On our return to our German class after summer vacation our teacher asked us a question and requested that the answer to that question be given in spoken German. The question was, “What did you do last Summer?” Our teacher wanted a minimum of two complete lines for an answer.

In a class of almost 25 students there were only a handful who could provide a complete and a grammatically correct answer. Too bad for a class that had undergone a training of one complete year of study!

Who was to be blamed here? The course and curriculum? The teacher? Disappointed with the response our German teacher gave us some very valuable advice that helped many of us to not only secure better marks but also learn the language better in the succeeding months of the course.

My German teacher told us that if he had put a child of 4 or 5 years in our class and had taught the child (only slightly differently than the rest of us) then that child would have overrun most of the students in the class in speaking German. “By now the child would have started speaking”, he exclaimed. Very true indeed! Isn’t that the way millions of children learn to speak their mother-tongue or in the case of German, the father-tongue? 

The teacher then continued to explain the reason why a child is such a fast and natural learner and how we too could consciously employ the techniques used by the child, the very same techniques that the child does automatically and unconsciously.

He taught us two things. These were 1. Repetition and 2. Speaking without caring too much about making mistakes. Let us look at these two learning habits of the child in more detail.

Repetition is not only the only way a child learns to mimic sounds made by adults that look after him but also after mimicking he realizes he can get things done using those sounds of the words he has learnt. For example if he is hungry he learns to say the right word for food.

Gradually his curiosity and interest makes him add more sounds to his vocabulary. Later after he learns different words of the different kinds of foods he likes he uses them instead. Therefore to him learning words is survival and it happens out of necessity. He moves from simple sounds to words and then to simple sentences using this technique.

The other aspect of his learning is that he is neither shy nor afraid to make mistakes. In fact he makes as many mistakes as he wishes to. The wonderful advantage here is that whenever the child makes a mistake he is corrected and he learns to use the new word right. So the more mistakes he makes the more he is corrected and the more he learns. The child neither has ego or worry from embarrassment or humiliation to shy away from making mistakes.

These are traits that nature has ordained for his survival. In fact in many cases where parents complain that their child is slow in learning or speaking it is the parents who are failing. Studies have shown that these parents have spent very little time in speaking to their children and thereby depriving their children the invaluable art of making their children speak or repeat and most importantly not giving them a chance of being corrected.

How can an adult learn like a child?

Now let us look at why adults who are learning a foreign language fail to use the techniques the child does. An adult’s primary problem is his or her ego that stops them from making mistakes. Feeling embarrassed in front of other grown-ups they fail to use the two most important techniques of both speaking (repetition) and making mistakes.

 

Speaking has another effect on the brain and the subconscious. To illustrate here is a small experiment. Take a book, a TV guide or an address book and try to remember a few events such as the shows and timings of a day’s events or an address by just reading it mentally. Make sure you don’t speak out orally the contents you are reading. Now close the books and try and write down what you have read in a piece of paper.
Done? Now open the books again and read another set of similar contents as you read before. This time make sure you audibly speak out the contents as you read them. Close the books once again and as before write down what you have just read in another piece of paper. Compare the two writings you just did. Didn’t the second writing feel easier and have more correct and comprehensive contents than what you wrote in the first piece of paper?

This is a simple exercise demonstrating the power of the spoken word on the mind when it comes to retention and recall. We do this several times in a day like remembering an important errand, remembering a name when someone is introduced to us etc. but when it comes to learning a language many of us force ourselves to speak and read less and are not being benefited from the power of this simple yet very useful habit.

So the important advice: Read aloud and try to orally speak as much as possible the language you are learning. It will be a good practice at this juncture to make sure you pronounce the syllables, sounds and words as accurately as possible in the original language.

 

The second and more important habit of the child, and beneficial to all of us ,is to make as many mistakes as possible and be corrected. For this a change in attitude is what can be considered most essential. Learning to understand that others in the class are also learners like you and I and that making mistakes will help even other students, will help create a paradigm shift, most essential for language learning.

A couple of students who took this advice to heart eventually eclipsed even the top students when it came to spoken-German. That brings us to the second and most important lesson that the child can teach us: Do not worry about making mistakes and do it without inhibition.

 

These are two things that children can teach us as language learners. There are other things to learn as well and these will be dealt in articles to be published soon in the future.