone switches to English when they walk in a room. So we are comparing a child who is immersed for hours and hours every day with parents who go to lessons twice a week. The difference in performance is entirely predictable.

What if you lift the children out of the local school and put them into an English speaking school: is there then a difference between the language performance between the children and parents? Here I can talk from first hand experience. I was from the age of 6 to 9 brought up in Germany but I went to an English-speaking school. Result? My mother was the best German speaker – she had to do the shopping and made more of an effort. I learned German swear words but not an awful lot more. I can say all my little friends from that school were no better at German. All in all, a picture is emerging as to what actually is important in language learning – and it’s not necessarily age.

The next statement might surprise you (and hopefully inspire you)

You can learn a second language just as well as a child.

This is not wishful thinking – it is well researched and actually self evidently true.

What are the important factors in language learning?

Professors of Language, Kendall King, Ph.D and Alison Mackey, Ph.D in their excellent book – The Bilingual Edge (Collins Living), site that the environment has much more influence over the success (or otherwise) of second language learning than age. Many researchers believe that other factors such as motivation and anxiety levels as well as the amount of exposure have a bigger impact on your success than your age. Children will think nothing of trying another language (if they have to) and won’t mind getting things wrong. Adults will often avoid social interaction for fear of being seen as foolish. When they do this they reduce their exposure and performance naturally drops.

Can adults learn a language just as well as children?

Yes – given the same opportunities and motivation.

If age is not as important as many think, then what are the keys to your success in language learning?

1. Make time

2. Be motivated and not be afraid to make mistakes

3. Seek chances to trial your language with real people

4. Use the right language resources.

The last point is especially important. The same authors talk of the perils of learning with the wrong language resources. Many edutainment devices, DVDs, television programs, computer games and talking toys are, they say, close to useless.

On the other hand, they recommend language games, reading together and interacting with a real person (who does not have to be fluent in the second language).

A foreign language game that uses language principles

KLOO is a multi-award winning language game that lets you make sentences and learn words as you play and interact with other learners. Players find they learn a language at least 200% faster and have more fun too! The game was designed around important language learning principles. Why not for instance check out how easy it is to make a sentence in Spanish using KLOO cards in the video below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT8ZqajZJf4&feature=g-upl]

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