Achilla Imlong Erdican
Duncan Road, Dimapur
The problem of language learning is often misunderstood because it is too often oversimplified. "Learning" a language can mean a dozen different things to as many persons. It involves not one, but half a dozen diverse physiological and psychological processes. It is a matter of speaking, understanding, reading and writing. Each of these faculties represents a complex of acquired abilities and functions. In speaking, we must control the vocal organs so as to produce the proper sounds, at the same time we work with the memory, the understanding and the faculty of coordination.
There is no such a thing as an "easy" or a "difficult" language; every language, no matter how intricate it may seem to the outsider who undertakes to learn it, is easy to its own speakers, who have learnt it by the "natural" process since earliest childhood, by direct imitation of their elders, and trial and error method.
We are creatures of habit. From the moment we are born (some say even before) we start acquiring habits, physical, mental and psychological habits. These habits tend to become permanent and remain with us through life. Language definitely falls under this heading of habits.
A language will impress you as "easy" if it runs close to your already established linguistics habits, and "difficult' if it diverges from your language. Languages whose structural pattern, basis vocabulary, general mode of expression resemble those of your language strike you as relatively easy, those which differ radically as hard. For example, Assamese language which have many points of contact with Bengali, will normally would be the easiest for a Bengali to learn.
Oriental languages seem to be difficult not only in their written forms but also in their morphological and syntactic structures, which differ fundamentally from those of Indo-European, e.g. Hindi is written in the ancient Devanagari characters inherited from Sanskrit; Urdu is written in the Arabic alphabet.
Moreover, some languages like, Chinese and Japanese are more highly organized than others and learners therefore require long training to write them correctly and stylistically, while they can speak them simply and effectively without running into much trouble.
Every language, even a quite primitive one, holds within itself a well-adjusted system, complete in itself and adequate for all needs. There is no such thing as an incomplete language in active use.
According to Dr. Eugene A Nida, the scientifically valid procedure In language learning involves listening first, to be followed by speaking. Then comes reading, and finally the writing of the language. This is just the order in which a child learns his mother tongue; and only after he has acquired considerable facility in understanding and speaking, does he learn to read and write.
Dr. Mario Pei also says that "Children can master, without apparent effort and with great fluency and a flawless accent several languages at once, if they are in direct contact with their speakers. This seemingly simple mastery, of course, predicated not upon the written, but upon the spoken form of the languages, with Its more ordinary conversational reaches." For example I learnt 5 languages fluently without any difficulty when I was a child, but now I find it rather difficult to learn a new language because I am more self conscious of my mistakes, most traditional methods of teaching languages to adults have almost completely reversed this process —first comes reading, closely linked with writing and then conversation. It was falsely assumed that since the classical tongues like Greek, Latin, Sanskrit etc. were taught exclusively through the printed page, therefore modern living languages should be introduced the same way. Thus making language learning very boring and discouraging. Our main trouble is that we tackle the study of language from the wrong end. We are like the man who thinks he can learn swimming simply by reading books about swimming. Advanced instructions about swimming are helpful as we learn something from actual experience is the water. In the same way, the grammatical rules are valuable as we plunge into the language and need some assistance. But reading books never makes a swimmer and learning rules never makes a practical linguist.
Learning to speak is dependent upon hearing someone else speak, not upon reading. The emphasis upon the auditory perception does not mean that we should set aside all the other factors in the memory process. We should listen to expressions (an auditory process), and then pronounce them over and over (repeated motor process).For a success in language learning it is worth numbering certain fundamental principles.
1. MIMICRY AS THE KEY TO
LANGUAGE LEARNING.
People who can mimic easily have a great advantage in learning a foreign language. Language learning usually necessitates conscious mimicry. It means noticing carefully such matter as the position of the lips, the quality of the sounds, the speed of utterance, the intonation of the voice, the "swing' of the sentence, and even the characteristic gestures.
Mimicry consists of three aspects: (1) acute and constant observation (2) “Throwing oneself into it” (3) continual practice.
2. LANGUAGE LEARNING BY OVER-LEARNING
Language must be automatic. The person who must stop to figure out the right forms or who must group constantly for words has not learned a foreign language. Expressions must be on the tip on the tongues.
To acquire an automatic language facility requires three processes:
(1) drill and repetition
(2) thinking in the foreign language and
(3) continued opportunities to use the language.
One of the most effective ways to master a language is to drill on a series of related sentences, e.g. "I see the book", "I recognize the child book", "I talked to the mom". One can take this same series of sentences and substitute different objects in each sentence, e.g. "I see the man", "I see the woman", "I see the child", etc. If one is able to drill With a native speaker, then this person can say the sentence first and the student can repeat, going through the series time after time including scores of repetitions, if necessary, until one acquires automatic facility.
Thinking in a foreign language is absolutely essential done intends to learn it. One cannot expect to speak fluently while going through the process of transferring ideas from ones mother tongue into another language. It will only make the speech slow and jerky, but the sentence will be predominantly your own language (translate this sentence into your own language-"Where are you going?")
3. LANGUAGE LEARNING BY LANGUAGE USING
Simply learning the technical information about language structure or grammar will not make a skilled speaker. We must become surrounded by the constant hubbub of language use if we are to learn.
One must get out where the language is spoken and where we can speak. To do this, we need to look for real situation where the language can be used.
e.g. A group of new missionaries were entering a country in Latin America, where one of the members of the group gallantry volunteered to do the marketing while the others were busy studying the host countries' language. It turned out, of course, that the one doing the marketing progressed very rapidly in the use of the language, for he had excellent opportunities to use his limited knowledge of Spanish since marketing involved constant haggling over prices.
4. PRACTICAL SITUATION
(CHATTING AND CONVERSATION)
Another practical situation is visiting. This means simply chatting about anything and everything. Conversation, however limited, with the servants, the gardener, and the peon in the office are all means of learning a language.
Most people have found that the "grammar approach" does not work well. If the ordinary person starts out to learn a new Language by reading rather than speaking, or by memorizing sets of forms and rules, he is likely to get nowhere fast. It does absolutely no good to try to learn to read and write without first forming speech-habits on which to base the reading and writing.
Many languages teachers make the mistake of forcing the students to speak on literary topics and of interrupting them for correction each time they make a mistake. After a short time the students are afraid to open their mouths, least they open the wrong way. The new system is to put the students on their own in a life-like imaginary situation and letting them play the role of themselves, while the instructor takes on the part of a native with whom they converse and who is far too polite to correct them, at least while the conversational exchange is in progress. The only requirement is that they make themselves understood.
According to Dr. Simeon Potter-"Learning a new language calls for no great originality of mind or critical faculty, but it does demand an eager intellectual curiosity and a constant and lively interest in the endless ways in which human ideas may be expressed. It demands quick observation first of all, reasonable ability to mimic and imitate, good power of association and generalization and retentive memory." Remember, one must murder a language before mastering it.
Achilla Imlong Erdican
Duncan Road, Dimapur
