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Learning any language as an addition to your own can be either extremely exciting, or boring, or daunting, depending on who you are and what your experiences have been. We've all had those moments in French classes at school when the teacher has put a list of grammar drills on the board, and it may as well be a physics formula as far as we're concerned. What I want to dispel here is the fear of learning foreign language, and the way I believe it should be taught.
Firstly, though, I propose a question. How did you learn your own, first language? Did your parents sit you down when you were 2 or 3 and hand you a grammar book? Did they hold classes for you everyday where you had to prepare oral exams and learn about how the French use 'wind power' (this is what I spoke on for my French As level oral exam, really). The answer, unless you had some extremely off the wall parenting (and everyone to their own, of course, if you did) is no. So, how do we all know how to speak our own language? We soaked up language like a sponge for the first 15 or so years of our lives at the speed at which a completely dry sponge soaks up water for the first time - naturally, and quickly without help. Unfortunately as we all know as we get older, the rate at which the sponges of our brains 'soak' up language, slows.
However, unlike a sponge our brains do not become so saturated that we can't learn any more. On the contrary - the more you learn, the more you can learn when it comes to language. It just takes a little motivation. Have you ever met one of those people who speaks a whole load of languages? You think how on Earth can someone be so clever? I can assure you it's exactly the same as anyone who has a job, or who does anything routine in their lives. We all find what we do often, easy. I'm not saying that everyone should go and learn 5 languages, but language is no different to learning anything else, whether it be how to do keep-me-ups with a football, or learning to play the piano. Yes, passion helps, but language should not be thought as something unattainable and boring.
The British education system treats language learning as an academic study of the linguistic structure of language. That's great if you want to study linguistics, but generally we want to communicate. Language is not just about learning grammar, in fact it's mostly about getting a basic point across first for survival, then detailing later. What's the point in leaning French and only being able to conjugate irregular verbs? Wouldn't we prefer to be able to communicate first, then fine tune the details?
Language should be taught like gym, or dance, or football or the clarinet. It's physical, practical, and should be taught for performance. If your clarinet teacher proposed you only write essays on how people play rather than every picking one up, she would be laughed at. So why is language taught like biology? or Maths? Language is the most advanced form of communication we have, and so let's concentrate at first on speaking it using the way we learnt naturally - by the real need for communication rather than essay writing and conjugations!
