People who speak a single language perceive fluency as an ideal. It encompasses a concept of being able to speak freely, without pauses to think of vocabulary and grammar. A fluent speaker has mastered the language. To the language professional though, fluency is a slippery slope. Someone with conversational fluency may be able to talk about everyday subjects easily, grammatically, fluently – but be lost for words when the conversation moves onto the intricacies of playing cricket or baseball, or conversely be bamboozled by a discussion on late 19th century art. A street urchin selling souvenirs in a souk might speak half a dozen languages fluently, but not grammatically – and more in depth conversation might reveal that their vocabulary is limited.
The traditional way of learning a language academically involves a lot of translation accompanied with learning vocabulary (which is relevant to the translation work). The advantage of such an approach is that it develops your formal knowledge of grammar and the translations can be tailored to make the vocabulary relevant to the learner. However, most people learning this way find it extremely difficult to speak well or fluently – with language graduates from university often failing basic conversation tests when they finally reach a country where they can speak the language. They know individual phrases, a lot of words and a lot of grammar to hold it together, but have had very little experience bringing the words together. Learning this way also means that in order to speak in the foreign language, often you have to think of what you want to say in your native language, then translate each word and add the appropriate grammar. This process requires a lot of mental energy and is very slow. This was how I initially learnt Russian, and it was spectacularly unsuccessful. Even a small sentence required me to hold about 20 pieces of information in my head at any one time. Sentences were painfully slow to speak and difficult to put together.
A better way to learn
Learning a language through translation is only part of the puzzle and should be kept as a small part if you want to develop fluency. Language is learnt for communication – not for translation, so why learn via translation? A big problem with this sort of learning is that most people will learn words as individual words, without context. However, it is the context which gives words meaning. If you look up a dictionary you will often find half a dozen meanings for any word, depending on context. So it makes sense to learn words within context.
Secret Number 1: Learn words in context.
Instead of learning le chat as “cat”, learn an entire sentence. This means you absorb the grammar associated with the word as well. So le chat suddenly becomes “Est-ce que tu as un chat?” (Do you have a cat?) or perhaps “Le chat noir est sur la table” (The black cat is on the table). The advantage of this is that you are always working with sentences and so always have living example of the word in use in front of you and that the word is being actively used with context and meaning.
Secret Number 2: Use images.
People who often seem to speak languages well, don’t think in terms of an actual word, when they want to say “cat” in French, they don’t think of “cat” in English and then think “chat” (this often happens as the result of learning via translation), they see an image of a cat and immediately think of word in the language they are thinking it. It is an automatic association that is faster, and seems to reflect how we mostly use our native language. Visual memory is also extremely powerful, so by adding images you also make it easier to remember the vocabulary. So when using vocabulary cards, add images. If you can draw, you can draw the images onto the card, otherwise, make vocabulary cards on the computer and paste images from Google images into the flash card. This means you can then have vocabulary cards using a combination of images and words.
Est-ce que tu as un 
?
The reverse side of the card can have the full sentence and any other information, which is relevant, such as gender, pronunciation information, conjugation or declensions. Use colour and images to stimulate visual memory. To represent that chat is a masculine word, you could put it in blue, for example, so you have another visual reminder of the grammar necessary when you use the word. Because the reverse side of the card is also in your target language, you are also constantly practising thinking in your foreign language. Good preparation for the real thing. Dictionaries almost always have examples of a word in use which you can use as part of the learning process. If the dictionary is any good, you will always be learning correctly. The sentences are often transferable, so in real life you might not want to ask someone if they have un chat, but maybe if they have a boyfriend… Est-ce que tu as un copain? or girlfriend… Est-ce que tu as une copine? Of course, if you don’t care, you might need to make use of this phrase “Je ne savais pas qu’elle avait un copain” (I didn’t know she had a boyfriend).
Secret Number 3: Subject cards
There are always going to be things you will find yourself talking about. These will include yourself, your hobbies and interests. If you are English, then perhaps the weather… Write out subject cards to cover sentences vocabulary and grammatical phrases which you need to discuss the subject. You might also want to write subject cards for going to a café or restaurant, travelling on the metro or taking a bus/taxi, asking directions, or visiting a doctor or pharmacist. Write short conversations for yourself with each subject card covering everything you can think of in a conversation. Learn useful phrases which you know you will want to use when talking to someone. These might include such useful phrases as “I like pizza and beer” to “I want to do extreme skiing in the Austrian Alps.” Both phrases are equally useful in my experience (I have never used either of them). By creating a number of subject cards and practising the words and phrases you expect you’ll need the most, you can increase your functional fluency for parts of the language which are relevant to you. This can take a bit of time and require a little bit of imagination but are beneficial in building up fluency and vocabulary. Again, add as much imagery to the subject cards as possible. Act out conversations, the more senses you involve, the better you will remember the vocabulary. It is partially for this reason that immersive learning can be so effective because you can hear, feel, smell the linguistic environment which creates stronger memories.
If you want to learn more great ways to learn and master foreign languages, purchase Peter D Campbell’s book Language Learning Secrets Revealed: How anyone can learn a language or book a consultation with Peter.
About the author: Peter D Campbell is a professional Russian to English translator and journalist with over ten years translation experience. Peter speaks fluent Russian, has a degree in Latin and can speak conversational French. He has written three books and two novellas, all available from Amazon.com.
Writers’ block conjures up images of the impoverished author, sitting at a typewriter, a blanket over his/her lap and a cigarette hanging despondently from stained teeth.
If you find yourself sitting at the computer hour after hour rewriting the same sentence, it probably means that you want your writing to be perfect. After all who doesn’t want to be perfect?
Want to write but never get round to doing it? The chances are you aren’t motivated to write. There are good reason’s to be unmotivated, it requires time and energy, it is often solitary and for most there is little or no financial reward. If you are not writing and would like to be you need to find a reason to write.
Disasters, whether they are manmade or natural come with a physical and emotional cost. The true trauma of a disaster occurs after people have recovered from the initial shock. Survivors who continue to live in the disaster zone are burdened with the clean up and the costs: financial, material and emotional.
Eat comfort foods. This is something which we tend to do automatically when stressed, but it is worth mentioning. We all have some food or beverage which reminds us of better, happier times. Take time to enjoy it. It might be a cup of tea or a particular sweet.
everyone.
It is a common mistake among couples that they only go to a relationship coach or counsellor when things get bad. This is like suggesting that the national team shouldn’t have a coach unless they start losing games. The time when you should ask for advice about your relationship is before you have started it.
Good relationships are not simply the result of chemical highs caused when we are in love, if we rely on these, we don’t get a relationship but an addiction and become addicted to the non-functional nature of the relationship. A relationship takes love, care, affection and communication and for your lives to work happily together they must be bound with overall goals and hopes. All of these are things which need to be worked out before becoming serious, otherwise serious problems can be caused in what would otherwise have been the perfect couple.
At some stage most of us go through a time when we have to be strong and brave. Whenever we find ourselves in a dangerous and continually threatening situation it is natural to ask “how long will this continue?” For some of us this question really is “how long do we need to be brave?”
Bravery is relative, it is also context specific. Above all it is all about what is going on in YOUR mind. There is a story of a World War II bomber pilot who had flown into through enemy anti-aircraft fire on numerous occasions. He said he never felt fear. There was too much to do.
The Romans believed that bravery could be taught. With an army of 500,000 men they protected an empire that encompassed Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. They regularly fought armies much larger than their own. The Roman legionaries were definitely brave.
There is nothing so disheartening as competing and knowing that you are being beaten by a player who isn’t as good as you are, or who trains less seriously than you do. Every sportsperson has participated in games where the worse player has somehow managed to win. This was particularly galling when I was the player being defeated and I could do seemingly nothing as my opponent, lacking technique and finesse, doggedly took my game to pieces and came out the bloody victor at the end. Most sportspeople know of this experience and have often experienced it both ways, taking satisfaction at knowing that they have beaten someone who is better than they are. So how does it happen?
This is a clear demonstration of how what we do with our minds affects how we perform and who we are. As human beings we have a huge amount of control over what our bodies do and how they behave and react. Since we are complicated beings, the majority of these tasks are assigned to the subconscious mind (and a good thing too, imagine what would happen if we absent mindedly forgot to breath) and since the subconscious usually operates beneath our conscious awareness we lose control of this vast and complicated system which runs our bodies for us. With NLP techniques we can take back control of some of these functions and reset the system so it operates more efficiently and towards the outcomes which we set. This is extremely useful in sport when often we have to force our bodies to operate at a peak level the logical and sensible option is simply to take a break, eat some food and relax until we have some more energy and can focus more easily on the game. Sport just doesn’t let you do that, so instead we have to force our bodies and if the subconscious is unwilling, we literally have to fight against ourselves, which distracts us from the important task of focusing on the game or the race and putting all our resources behind winning.
In other cases it is a matter of self belief. Steve Gurney expected to lose his last Coast to Coast because the running leg of the competition had been increased and he had short legs. Dr. Richard Bolstad, who was working with Steve Gurney, took him through some processes which altered the belief that he couldn’t win. For the first time ever Steve won the running section of the Coast to Coast. He attributes his success entirely to NLP and the work that Richard Bolstad did with him (see Lucky Legs, Steve Gurney).
Relationships can spiral out of control. By the time you realize that counselling might be useful it is often too late. Both parties have been under such emotional stress, have felt so much pain that they are no longer certain that they want to maintain the relationship. To end the pain is easier than trying to fix the relationship. Furthermore, even assuming that the relationship can be fixed, people may choose not to because they have experienced it break and don’t want to go through the emotional pain of having the relationship spin out of control again.
How many people do you know who are either depressed, unhappy or simply negative? There are probably numerous explanations why depression is so prevalent in today’s society but I will focus on a couple and explain how we can resolve depression quickly and effectively without resorting to drugs.
Drugs and addiction have accompanied humanity since before the birth of civilisation. Most peoples have their own forms of drugs that they take. In the Americas these consisted of tobacco, the coco plant and tobacco. In the Pacific and Melanesia, kava and betel-nut juice are prevalent. Even nomadic horse tribes had their own alcoholic beverages.
One day she told him she loved him and he broke down crying. With a lot of support from his family the teenager was able to make a full recovery and although this happened many years ago, has never relapsed.The story demonstrates an interesting point, that the pseudo-religious zeal of anti-drugs groups in many ways acts as an impediment to recovery. Many people who are addicted don’t want to be on the drug themselves but are compelled to take them by cravings and desire.
The Brooklyn Program is the most effective drug rehabilitation programme in the United States. The system developed and implemented by Dr. Richard Grey makes use of recent research into the cognitive aspects of addiction and so the programme works not only for various drug addictions but for other forms of addiction including compulsive eating disorders, addictions to particular food and beverages, and to other social problems such as sex addictions.