Hi there!
I believe there is no such a thing as a gift or talent for learning a language. Sometimes people tell me "I envy you, I wish I could speak languages like you do. You must have some sort of a gift!" but they just see the result - not the hours spent learning and such.
Anyway I have a friend who studies a school and he has "English" and "German" as a school subjects. (BTW our native language is Czech).
And he asked me if I could help him to learn English and German, because I can speak both.
And after six months I am like "Oh maybe some talent or gift is really needed here!"
Because it seems that he doesn't have the "instinct" or how to call it.
1) He kinda doesn't understand the concept of "types of words", so he doesn't understand what is a noun, what is a verb and so on. So I tried to explain him repeatedly, but he's still very lost and confused.
For example you have the "it sounds" and this is a verb. But he translates it as a noun - "sound" in plural and he's ok with it. He simply can't see and doesn't understand why it's wrong. And I am like "Well, it's not a noun, it's a verb." but he doesn't understand it much.
2) He totally ignores the tenses. Like he has a sentence "She is opening the door" and he translates it into our language as a future (literally: She will open the door). And I am like "It's not future" and he doesn't understand much why he can't change the tenses just like that and does it repeatedly anyway.
3) He also doesn't have the instinct to understand a meaning of the words that are the same in all languages. Like, he sees "Creativity" which is very similar to Czech "Kreativita" but he doesn't get it's the same word. It's very obvious for many people, but never for him. He always needs to explain it.
4) No matter how hard I try, he still uses "your" when he wants to say "you" and vice versa.
5) We don't have the "the" and "a" and "an" thingies in Czech, so he simply doesn't understand what they are, even if I explained him the grammar and gave him some examples and so on. Of course I myself forget these often and I am never sure if I use them correctly, but still...
6) He often forgets letters or he adds some extra in words.
Cold -> Corld (an extra "r"). Think -> Tink (forgets "h").
Also he has dyslexia. But I have dyslexia as well and still I can speak English, German and little Spanish. So maybe dyslexia itself is not a reason to be unable to learn language.
I am desperate. Am I really that bad teacher or there are just people who just are unable to learn a language?
What is your opinion? Do you think there are people who will never be able to learn a language - no matter how hard they try and what method they use. Or I am simply a bad teacher and a person ALWAYS can learn language if he or she really wants?
[link] [comments]
from Тавтай морилогтун | Languagelearning http://bit.ly/2RoXBT2
via Learn Online English Speaking
Comments
Post a Comment