I was reminded of thing during the Independence day celebration, which I have reflected a little on afterwards. In a way it’s kinda obvious, but I still think it’s good to remind oneself of it every now and then. When it comes to languages, different situations have very different challenges and levels of difficulty. Since three is always a good number, I think I’d go with that also.
- Practicing and learning vocabulary and grammar.
- Learning words and grammar does definitely have their challenges. Especially when you are studying a language that is a bit more foreign. However, when you are doing this, it’s in a fairly controlled environment, and the questions and exercises are quite straightforward.
- Simple conversations, one-on-one, in a controlled fashion
- The next step, for me, is when you start to form simple sentences by yourself, in conversation with another person (or a very small group). The subjects are often predetermined, or adopted to your level of conversation.
- Conversation in a bigger or livelier context.
- This is when you try to have conversations in a more chaotic situations, like a party or bigger group of people. There is more noice disturbing you, the subjects can be more varied, and you often have less time to think about what to say.
There are a couple of important things to remember from this, when studying languages. First of all, just because you feel confident on one of these levels, doesn’t mean that you automatically are good at another. Just because you have studied words and grammar doesn’t mean that you can do simple conversations. So, when learning, you have to vary your studies and challenge yourself and put yourself in situations where your skills are put to test.
Another thing is about over-preparing. Even though skills are not 100% transferable, I think you can prepare yourself. But that requires over-studying or over-preparing. When a skill, any skill, is performed under pressure, there is a chance that you will perform worse than you would do under more controlled circumstances. For instance, even if you feel secure when sitting and talking with another person in a clear and controlled manner, some of that skill will go away when put in a bigger context. That means that you need to not just practice up to a certain level and then think that you will perform at that level in another context. Instead you need to practice up to a higher level than what you want to reach.
Or to put it in another way. Let’s say I sit at home, and study with flash cards, and want to learn 100 words to use at a party later that week. These numbers are just very rough estimates, and mostly used to describe a principle. As I said, you sit at home and study 100 words, until you feel confident you know them.
Then you go and meet your friend to try to speak simple sentences. All of a sudden those words you were so sure of at home is gone. Maybe you just remember 80 words of the 100. And later, when you go to that party, with more people around you, more distractions and so on, suddenly you only remember 60 words.
In order to actually remember 100 words at the party, you maybe need to learn 150 or 160 words. Extremely simplified of course, but the principle is still there.
So, vary your learning, put yourself in challenging situations, and do your best to over-learn! And good luck with all studies!