Learning A Language Through Its Use

This article epitomizes the way I teach Spanish and furthermore English in my home country. This means that this is the way I believe a language should be taught and the way I follow.

Do you remember when you started to speak? I don´t think so. But you do know that it is by repetition. There is not much rationalization. I am not saying that this is necessarily something bad. Nevertheless too much of it can obstruct your learning. And this is precisely what the traditional method of teaching does. In this method the teacher explain pieces of grammar. The idea is that you will use these bits of grammar when you face a real conversation. In my opinion this is utterly wrong. It is extremely difficult to put in practice this newly acquired knowledge since you have just milliseconds to build your sentences. I do not see how the student can think about the right structure he/she learnt in class and create a sentence in about few seconds or even milliseconds as I already said.

I believe there is another approach more in line with the way you learnt your mother tongue. In my view the learner has to speak. No matter how but speak. He/she has to learn to join words and form ideas with the help of the teacher. Then the questions about grammar will arise... but they will be in context. The teacher will give answer to natural doubts result of your endeavors to speak the language you intend to learn. Isn´t more natural and organic? The good thing about this approach is that the chances of these newly learnt concepts stick in your mind are good. Your brain is a very sophisticated machine that accurately organizes your knowledge -and your newly the acquired- without the need of following structured grammar lessons.

This is all in all my creed regarding learning languages. I hope the article open your mind to new ways of learning a foreign language.