Study Hints
I want you to learn Spanish as efficiently and as thoroughly as possible. Learning a second language is not difficult. It is easy if you go about it the right way. But you must be willing to do some steady work for a few minutes each day. I am offering the following study hints to make this work easy and fun.
A language is a set of habits. Our own language is our set of habits which we aquired and mastered about the age of five or six. We had to listen to other people ever since our birth and in order to communicate we copied and imitated what the people around us said. You need to do the same with this second language of yours.
1.) YOU MUST LEARN TO LISTEN AND IMITATE.
We are no better than children at this stage of the game. In fact, its worse, since our own language habits keep getting in the way.
2.) YOU MUST MEMORIZE AND IMITATE.
To learn this set of new habits you must practice, pratice, practice until all the sets of the new habits become automatic responses. It is as simple -- and as hard -- as that!
3.) STUDY OUT LOUD.
You double your efficiency when you add auditory memory to the visual memory. You quadrupal your efficiency when you add motor memory.
4.) DIVIDE YOUR MATERIALS INTO SMALL UNITS FOR MEMORIZATION, THEN STRING THEM TOGETHER.
Divide your study time into small units of fifteen minutes. Do some other work. Then go back to another fifteen minutes of work. Do your modern language study just before bed. When dressing in the morning, try to recall and repeat what you learned the night before. You will be suprised at the results.
5.) MAKE FULL USE OF YOUR CLASS HOUR.
Students are usually classified as dumb or smart in a language class by the way they make use of their time. Some students sit back dreaming; others make full use of their class time. When someone is reciting, they are doing it right along with him.
6.) YOU CANNOT CRAM IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASS.
Foreign language study is steady, day -by- day work. You cannot cram for a swimming test. You do not learn habits and skills that way. Language learning is a cumulative process; you build on top of what you did the day before.
7.) YOU NEED TO THINK.
Because you are more mature than when you were a child learning your own language, you have the advantage of being able to analyze the materials you are memorizing. You will discover, for example, the way your second language changes endings. You will start making your own observations and generalizations accordingingly. This can speed up your learning process considerably, but the only use for this structural analysis is to help you imitate more successfully.
Foreign language study boils down to a constant process of learning, forgetting a bit, re-learning, forgetting a little less, and then re-learning again until the language becomes a habit. If you learn this way, you will not forget a language even if you dont use it for a considerable length of time.