The Best Way to Learn a Foreign Language

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“The best way to learn a foreign language is to speak it” This is probably the most frequently repeated piece of advice for language learners. You will hear it from teachers, webmasters of ESL sites, and people in the Antimoon Forum (e.g. see Jeff Hook’s posts in this discussion). For most language teachers, the goal is to have you talking as early as possible and as much as possible. They believe that they should be quiet during their classes, while their students should have the opportunity to speak. Fact: Speaking is imitation. When you speak your native language, you don’t make up your own grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. You use the same grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation as people around you. Similarly, when trying to speak a foreign language, your goal is to imitate the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation of native speakers, so that your way of speaking is correct and natural. It’s pretty obvious that, in order to talk like the native speakers, you have to listen to the things they say and read the things they write. When you do so, you learn new words and grammar structures that you can use to express your thoughts. As a result, it becomes easier and easier for you to build your own sentences in the foreign language. By contrast, if you follow the popular advice and concentrate on speaking rather than listening and reading, you will learn few new words and structures and, like so many learners, will be stuck with your limited vocabulary and grammar. It will always be hard for you to express your thoughts in the foreign language. Benefits of speaking While speaking practice does not develop your vocabulary or grammar, it does offer a few important benefits: * It helps improve your fluency (moves your knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation from your “slow memory” to your “quick memory” — however, first you must put

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