An easy way to learn foreign languages

by Luca Lampariello on Jan 3, 2011

Listening and reading have made up the bread and butter of my language learning since I

was 13. My highly effective language learning method has developed from that.

The method is simple. I study every day (1 – 2 hours max). Shortcuts sound sexy and give

you a short-term buzz, but the effects fade away quickly. My method is efficient and gets

you fluent in the long term.

Quality of study in the initial stages makes the difference between an excellent and an

average student.

The four components

Four components are required to learn a language:

•Listening

•Repeating

•Writing

•Translating*

(* Translating from your own language into the target language (the opposite of what

people often do) is vital.)

My method allows me to retain 80% of what I study.

People want to speak a language quickly and some study for 10 hours a day. They reach

burnout just as fast!

Tempo

The quicker you learn, the quicker you forget, if the information is not used regularly. Easy

come, easy go as the saying goes.

Success is language retention in the longterm. Gradual and structured learning (creating,

what I call a “linguistic core”) is a must. This enables the learner to hold a decent

conversation following a two-year break in practice. In the same scenario, those who

studied a number of languages at the same time (or one in an unstructured manner) are less

likely to speak it well, if at all.

The Linguistic Core

Developing a linguistical core provides a solid grounding in the language.

Quality of study in the first 8 to 12 months is crucial.

Then the other necessary ingredient for good language acquisition – QUANTITY – can be

added.

Preparation

Prepare and train your brain to receive content.

Absorb the sound and the essence of the language. This develops a “plasticity” towards the

language.

Listening and reading are extremely effective once you have done this and developed a

large passive vocabulary.

Learning is easier if you understand what you are learning.

If you already know a lot of words you are more likely to understand, enjoy and learn from

an article or a podcast.

***

Forget it: the secret of remembering words

by Luca Lampariello on Apr 11, 2012

Words are without a doubt the basic elements, the “bricks” of a language. Learning new

words represents a serious challenge for many language learners. Acquiring lots of words

fast is a dream for every language learner. For some, it is a real obsession. Quite often, these

efforts are met with disappointment and frustration.

It is no surprise, then, that one of the most frequent question here and I get here on

YouTube concerns what I define as “the quest for words”.

Why is it so hard to memorize new words?

Memorizing new terms seems a difficult task for many reasons. In general, the brain tends to

select the information that it receives, discarding what it considers unnecessary. Imagine

remembering every single detail that enters your brain: you would remember thousands of

words effortlessly, but would also be paying a terrible price: your brain would be constantly

fighting against a permanent, unwanted and annoying interference of useless information.

Fortunately, our brain works on its own rhythm and it “self-regulates” when it comes to

organizing information.

So, forgetting information is actually a good thing. The goal is to help the brain to remember

the information that we consider important. Language learners want to remember as many

words as possible and they often cannot. They come to the conclusion that they simply do

not have a good memory and thus language learning is not for them. This is another myth

that must be dispelled.

Whatever its limitations, the brain possesses an extraordinary ability to learn and retain

information. The secret is to how to really use it.

A famous graph exists called “forgetting curve”:

If we learn a new word or expression on day X, this information will fade in our memory

within just a few days. Do not be surprised, then if you cannot recall a given word after

having learned it just a few days earlier.

How can we improve our capacity of retaining new words?

The process of acquiring new information can be generally divided into 3 categories:

decoding, storage and retrieval. When the brain receives new information, it decodes it and

then stores it. The stored information can then be retrieved in the future. If we cannot recall

something (the so called “knowledge-gap”), something went wrong during one of these

phases.

There are several types of memory: short and long-term memory, sensory memory etc. The

latter receives information through the stimulation of the senses such as sight, touch, smell.

The short-term memory, also called working memory, retains small amounts of information

for short periods of time. We use it when we do mental calculations, remember a password,

a code or a phone number. If we want to store a word, we have to put it into our long-term

memory. How can we do it efficiently?

Memory is like a muscle, it atrophies if it does not work. Each capacity/faculty that is

neglected tends to weaken and eventually disappear. So it must be constantly stimulated.

The best way to do it is to repeat continuously. If you want your memory to work well, make

it work a little bit everyday. The repetition of an operation has a cumulative effect whose

main goal is that of forcing information into our brain without us making deliberate efforts.

KEY FACTORS

Here are some key factors for improving your overall capacity to remember new terms and

expressions

Interest

In order to improve your ability to recognize and memorize new words and expressions you

need to be interested in and passionate about what you are doing. Cultivating an interest in

a particular field and constantly reminding yourself why you are doing it provides an

incredible boost in your learning process. When you start learning a language; imagine the

immense possibilities that speaking it would bring in terms of work, friendships, feelings.

Emotions enhance memory. It is up to you to make this happen.

Attention

Concentration and attention are key factors in the learning process. In the Internet era,

concentration is diminished due to multitasking. So, I suggest you eliminate the music radio

and all other potential distractions and focus on the task at hand. Concentration helps boost

your performance enormously.

Comprehension

We only learn what we can understand. Whenever you fully understand a sentence or a

concept, you also understands its single parts and the connections among them. An engineer

who figures out how an electronic circuit works is more likely to understand its single

components. The same goes for a language learner: if he understood a given sentence, he

will remember the words better.

Association

Our brain is a huge network of neurons: every single neuron is connected with tens of

thousands of other neurons So if we want to make the best of learning processes we should

adapt them to the way our brain is structured. One of the most effective tools for doing this

is association, that is, linking new information with old information, which is stored in our

long-term memory. This can be done in many ways.

Visualization

One of these ways is through images. Our brain also processes information via colors, forms,

etc. If you link a given word with an image, that word will be more likely to be linked with

other information already stored in our memory. As a result, we will remember it better. For

example to remember the name of a person, you can put it in relation to a particular feature

of his appearance. The more the association is absurd, the easier you will remember that

person’s name.

Consolidation

Take the time to process and store information. One of the best and simplest ways to do this

is simply to review what you have learned at regular intervals. Repeating something makes

your brain realize that it might need that information and it helps you to fix that information

in a much more effective way.

Context

Context is king in language learning. It is important to always learn words in their context

which helps your brain to form images, associate the word to other words. The more

interesting a text is, the more we will be motivated to understand it and thus remember it.

Multiple contexts

Reading makes us connect the dots. When we read a lot, we enormously raise the possibility

of finding the same word in different contexts, which enormously reinforces our capacity to

retain it. Once again, associates plays an important role.

Dynamic

Learning a language is a skill that we acquire. A dynamic learning process is preferable to a

static “study” of the language, where parts are analyzed in isolation and without a context

instead of being absorbed within interesting content.

TECHNIQUES

I have developed 2 specific techniques which abide by the factors/principles that I

mentioned above.

I use the first one when I am at STAGE 1 and STAGE 2 (deliberately learning) and the other

one deals with expanding the vocabulary at STAGE 3 (advanced learners, interpreters). I will

expand on this subject in my book…

***

How should we learn grammar?

by Luca Lampariello on Feb 15, 2012

Do we even need to formally learn it?

There are many opinions within the language learning community on the part of teachers

and learners regarding grammar.

Some people believe that a grammar-based approach is key to efficiently learning a language.

They claim that a thorough grammar study is necessary for understanding the structure of

the language. They insist that without understanding grammar, a language would be a

jumble of words difficult to decipher. Some go as far as to say that they first need to have a

good grasp of grammar even before starting learning the language. I call this a purely

analytical approach.

On the other hand, others believe exactly the opposite: that grammar books are an

unnecessary obstacle that slow down the learning process. Grammar rules should be

exclusively inferred by the language and not vice-versa. According to this vision, a student

should start “attacking” the language as soon as possible. Massive exposure and deduction

are key factors here. I call this a purely inductive approach.

A definition of Grammar

I found a rather interesting definition of grammar. Grammar is “the structural foundation of

our ability to express ourselves. The more we are aware of how it works, the more we can

monitor the meaning and effectiveness of the way we and others use the language. It can

foster precision, detect ambiguity and exploit the richness of expression. This can help

anyone, not only language teachers, but all teachers of everything”.

What struck me was the phrase: The more we are aware of how it works. I don’t think we

need to be aware of how it works. We just have to make it work. Once a language flows and

is accurately expressed, we have learned its grammar. Five year old kids are not even

conscious of the word grammar, and yet they are able to string together full, correct

sentences in their native tongue They have internalized it unconsciously.

Breaking the code

Our goal is to communicate. We are not seeking to do well at grammar exercises and related

matters . Grammar will be internalized if the learner works in a truly efficient manner.

I view languages as codes. Each language has a different code. Languages are ways which

human beings “encode” sounds and words to convey a message. If we communicate

efficiently, we have broken the code.

In order to break a code, we need to figure out its patterns. That’s the key.

Once you have broken the code, the language unfolds and everything gets easy and

enjoyable.

How to break the code?

The main question is, how to break the code? How to find a method to put all this into

practice?

Let me give you an example of analysing and inferring.

Let us consider the following sequence of integer numbers, called the Fibonacci numbers :

0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13…

Instead of giving you the explanation, I can give you a hint: there is a precise and simple

pattern between adjacent numbers, considered in pairs. Did you figure it out? If you didn’t,

try again, it is well worth the effort.

Ok, have you found the solution the solution? Don’t you feel a sense of satisfaction?

Now, imagine that I had simply given you the following definition:

The first two numbers in the Fibonacci sequence are 0 and 1, and each subsequent number

is the sum of the previous two. In mathematical terms, the sequence Fn of Fibonacci is

defined by the recurrence relation:

Fn= Fn-1 + Fn-2

With seed values F0 = 0, F1 = 1.

With this, you will only have to insert the numbers the initial seed values and obtain the

sequence. You have learned the notion of the Fibonacci series, you have been told how it

works. In the first case,, instead, you have figured it out by yourself. If you did, the brain will

have made the effort to find a pattern. That effort is important in that it causes neural

networks to form. Inferring things with a little help from the outside is important.

My Techniques

I am very goal oriented person, and I make 100% sure that I can comfortably communicate in

the target language.

In order to do that, I cut out all the fat and only concentrate on what is necessary to use the

language. I simply choose texts which suit my interests and intuitively try to understand the

grammar by observing the actual language of native speakers. I am calm and relaxed

because I am aware of the fact that very single sentence contains all the grammar I need to

know to express a particular thought, just as the Fibonacci sequence contains the key to its

encoding in just a few numbers. Less is more in my method.

For anyone of you who is interested in using it, I can show you exactly how to achieve what I

have achieved over many years of successfully learning languages by “coaching” you

throughout the whole process.

***

Learning more than one language at the same time

by Luca Lampariello on Jan 2, 2012

A question most people ask me on my Blog and YouTube channel is the following: “Is it

possible to learn more than one language at the same time, and if so, how should I go about

doing it?” Well, the answer is yes, it is possible to learn more than one language at the same

time. But, before I give tips and guidance on doing this, I want to share a few of my thoughts

on this interesting topic.

Until recently, I never felt the need to learn more than one language at a time. Now that I

think about it, my strict “one language only” approach was mainly for three reasons: (1) I

was never in a hurry to learn languages; (2) once I chose a language, I was so involved in the

learning process that I had no desire to deal with others; and (3) learning only one language

at a time gave me the opportunity to polish the ones I previously learned. Now, I’ll discuss

these factors in detail.

1. Haste is your enemy

The modern world is obsessed with a “here-and-now” compulsion which is particularly

harmful to language learning. It is no wonder that in Italian, as well as in many other

languages, a long series of proverbs exist on the pernicious effects that haste has on our lives.

For example, “Haste is a bad counselor,” “Slow and steady wins the race,” and so on. The

first six months of the learning process are the most delicate, and one needs to focus on a

given language daily and dedicate to it quality work. Time is a luxury that modern men lack,

so if you split it between two, three, or even four different activities, the quality of your

learning will suffer. Therefore, I personally recommend learning one language at a time.

2. Building a language core

The language learning process involves the use and memorization of words, structures, and

sounds; however, emotions, colors, images, and memories are also involved and contribute

to what I call a “language core.” Acquiring this language core is extremely important if one

wants to keep the language alive in their head, even long after not having used it. Moreover,

it takes time to build a language core, so attempting to speed through the learning process

with multiple languages can cause language cores to overlap, or simply prevent even one

from forming.

3. Optimizing your time

Picking up a new language doesn’t prevent one from keeping and even refining the ones he

previously learned and are obviously at a higher level. The trick is having good time

management skills. By trial and error, you want to find a sustainable schedule to learn

languages.

The two students’ race

In order to better illustrate what I mean by “managing one’s time,” here’s a story I call “The

Two Students’ Race.” Two students (both Italian) decide to compete for a challenging and

ambitious goal: learning ten foreign languages. The judges give them a ten year “time

budget,” and the rest is up to them.

Student A decides that he will pick up two languages every two years. He starts by learning

English and Spanish. At the end of the two years, he picks up French and German. While

learning French and German, he enjoys conversing with native speakers in both English and

Spanish, languages he now speaks with a certain level of fluency. He also loves reading books.

By the end of the fourth year, he is relatively fluent in German and French, so he starts

learning Portuguese and Swedish. At the same time, he moves to Pariswhere he gets the

chance to use the four languages he learned and continue to actively learn Portuguese and

Swedish. At the beginning of the sixth year, he decides to learn Mandarin and Romanian.

Two years later, he finally picks up Japanese and Dutch. Then ten years later, when time is

up, he speaks English, Spanish, French, and German fluently; Portuguese, Swedish, Mandarin

and Romanian well; and Japanese and Dutch decently. He has weak languages, but he

reached the admirable goal of building a core in more than five languages. Moreover, he will

never forget these five languages. He could get rusty in them, but they will quickly come

back to him.

Student B goes for the same languages, but opts for a completely different strategy—he

starts learning the ten languages all at the same time. Over the years, he lacks the

consistency and patience to hold onto all the languages he is learning. Sometimes he learns

five, sometimes six or seven, but never ten per day. He might have brought some languages

to a good level, but for the most part, his languages are at a basic level. He confuses

languages such as Italian and Spanish, and Dutch and German. Many of his languages are

destined to regress to a very basic level because the student did not build a linguistic core

for any language.

Now, the example is a bit extreme, but it gives you the general idea. People delude

themselves into thinking that doing multiple things at the same time will accelerate the

learning process when, in fact, it damages the learning process. Remember the story of the

tortoise and the hare? Well, be the tortoise. Patience and aiming for a long-term goal will

bring you success.

Tips and guidance for learning multiple languages at the same time

For the last 20 years, I was similar to Student A in that I picked up a new language every two

years while refining the ones I knew. Now, I learn two languages every two years, while

refining the ones I know. So, although I suggest learning one language at a time, if you

decide to take on this “multi-language challenge,” make sure you have the following:

- A fair amount of time to dedicate to language learning

- Willpower

- Some experience in language learning

- Good time management skills

Guidelines

If you decide to take on this “multi-language challenge,” here are some useful tips.

1) Choose a maximum of TWO languages at any given time. Three languages is excessive and

will impair whatever language core you’re trying to build.

2) Choose two languages that are distinct from each other. Languages that are similar can

overlap by way of words, grammar, emotions, memories, and other factors, thereby causing

confusion. Therefore, learning Spanish AND Italian, Dutch AND German, or Portuguese AND

Romanian at the same time is not a good idea.

3) Try to choose an “easy” language and a relatively “difficult” one (I explain this concept

both in English and Spanish on YouTube)

4) If you choose two languages that are at fairly opposite ends of the complexity scale, give

the difficult language 70-80% of your budgeted time, and give the “easy” one 20-30% of your

budgeted time.

5) Study both languages every day.

Conclusion

Be the tortoise. Language learning is a slow marathon that takes time, quality work, and

patience. Every language is an adventure. I usually suggest learning one thing at a time, but

there are no set rules. If you decide to embark on multiple adventures, contemplate the

conditions you will face. If you think you can make it, keep in mind the above-mentioned five

tips. And good luck!

***

Tips on how to learn – Chinese tones

by Luca Lampariello on Nov 19, 2011

Did it ever occur to you to see a person on YouTube or face-to-face who speaks Chinese

surprisingly well? The first reaction you will probably feel is one of admiration and surprise.

Admiration then gives way to doubt: how did they reach such an incredible level in the

language?

Until a few years ago, Mandarin Chinese was surrounded by an aura of mystery. It was

considered an exotic language, undoubtedly difficult to learn. Foreigners as well as the

Chinese themselves thought that mastering Mandarin Chinese was indeed an impossible

goal to reach. Then came Dashan.

In this short documentary, it is shown how Dashan shocks the audience by speaking flawless

Chinese on a TV program watched by half a billion people. As a result, Dashan becomes an

instant celebrity in China.

Many things have changed since that distant 1988, and the number of foreign students

coming to terms with the Chinese language and living in China has grown dramatically over

the last 20 years. It is no longer unusual to come across a “wairen” (foreigner) in Mainland

China. Yet, many students keep having problems when it comes to speaking Chinese, and

this is mainly due to an aspect often considered “dramatic” from a Westerner’s perspective:

Chinese tones.

When it comes to speaking about tones, two things immediately to mind:

1) Why are Chinese tones perceived as being so difficult?

2) Is there a proper way to learn them?

The difficulty of learning Chinese tones

Let’s address the first issue. It is important to emphasize, once again, the following point:

Chinese is a tonal language. This doesn’t only mean that tones make up the words, but also

that the meaning of the words themselves relies on their tones.

In non-tonal languages such as Italian or English, tones do exist. We are not aware of that

simply because the meaning of the words does not depend on their variation. So, in theory,

the same tones can be used to visually represent syllables that make up the words in non

tonal languages.

The very first thing you’ll be confronted with when it comes to speaking Mandarin Chinese is

the tones. The following charts show, in detail, the four “heights” of a syllable in Chinese.

One is generally told to look at the chart, listen to the corresponding sound and try to repeat

it. It seems like a logical approach: one starts by the basic building blocks (the syllables) and

then moves on to words (which can be mono-, bi- or trisyllabic) and finally to whole

sentences. In engineering and computer jargon one would speak of a “bottom-up” approach:

one builds a wall starting with the base, brick after brick. Although techniques have been

developed that seem to adopt a very successful approach among students (*see footnote),

learning Chinese can’t be done using a simple algorithm. ‘A good start is half the battle’,

they say. Unfortunately, things are not as simple as they might seem. (If you want to learn

more about this issue, my friend Vlad wrote an excellent article about this on his blog)

Now, imagine that you want to learn Italian, and that your teacher imposes the

aforementioned bottom-up approach. So, one should start from the sound quality of

syllables and then move on to words and sentences. After tedious explanations and charts,

imagine practicing the following sentences:

Ma che hai fatto oggi? ==> Mā chē hā-ī fàt-to ŏg-gí?

Ma dove sei andato? ==> Mā dō-vē sē- ī ā-ndàtó?

Imagine the gigantic effort in trying to utter a whole sentence by looking at the tone of every

single syllable. Things get even worse when it comes to thinking about a sentence, in that

one should also remember every single tone!

And even if you are great at pronouncing the tones, the sentence would still sound ‘robotic’

to a native speaker. The reason for this is that a sentence is not the simple aggregation of

individual sounds. When we talk all the single components follow the general intonation of

the sentence, and a ‘tonal shift’ takes place (you can find more information here). This

“tonal shift” means that the pronunciation of the syllables making up a word change

according to the positions occupied by that word in a sentence. In Italian (as in other

languages), the same word has different tones if it is at the beginning or at the end of a

sentence.

La pōlĕntá* è un cibo tipico dell’Italia del Nord. (‘Polenta’ is a typical dish of NorthenItaly)

Mi piace la pōlènta.* (I like ‘polenta’.)

As you can see, the word “polenta” at the beginning of the sentence sounds like a first-third-

second tone, while it becomes a first-fourth-fifth (neutral) tone when at the end of a

sentence.

It is obvious that this approach to learn Italian would be a disaster. None, fortunately, would

dare adopt such an approach. Yet, even considering the big difference between Italian and

Chinese, this IS the only approach adopted in the vast majority of Chinese courses, be it at

university or in private schools. Now, is there an alternative to all this?

Some advice on how to learn Chinese tones.

Very often the combination of Chinese tones and characters causes a lot of students to give

up too soon. Yet more than one and half billion Chinese, as well as a vast number of foreign

students speak impeccable Chinese, showing that Chinese tones are not impossible to learn.

We often tend to see children as the best and fastest language learners, and attribute their

success to a brain plasticity and flexibility that we adults no longer possess. One might

quibble with the definition of “brain plasticity”, but a key factor in the learning process is

often omitted: the way they acquire a foreign language is different from ours.

Children hear whole sentences. They don’t start with syllables. They simply hear chunks of a

language and then identify the single components by themselves. As adults, we tend to think

that we can figure out the structure of a language by analysing every single aspect of it, and

we lose sight of the general, broader picture. As adults, we still have the capacity to hear,

but we have partially lost our capacity to listen.

In order to restore this capacity one needs patience and a bit of open-mindedness.

Only a few months after starting learning Chinese “the traditional way”, I realized how

important it was to listen to whole sentences. This thought dawned on me when I first used

a special software in which a native speaker utters a sentence, and you have to repeat it. The

software program then compares both sentences and gives you a mark ranging from 1 (very

poor) to 7 (perfect).

Even though this was a machine with all its flaws, the exercise was fun and interactive, and

before I knew it, I had tried more than 300 hundred sentences this way. I was repeating

sentences without even thinking about tones.

The bottom-up approach had suddenly turned into a top-down approach: one starts by

uttering a whole, simple sentence and then moves downward towards its individual

components.

Based on my experience I would suggest that one follow these simple steps:

1) Read the introduction on phonetics: it is always helpful to know that Chinese is a tonal

language anyway, and that it has 5 tones (4 + a neutral one). This will always be a good

reference. Furthermore, at the early stage, one should learn immediately how to pronounce

consonants, taking special care in differentiating retroflex consonants (such as zh, ch, shi)

from normal ones (z, j, s), and aspirated (p, t) from non aspirated ones (b, d).

2) Once you have a general understanding of Chinese phonetics, start considering very

simple sentences. Listen to the sentences dozens of times, and repeat them with your eyes

closed, without looking at the tones that make up the individual words.

3) Then consider the individual words, and try to focus on them when they are “embedded”

in the sentence. If necessary, write down a list of the words as long as you learn them.

4) Move on to more complex sentences (main clause + relative clause/conditional clause,

etc.)

In addition to the tones, it is important to point out that Chinese also has a general pitch (the

way a sentence flows) which has to be taken into account. There is a very interesting video

on YouTube by my friend Marco on this subject:

Marco explains that Chinese introduces breaks in certain positions in a sentence. These

breaks, which I represent by the symbol “/”, give one a sort of guideline on how to

pronounce a Chinese sentence, other than the tones. It is part of the ‘Phonetic Analysis’, an

approach to pronunciation and pitch which I use to teach languages to my students (via

Skype and face to face)

1) Finally, after having learned how to listen, you have to simply… start listening! Do this at

least half an hour a day, preferably an hour, and when you are ready, try to spend even

more time on this activity. It is key to speaking native-like Chinese. Starts with audio AND the

corresponding script.

Quality at the beginning followed by quantity at a later stage is a great way to reach an

excellent pronunciation!

Conclusions

The tones of Mandarin Chinese are undoubtedly a challenge, but they can be learned with

the proper approach. The one I propose is simple: consider a whole sentence and listen to it,

try to figure out how it sounds as a whole without focusing on the tones. You’ll find that it is

an efficient approach to acquiring tones in a natural way.

***

The 3 stages of language-learning evolution

by Luca Lampariello on Jan 13, 2011

There are two keys factors that influence language learning:

•Time

•Method

Acquiring a language takes time and a flexible learning method.

Flexibility at the various stages of your language acquisition is essential to developing a solid

“linguistic core”.

My method enables your brain to acquire effectively the language in a progressive manner

over time.

Language learning is not merely a matter of learning words and phrases. You also need to

develop other language skills with them.

Language manuals, courses and tests divide languages into levels of linguistic abilities. The

Common European Framework explains these distinctions here. They are used throughout

the EU.

Language levels are generally divided into three main stages:

•Beginner

•Intermediate

•Advanced

My method shows the learner to how adapt the learning method to overcome the different

issues at each level of the learning process.

Here is a brief summary of the situation for the learner at each stage of the language

learning process:

Stage 1 - Beginner

Stage 1 is the most delicate phase.

Everything is new.

The sounds of the language can sound almost indistinguishable to our ears. Vocabulary and

grammar can also be completely new to us and be unlike anything we know in our mother

tongue.

It takes time for the brain to get used to the sounds, patterns, grammatical structures,

vocabulary and rhythms of the new language.

It takes time for the brain to process the huge quantity of information it is being exposed to.

These pieces of information are stored in specific locations in the brain.

Further time is then needed to “network” this new information in the brain to join up the

words to the sounds. At an even higher level, an overall and superior networking is required

to put together everything.

This whole process is makes up the “linguistic core”.

Stage 2 – Intermediate

The language no longer sounds so foreign now. It is possible to recognise the rhythm of the

language and pick out its sounds. When a native talks about familiar topics, the learner can

understand the bigger picture of what’s being said and can identify speech patterns in the

language.

Acquiring sounds, words and structures becomes quicker and easier. The brain is putting

together the pieces of the language absorbed through listening and reading, writing and

listening practice.

At this stage, things are getting easier, but you still have the feeling that you cannot fully

manage in the language in a wide variety of situations.

Stage 3 – Advanced

During the transition period from the intermediate stage to the advanced stage, something

clicks. Suddenly everything that had been difficult so far (in terms of comprehension and oral

skills) becomes easy. Understanding native speakers, following a TV show and reading

newspapers are possible. Building sentences is done effortlessly. We call this the Epiphany

point (E point).

After the E point language learning continues without so much effort on the learner’s part.

You can use the language in real life situations to increase your knowledge and ability, often

without the help of course or language course books.

At this stage in the learning process you can begin to explore the rich tapestry of the

language and build on a deeper understanding of the workings of the language.

The rate of one’s learning must be adapted to the specific features of each stage. Getting to

grips with the challenges of each language is key. Then it is a question of tackling the

challenges presented at each stage of learning.

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