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How did you learn your mother tongue? Total immersion of course - that's the natural way. It doesn't only apply to learning languages, whatever you are interested in and want to learn, if you find yourself in a situation where you have to do it, you can. Here's my story: at school I wasn't interested in learning foreign languages. That was mostly because the methods and the teachers did not appeal to me. It was the old-fashioned way where you learn lists of vocabulary and write out answers to grammar questions in your school book. None of the teachers were native speakers. There was nothing about our language lessons you could call fun, actually that's not quite true, there was one thing that caught my young imagination and I have retained for %*$!% years (a large number) - it was a rather clever and amusing poem in German. But that's about it, years of lessons, a few hundred hours of homework and the result - inability to hold a simple conversation with someone who speaks another language. My school days were a long time ago, but not much has changed; my daughter studied French from the age of 6 and until the last two years was able to say little more than 'My name is ...' in that language. Pathetic. (Luckily she is a very hard working student and has put a great deal of energy into improving the situation and has now reached a decent level of conversation French). But that was with very much perseverance and motivation. I on the other hand, learned French later in life with virtually no effort and for free. Obviously that wasn't by taking a course at a school or university. I gained my grasp of the language just by living in that country. Initially I felt inhibited about saying anything except very simple words and I spent most of my time with other English-speakers. But then, wonder of wonders, a friend helped me get a job in a small French business. There were 4 young men working there, Claude, Jacques, Roger, Georges. None of them spoke English, so right from the start I had no choice, I had to understand and reply in their language, French. One day all of them had to go out and they left me in charge of the office. That meant if the phone rang, it would be me who would have to reply - I dreaded that. Actually the first few times it sounded, I picked it up and just said, in bad French, 'I'm a friend of the guys who work here and they have gone out, call back later', but that broke the ice for me. Gradually I became better at speaking and understanding the language. The greatest aid to my progress came when I got to know some local young people - that led to shared activities, parties, visits to the bistro, going to the cinema - all that in French of course, not my mother tongue. This culminated in me having a girlfriend, Chantal. She and I never spoke in anything other than French and this eventually led to me not only thinking in that language but even being taken for a native speaker. In total from being scared of trying to say anything in a foreign language to total fluency took me about 3 years. But the first couple of months were the ones where the greatest change took place - I lost my inhibitions and fear of saying something stupid. Afterwards I was just building on the base of language which I had acquired naturally. If your ambition is to reach a very high level in a language, there can be no doubt that immersion is by far the fastest way. But you need to be lucky to have the chance to do this; the next best alternative, but which requires some self-discipline is to use a language course which combines all the input methods to maximise your retention of what you are learning. I recommend this one - you can get a free 6-day trial, which itself is useful in picking up words and phrases you will need in everyday conversation. I've been describing my experience of learning French, but having fluency in that language has given me a taste to do the same in other ones, that's why this site is all about my studies of Spanish. So far I haven't had much real immersion in that language but that's still an ambition, in the meantime by using all the resources that you see here, I have picked up enough to be able to hold simple conversations. I'm not satisfied with that, though and want to reach the point where it's nearly effortless to say whatever I want. If you want to learn conversational Spanish try the short course below, it's impressive. You hear native Spanish speakers saying the words and phrases and even if you don't take it any further you'll have learned some basic Spanish free. I wish you good luck and fun with your explorations here.
Buena suerte Robert
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