The Most Important Elements of a Language-Learning System

September 6th, 2016

It's a fact that when it comes to learning everybody wants to achieve the desired level as quickly as possible. In this article we'll focus on what you need to do to learn a foreign language fast.

First and foremost, do not start out just trying. Instead, as Nike would put it, just do it. Your attitude to learning is the key to your success and the more determined you are, the better the results will be. Your time is scarce but it can always stretch for things that truly matter to you. ("I don't have the time to study" almost always equals "I have other things in my life I give higher priority to.")

Second, you need to design a weekly routine that will help you stick to your learning process. Ideally, both your classes with the teacher and homework sessions should be written down in your agenda. It might be painful to force yourself to study on your own during the first few weeks, but as you settle to your new routine and it becomes a habit, you will actually start looking forward to your sessions.

Additionally, be prepared for some frustration along your learning curve, which often feels like a rollercoaster. The fluency of your speaking depends on your brain's ability to retrieve the right structures and expressions in the shortest time possible which in turn depends on your overall brain sharpness on a particular day. This means that on some days depending on your physical, mental and emotional state you will feel less fluent than only a week ago. However, you shouldn't confuse this occasional lack of 'inspiration' with lack of progress. Your real progress can only be measured long-term and your jumps to the next level will be akin to change of seasons. Isn't it true that the arrival of spring always takes us by surprise?

Now you have probably heard the English proverb "Practice makes perfect" but might be wondering why in some cases practicing didn't seem to make anything perfect. Well, apparently, it's not all about how many hours you dedicate to practice. What matters most is the system you use. A 'professional learner' (as he calls himself) Tim Ferriss, defines the ideal language learning system as based on three elements – effectiveness (What?), adherence (Why?) and efficiency (How?). Here's what he says about EFFECTIVENESS:

"If you select the wrong material, it does not matter how you study or if you study – practical fluency is impossible without the proper tools (material). Teachers are subordinate to materials, just as cooks are subordinate to recipes... Teachers are viewed as saviors when materials are actually the determining factor. Teachers are merely conduits for the material and sequencing. By analogy, it is better to have a decent cook with excellent easy-to-follow recipe than a great cook with terrible recipe. It is the material that will restrict or elevate the teacher, and a good teacher forced to follow bad material will hinder, not hasten, learning progress. I don't sit in on classes or otherwise consider a school until I've reviewed both hand-out materials and text books. Judge materials before you judge teachers, and no matter what, do not begin with classes or texts that solely use the target language (e.g., Spanish textbooks in Spanish). This approach reflects a school's laziness and willingness to hire monolingual teachers, not the result of their search for the ideal method."

Additionally, your learning process itself has to be EFFICIENT. In language learning, this means that the textbook you use has to be designed to save your time. A language is a collection of grammar structures (the backbone) and vocabulary (flesh) so you need a textbook that introduces and recycles those in a logical and clear way that will increase your retention rate. Once again, you should ask yourself whether your textbook will do that for you.

As to ADHERENCE, the method and process you choose need to appeal to you otherwise it will quickly get too monotonous for you to persist with your study. We all know that it's easier to adhere to something fun, so your language learning should NOT be a collection of tedious gap-fill exercises, listening to boring dialogs and talking to a person with a similar level. In short, the more impersonal the study feels, the less likely you are to learn.

To sum up, if you are taught in an unsystematic way where you are given eclectic materials that are not consistently recycled, instead of steadily progressing towards your goal you will be passing the time consuming some information that will be quickly discarded by your brain. The thing is you simply can't put an equality sign between going through content (reading texts, doing listening etc.) and learning a skill (understanding, speaking) but only experts would be able to spot this difference and predict how likely a certain method is to result in real skills.

So, before you blame yourself for having failed to learn a language in … months/years (fill in the blank), think that maybe you were simply not given the right system and tools to learn. To sum up, the language learning system you use needs to be effective, efficient and engaging. However, the fact that so many people fail to learn to fluently speak at least one more language is proof that those are very rare, indeed...