KISWAHILI NOTES FOR FORM SIX – ALL TOPICS

KISWAHILI IN INTERNATIONAL LEVELS

a) Official Language in EAC

Big
news! The East African Community has decided to use Swahili as their the
official language. This is no surprise, as a large part of the population in
most of the association’s countries already speak the language. However, this
is not the case in Uganda, which is why all Ugandan citizens have been ordered
by the government to learn the language.

When
a number of countries form an alliance and a number of countries share the same
language, it can be convenient use this language as the main language of
communication. According to the Africa Report, this is exactly what
happened for the East African Community, which consists of Kenya, Tanzania,
Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. They have declared Swahili to be their official
language.

This
decision can easily be explained, as Tanzania and Kenya already regard Swahili,
which is a mix between the local languages of east African tribes and Arabic,
as an official language, the Africa Report says.

In
addition, many people in Rwanda and Burundi speak the language as well. The
only outsider here is Uganda; here, Swahili is only spoken by a small part of
the population.

The
Africa Report claims this has to do with the fact that many Ugandans dislike
the language because it was used by dictators and colonial officials.

The
Ugandan government has decided that now the language will become the official
language of the EAC, all Ugandans must learn Swahili.

According
to the Africa Report, this president Yoweri Museveni is thus keen to increase
the popularity of the language. To create more Swahili speakers, all
institutions involved in languages have not only been asked to use Swahili, but
also to promote the language and teach it to those that do not speak it. As a
result, the government hopes the language will become another national language
in Uganda, the African Report says.

According
to Barbra Nekesa, Uganda’s Information Minister, the government hopes the
decision to make Swahili more widespread in the country will mean conducting
business with other EAC states will be easier. She says communication will run
more smoothly as the language barrier between business partners will disappear.
Nekesa states that the Ugandan government has always promoted the Swahili
language but that the negative image the language obtained during the
regime of dictator Idi Amin had prevented the efforts from becoming successful.

b) Official Language in SADC

In celebration of 2019
as the International Year Of Indigenous Languages, SADC has adopted a language
from its east African brothers and sisters. Not only will Swahili be recognized
as an official language, but will be recognized as a mode of communication in
business in all sectors and the environment.

Last week the Pan South African Language
Board (PanSALB) welcomed the declaration by the Southern Africa Development
Community (SADC) to adopt kiSwahili as its fourth official language of
communication.

The announcement came as the world
celebrated 2019 as the International Year Of Indigenous Languages and was
announced during the SADC 39th heads of summit in Tanzanian at the Julius
Nyerere International Conference Centre to ensure that the marginalization of
African languages as languages of business was dealt with.

“This milestone achievement towards
recognition and elevation of indigenous African languages across the SADC
region forms part of the greater effort in ensuring development, usage and
intellectualisation of our heritage languages,” said the Chairperson of the
Board, Dr David wa Maahlamela.

Existing
official languages of SADC currently are English, Portuguese and French.

Africa
is the only continent where a majority of the languages taught in schools are
international foreign languages such as Arabic, English, French, Portuguese and
Spanish.

“KiSwahili
would be adopted at the level of Council and Summit, first as a language for
oral communication, before eventually being adopted for written official
communication within SADC,” says GCIS.

It
is already an official language of the African Union.

“KiSwahili
is an impeccable point of departure in safeguarding integrative multilingualism
inclusive of indigenous languages,” Maahlamela said.

It
is also the official language of Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda with over 100
million speakers.

“We
have for long been very much concerned that not only South Africa has
experienced the marginalisation of indigenous languages, but also our SADC
region, where mostly English language took prominence amongst others.

“South
Africa as a member state has a huge responsibility ahead in ensuring that
indigenous language not only becomes communication languages, but also business
languages in all sectors and environment,” Maahlamela concluded.

c) Kiswahili
in AU

The
African Union has joined the campaigns to elevate Kiswahili as one of its
common languages even as it prepares for heads of State meeting on July 7.

The
African Academy of Languages, AU’s specialised institution mandated to develop
and promote African languages, has entered into a partnership with the East
African Kiswahili Commission to “promote wide use of Kiswahili for regional
integration and sustainable development.”

Adoption
of Kiswahili as a continental language implies that there will always be a
Kiswahili translator at all the bloc’s official meetings with documents,
including treaties and agreements also being authored in the East African
language.

“The
AU has partnered with the EAC to set the pace for the recognition and promotion
of Kiswahili as a Language of Wider Communication in the whole of Africa,” the
EAC Secretariat said in a statement on Wednesday.

The
push to make Kiswahili a pan-African lingua franca comes as the bloc moves to
set rules for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) unveiled in
Kigali last year.

A
committee of experts is working on the rules of origin to be applied by all the
AfCTA signatories.

On
Saturday, President Uhuru Kenyatta is expected to join other African leaders
for the AU Extra-Ordinary Summit and the first AfCTA meeting in Niamey, Niger.

A
common language plays a crucial role in commerce. African countries have
adopted a number of official languages that include English, French, Arabic and
Portuguese, depending on their colonial heritage.

In
a statement, the EAC secretary general Liberat Mfumukeko, said the Kiswahili
push was driven by realisation by EAC policy organs of the importance of the
language in regional integration.

“The
language is a strategic resource for communication and active citizen
participation in development,” he said.

d) Kiswahili
in South Africa

Kiswahili
will, from 2020, become the latest language to be taught in South Africa’s
classrooms. This East African lingua franca, which is also an official language
of the African Union, will be an optional subject.

The news has been greeted with interest and has drawn praise from some
quarters. But practical questions related to South Africa’s current sociolinguistic
and educational contexts must be asked. For instance, why does South Africa
need another language on top of the local 11 as well as the various foreign
languages some schools offer? Has the country done all it can to champion local
languages before adding another to the mix? And is there space on an already
crowded timetable to successfully carry on this project?

These questions shouldn’t be ignored, but I would argue that the benefits of
introducing Kiswahili far outweigh the risks. There are several reasons for
this, among them the chance to prepare South African pupils for rich
interactions in trade, academia and ordinary daily life elsewhere on the
continent.

A
growing language

Kiswahili most
likely originated on East Africa’s coast. It came about as a result of
intermarriage between Bantu-speaking communities along the East African coast
and Arabs who arrived at the coast from as early as before 10th C, AD. It then
spread into the interior through trade, Christian activities such as missionary
work, and exploration activities in the East African mainland.

Today
the language is spoken widely in the larger Eastern Africa region as a lingua
franca, a language used between people who don’t speak one another’s native
language. It’s a national language in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and an official language of the East African
Community which comprises Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South
Sudan.

Its
use is spreading to southern, western and northern Africa. Currently, however,
none of these countries are teaching Kiswahili as a subject the way South
Africa intends to; instead, it is generally a language of trade and
inter-ethnic communication. However, it may not be long until more countries
join South Africa in teaching it in classrooms since the language is spreading
fast and becoming a household language in many of these countries in addition
to its adoption as one of the official languages of the African Union.

Kiswahili
is also a popular research subject at many South African universities. And it’s
studied outside Africa, most particularly in the US and Europe. This global
interest in the adoption of Kiswahili points at its growing international
significance. This implies that its introduction into South African schools is
a good move with multiple benefits.

HOW TO LEARN A LANGUAGE FAST – PART 6

15. Read wisely, not
widely

There’s value in
narrowing the focus of your reading materials. Focus on choosing the right
books, ideally, some that are related to your hobbies and interests. Richards
says, “If you are really into gardening, for example, then look for books on
gardening in your target language.” The idea is to learn through topics
that already interest you because you’ll be intrinsically motivated to
understand. But contrary to many common suggestions, Richards recommends not
using popular book series, like Harry Potter, to learn a language. Most fiction
books are filled with odd vocabulary you won’t use in real life – unless you’re
a wizard.

Instead, start by
reading nonfiction books because they use practical language you’re likely
to use in your daily life. Nonfiction is written more simply than novels, which
often use more creative vocabulary and complex sentence structures.

As a bonus, if you’re
reading a nonfiction book about one of your interests, you already understand
the topic. That means you can focus on learning the new language rather than
unfamiliar concepts.

16. Start With the 100
Most Common Words

Not all vocabulary is
created equal. Some gives you a better return on investment than
others.  For instance, when I lived in Buenos Aires, I met a guy who
had been studying with Rosetta Stone for months (not recommended). I
had been working on and off with a tutor for a few weeks, but I was surprised
by how he could not follow even the most basic of conversations despite months
of study and living there.

It turns out, much of
the vocabulary he had been studying was for kitchen utensils, family
members, clothing and rooms in a house. But if he wanted to ask someone which
part of town they lived in, he had no idea what to say. Start with the 100 most
common words and then make sentences with them over and over again. Learn just
enough grammar to be able to do this and do it until you feel pretty
comfortable with all of them.

17. Prioritise fluency
over perfection

Here’s something else
that native speakers can’t manage: completely perfect grammar. Everyone
makes mistakes when they speak. So when you’re learning a new language,
being perfect shouldn’t be your goal either. It’s much more important to get
your point across rather than spend ten times longer completing your sentence,
because you want the grammar to be perfect. While you’re in class, yes, the teacher
is often going to correct your grammar, and this is a good thing, because it’s
how you learn. But in daily life, even at work or at university, the majority
of people aren’t going to be listening to your grammar. They’re going to try to
understand you so you can have a conversation. So don’t be afraid to put
yourself out there and make mistakes. I’ve actually found that the less I worry
about making mistakes, the less I end up making them anyways.

……………

Well, I happen to teach this stuff to master’s and doctoral students, and I just finished one iteration of the course in December; my usual fury over the broad misunderstanding of the extremely complex issues is still fresh. I’ll write a detailed answer, but, for the TL;DR crowd, you can just scroll down to the very last sentence.

This is still a relatively short post that cuts through decades of deep-seated misconceptions and nonsense, so bear with me.

In the field of second language acquisition (SLA), there have by now been several meta-analyses (studies that aggregate the quantitative findings of other studies) that have compared trying to acquire grammar with and without explicit instruction, deliberate study, and explicit correction.

For misguided and ideological reasons, there had been decades of resistance among English-speaking researchers to the notion of deliberate study of grammar for adults. At least eight things conspired to cause this:

(1) Noam Chomsky’s views on (first) language acquisition (themselves theoretically and empirically very problematic, but that’s a story for another time) were fashionable. They were made even more problematic (and a bit intellectually vulgar, if you ask me) by a guy called Stephen Krashen and several of his graduate students, all of whom became influential in the field (and are now retired).

(2) It was wrongly assumed that adults could acquire grammar like infants and toddlers.

(3) The nature of children’s and adults’ acquisition of grammar and their neurocognitive and social/environmental underpinnings was poorly understood. In particular, it wasn’t understood how extraordinarily involved, sohisticated, and laborious child language acquisition is and how much input, sophisticated learning, and caregiver support goes into it (and it’s enormous amounts).

(4) Most SLA researchers studying this stuff were monolingual Anglophones and had never successfully learned another language as adults, which gave them lots of really silly ideas about the process.

(5) Most SLA researchers had a poor-to-appalling grasp of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

(6) SLA studies were often not methodologically and statistically rigorous; the samples were small, not enough detail was reported to make studies replicable, data were kept unpublished, the constructs and tests were wonky, the statistical procedures were inadequate, and often the very designs were fatally flawed; for instance, they relied on completely unfair strawman comparisons, predictably favouring the experimental condition the researcher was emotionally invested in.

(7) English speakers aren’t taught the grammar of their own language in school. When you don’t understand something, you (i) often fail to see its relevance and (ii) feel insecure about discussing, researching, or teaching it.

(8) English speakers are extremely concerned with saving face and extremely reluctant to give or receive direct, honest, explicit correction. Essentially, more insecurity.

It may or may not come as a shock to you that Anglophone academics of course thought they knew best, and it never really seriously occurred to them to consult people from other language backgrounds, particularly professors and students in any one of the hundreds upon hundreds of language departments at universities abroad, to see how these extremely successful learners were reaching their native-like and near-native levels of proficiency as adults. (Spoiler alert: It was through lots of explicit instruction, deliberate study, and explicit correction, coupled with tons of communicative practice.) No. They knew better. Of course they did. The wogs begin at Calais.

To cut a long story short, because it’s a convoluted and infuriating one that I slowly unpack for my students over a semester’s worth of readings, lectures, discussions, and assignments, the above led to decades, entire careers, and hundreds of millions of dollars being wasted on pursuing evidence that adults could acquire second languages through immersion and without instruction. That evidence never came.

This, unfortunately, got translated into decades of (a majority of) language teachers in Anglophone countries prematurely and misguidedly kicking grammar out of the classroom and basically just chatting and playing games with their students. It led to scruffy Aussie backpackers teaching English to Japanese people without a day of training. Hey, all you had to do was get ’em to talk!

This is one of the reasons (but not the only reason) why language instruction is still so poor in English-speaking countries.

Meanwhile, those who knew what they were doing, including a minority of teachers in Anglophone countries (many of them in foreign-language departments), kept teaching grammar, making their students study it, and explicitly and directly correcting errors without fear of hurting someone’s feelings. And a minority of SLA researchers continued systematically studying the effects of communicative language teaching with and without explicit instruction, but making sure they avoided poor methodological decisions and strawman experimental conditions.

Then we had the first meta-analysis around 2000 followed by a bigger and more focused one around 2010 (actually done by my former professor and a grad school classmate), followed by several even more focused ones. These were accompanied by significant strides in our understanding of the cognitive and neural bases of second language learning.

The answers that unambiguously emerge are:

1. Adults who are systematically and explicitly taught grammar rules outperform those who are not, all other things being equal. The effect size is large.
2. This advantage is seen both for formally simple and formally complex rules.
3. The advantage is also evident for local rules (applying to one word or several adjacent words) and long-distance rules (applying to words that are separated by other words).
4. The effects of explicit instruction transfer to communicative tasks and to measures of spontaneous language use, that is, they are not just limited to explicit paper-and-pencil-test situations.
5. Learners fail to notice most recasts (“gentle Anglo-style corrections”, often unobtrusively delivered with a smile). If they do notice them, they often misinterpret them.
6. Corrections of errors must be short, emphatic, and focused on the error.
7. It makes little difference to learning whether corrections are immediate (which is sometimes inappropriate because it disrupts communication) or delayed. However, some learners prefer one or the other for reasons such as embarrassment. For instance, a friend of mine conducted a study with Japanese learners of English, and his participants preferred immediate correction because the alternative (a debriefing session at the end) felt like a raking over the coals. [EDIT: The author of this study just reminded me via a text message that another reason his participants preferred immediate feedback was that they sometimes forgot what the error had been by the time they were being corrected. He also says that evidence has recently been building up for a somewhat bigger benefit of immediate feedback, which makes sense to me.]
8. If the learner can handle it (i.e., if they have enough mental bandwidth, which low-lever learners typically don’t), it’s beneficial to interrupt them, point out the error, and prompt them to correct it themselves, then later make sure they understand the nature of the error and the correction.
9. Learners tend to ignore peer corrections. They need to be trained to accept and process these.
10. Communicative practice is particularly effective for grammar acquisition when the completion of the task critically hinges on the learner noticing and using the structure that is being taught. For example, if you’re teaching past tense {-ed}, your practice tasks need to be constructed such that they can’t be successfully completed unless this structure is used and processed. In this particular example, this means you must remove all other clues that point to the fact that the event is completed (such as time adverbials like “yesterday”).
11. Successful teaching needs to incorporate a continuous cycle of short bursts of instruction and correction accompanied by lots of practice using the target language for communication, with any malformed output receiving explicit correction and being used to guide further curricular choices.

In other words: Adults can’t just magically learn a second language through osmosis; they aren’t babies; they need explicit instruction, deliberate study, and explicit, direct, unambiguous correction.

……………

Well learning vocabulary on daily base, reading a grammar book about the target language, the new language you are trying to learn, and in the case that the verb conjugation in the target language is difficult, this needs a separate step too, unless it is easy and can be learned as part of the grammar which is the case for Germanic languages while Romance languages have difficult verb conjugation.

You can learn vocabulary the old fashioned way, that is out of a book and marking the words that you had wrong with a pencil when you translated them in your mind, after hiding the right column that contains the translation with a paper. You can also learn it with software that keeps track of the past scores that you had for every word and the dates of the last examination concerning them.

Reading a grammar book is also necessary and you must begin with pronunciation of course and checking if you must remember the gender of the nouns in the languages in question so this you must know before you start learning vocabulary. The rest of the grammar you can read later or in the beginning according to your taste. If you keep it for later, the advantage is that you will know already vocabulary and won’t have to search up so many words anymore in a dictionary. My experience is that the best grammar books begin with pronunciation and subdivide the chapters according to the word sorts that they treat, e.g. chapter 2 is nouns, chapter 3 is adjectives, …

There is also a lot of crap among the grammar books. Books that repeat stuff according to level of knowledge and so on, waste of time.

The verb conjugation might take time too, the most difficult language for that is French, that has a really difficult verb conjugation.

If you learn on daily base you can move on at a rate of 100 words vocabulary/day at maximum, which takes you to a knowledge of 6000 words/two months which is almost enough to be fluent but this will work out only in ideal circumstances. It depends on your age and motivation among others.

I have learned 4000 Swedish words in two months time with a computer program that is on my site, that can be found by googling my full name. But motivation is the most important aspect, more important than the tools that you use.

…………

If you wanna learn new language the best way to stay motivated while learning is to think that you are not learning a language but you are understanding the whole community. If you learn that particular language than you can enjoy comedy shows songs great people’s speech of that language speaking country …..after understanding this you can use following method to learn

@after learning a basic vocab start watching a child related program in that language they narrat you slowly so you can understand and not forget to open a subtitles

@after passing through this state now you can watch vidio related to your interest like sports ,fashion ,poem,comedy whatever may be and try to watch it at least two time with subtitles and without subtitle you can also mimic it in your heart

@listenning songs this will really help you you can do this from your first day of learning that language bt keep eye on lyrics and try to sing like it and when you understand that language you can also translate it

@another way to talk to person who can speak that language better than you . If you have such people than you are blessed because it help you so much

@and while learning language take a determination that until I do it I will not leave it . Because sometimes thought comes in our mind that we can not do it you have to say to yourself I can I will…….thanks for reading till the end

………….

Learning a foreign language to the point that you can function independently in that language is not very much like an intellectual task such as learning philosophy, a natural science, history, or most non-foreign language courses is school. There are grammatical rules to be sure, but somehow babies learn their native language without textbooks teaching grammatical rules. Sometimes grammar rules are presented in a confusing manner. An alternative method would be to see short sentences and phrases that illustrate the rule.

Learning to function in a foreign language is more like learning to play a sport or a musical instrument in that you are acquiring a new habit. As such it requires practice to the point that you are comfortable in it.

It helps tremendously to have some audio recordings available so that you can hear the sounds of the language. If you have no native speakers available or if money is a problem, either inexpensive recordings or even using a program such as Google Translate is better than nothing.
Repeated listening is needed to get your ears used to hearing the language. Repeated watching of foreign films would be recommended once you have reached an intermediate level of ability. Do not worry if you do not understand much at first. This is because many common idioms in the language are not found in textbooks and dictionaries.

As for the course itself, the learning should be tailored to specific social experiences that you are likely to acquire. This can be done in units that you set up. Limit your acquisition of grammar to only the rules that are needed to achieve the task being learned. In the beginning, do not overload yourself with too much vocabulary. You can always add vocabulary later when you need it. It is critical that you practice what you are learning until you feel fluent in achieving each task. Remember, you are acquiring a habit. As for pacing yourself, because of the need for practice, twenty minutes a day is far better than all day once a week.

For example, in the first unit, you would learn specific phrases for expressing simple greetings and good byes. Included would also be expressions for “yes”, “no” “please” and “thank you”.

In the second unit you would learn to ask and identify yourself and other people. Keep it simple. Sentences and phrases such as ‘I am John Brown.” and “This is my friend, Phillip.” are typical of this unit. Family relationship terms probably should be limited to immediate family for now.

In the third unit you would learn to ask and identify several common objects seen in a room or classroom, such as “table”, “chair”, “book” “pen” etc. Knowledge of these items will be useful in attacking the next few units. This is not the place to overload yourself with too much vocabulary. At most, eight to ten objects are enough. Your primary task here is to acquire a habit by practicing the simple sentences and phrases needed to achieve this task. As you practice, the vocabulary will be internalized and your fluency in this task will be achieved.

In the fourth unit, you will learn to give simple descriptions of people and objects. This is a good time to introduce basic colors and simple adjectives such as “tall”, “short”, “interesting”, “boring”, “good” etc. Do not overload yourself with too much vocabulary. Focus on acquiring the fluency needed for this task through practice.

In the fourth unit, you will teach yourself to ask and tell where something is located. Here you have a chance to practice again the vocabulary learned in the second unit. Here you are learning expressions such as “is in front of the table”, “on the table”, “under the table” etc. You can add the names of a few places in town for expressions such as “next to the bank”, “across from the restaurant” etc. Practice what you are learning until you feel fluent in achieving this task. As for grammar, this is where you would learn about how the language deals with the prepositional (ablative) case. Some languages, such a Slavic languages, have propositions that require other case endings. These can be dealt with in a later unit. Practice what you are learning until you feel fluent in achieving this task.

In the fifth unit, you can learn how to ask and tell where someone is going. You could learn the names of common rooms of the house, perhaps a few more places in town. You might even ask where a city is located, but here, keep it simple. An example to be used would be: “Where is Paris?” – “Paris is in France.” Practice what you are learning until you feel fluent in achieving this task.

In the sixth unit you learn to ask and tell what someone is doing. Here you restrict yourself to simple expressions such as taking, putting, looking at, drinking coffee, eating an apple, sitting, standing etc. Practice what you are learning until you feel fluent in achieving this task. On the grammatic front, here is how the language deals with the accusative (direct object) case. Some languages, such a Slavic languages, have situations that require the genitive case be used to express the direct object. Likewise when saying something like “From where does he take the book?” the answer may require the genitive as well. Practice what you are learning until you feel fluent in achieving this task.

Later on, other units can cover topic like “giving”, “teaching” and “showing” where the language uses the dative case. “Some languages us this case for words like “help”, “answer” “thank” etc.
Other separate units can be added for “counting things”, “shopping in the grocery store”, “going to a post office”, “eating in a restaurant”, “buying clothes” etc.

By now you should have a feel for how to approach learning a new language.

…………..

First, change your view of what you are doing. You’re acquiring a language, not learning it. That sounds like nitpicking, but it’s not. Don’t get bogged down in trying to “learn” vocabulary and grammar. Focus on understanding and communicating. Definitely, look up what you don’t understand at some point, but if you can just make a quick note and move on at the time, you’re getting closer to your goal. You don’t want to know about the language, you want to use it.

Okay, here is a rough high-level view of the shortcuts:

First, trade hours for months. Spend more time each day learning and it will cut months off of the time it takes to learn … within limits. More sessions a day are probably more effective than making one session longer. And sessions every day are certainly more useful than a couple of incredibly intense days each week.

Second, find the most effective methods. Some of this is general and applies to anyone. That is, language learning depends a lot on input. You need at a minimum to hear people speaking the language. Yes, radio, TV, podcasts, etc. are helpful. Actual interaction with a speaker is even more helpful. You need to practice what you want to do. You’ll need to start speaking and writing at some point. There are differences of opinion on how soon to emphasize that. I’m of the school of thought that you need to do it earlier than you think you are ready. If you wait until you feel ready, you’re delaying your end goal.

Some of finding effective methods is finding what fits you. You want it to be both interesting and comprehensible. One suggestion I’ve seen is to seek out coverage of a sport that you like in your target language. The vocabulary and subject matter is more limited, making it easier to understand without dumbing it down. Is that isn’t your love, find videos on a subject you enjoy in your target language.

Third, don’t just put in time. Make your time count. Learn about spaced repetition. Make your practice challenge the boundary of what you can already do fairly often, but don’t overshoot so far that it does nothing for you. This is separate from effective methods. This is about the day to day effectiveness of making today’s work count by making it just challenging enough. It’s about deciding that some days all you can do is use what you already know in a fairly mundane way. Other days, it’s about trying to do something new that you haven’t tried before.

Fourth, don’t rely on a single method. One suggestion I’ve seen a couple of times is to get multiple sources that are geared to the level you’re at and use them all, side by side. Read the first chapter of a textbook, assuming you use one. Listen to the first couple of episodes of a podcast for beginning learners. Read a children’s book aimed at your vocabulary level. Mix and match. They’ll reinforce each other.

Absolutely none of this is magic. And all of it is about not blinding following a generic course. There are too many variables. You’ll pick up some things faster than others. You’ll struggle with some concepts. Don’t treat it as a series of tests to get graded on. Treat it as a series of conversations you want to be able to have. It’s a language, after all.

………..

Well, I wouldn’t answer the question in the context of “learning” a language. I don’t believe in the classic version of what people call “language learning”.

Very few people find it fun to be learning a language they don’t use every day. Just learning vocabulary, or grammar rules with little context. Like a “hobby” of sorts.

Strictly my own opinion, though, I have nothing against other people doing it as a hobby. Just never found it fun for myself.

But, if I may rephrase the question to “What is the fastest and easiest way to become reasonably fluent in a language?”, then I do have an answer to that.

I would say:

• Listening to music in this language, understanding the lyrics and the cultural aspects embedded in these lyrics
• Watching comedies (or any other genre of movies you find fun), understanding the humor, and understanding the cultural aspects of what they are laughing about and why
• Communicating with people you can learn something interesting from. Again, paying attention to the cultural aspects of what people are saying. Obviously, it is up to you to define what is interesting and what is not.

You may find these to be a lot of work. You may be right. It does not sound like the easiest way. Yet, I would still say it is actually the fastest and probably the most fun way of becoming fluent in a language, without wasting time, money and effort on trying to “learn” it.

……………

There is no way to learn a language ‘quickly’. As a baby we spend the first 2 years of our lives just listening, after we build up a good portion of confidence we physically start talking the language we’ve been studying all of this time, however our grammar and pronunciation are completely screwed, afterwards we spend another 2–4 years mastering our native language. So you can go ahead and prepare for the hard truth that becoming bilingual is not going to be quick nor easy.

Following advice from someone on how to learn another language is really hard considering each individual that has learnt another language has difference strategies and techniques! I’ve personally done more studying on how to learn a different language than actually learning a different language.

My best advice for you— (Simple as possible)

• Start with learning the alphabet, learning the alphabet in your desired language will help you tremendously in your journey.
• Basic grammar. If you start off learning words like ‘this’ ‘that’ and ‘the’, normally there are different ways to say and different places to put those words dependent on the sentences they’re in, drop the simplistic word learning and start off with basic grammar, it will give you a general understanding of how to read and arrange sentences.
• After learning basic grammar than you can start to focus on word power, there is no need to start learning hard and irrelevant words, just learn the basics. Greetings, Verbs, Pronouns, ect.

End to end, I’d personally say 60% word power, 40% grammar. I understand grammar is extremely important in learning a new language, I just believe you can learn more than you think simply from learning word power.

Good luck, and don’t study to hard, learning a language is supposed to be fun, not a chore. You will get burnt out on it if you study continuously day after day!

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There are various ways to learn a new language. You may join an online course, a regular school or a university . But the most important thing is when you cross a certain age its very difficult to learn or grasp a new language while you can learn it easily if you are a school or college going child.

I am very well versed in using English and being an Indian obviously I have a good knowledge of Hindi as well still working in a multinational company at a senior position made me feel the requirement to learn some foreign languages as well . I was completely puzzled which course shall I choose to make myself acquire the knowledge in a short span of time.

I started searching for various institutes on online platform and the topmost in the search list was British School of Languages.

They offered me various options ranging from beginner and intro-level courses to conversational courses, to comprehensive ones that help me to be fluent in the language of my choice so I finalized to invest my time and money in a positive manner.

The mentors during the demo told me that firstly I should learn the basics of a language to carry a conversation, considering the fact in my mind that I can be capable enough to deal with my foreign clients at my workplace.

The question that striked my mind was that how can I learn it and what methods would be followed to learn , what will be my course content, how much time will I take to learn one level. Will one level be enough or do I need to clear all the levels but luckily the trainers at British School of Languages helped me to understand that if I opt for any of the language courses offered by them I will require to learn all the levels to reach to a stage of perfection but not at one go it will be a time taking process . They offered me an option of enrolling as per my availability and customized requirement

The levels as described by them as per CEFR are :

A1 – Beginner helps you to learn main phrases and phrases used in every day situations.( Duration of course: 35 to 45 days)

A2 – Elementary helps you to learn to to articulate your self in any foreign language( Duration of course: 35 to 45 days)

B1 – Intermediate pre-intermediate helps you to develop skills of understanding somebody’s conversation as well as explaining your own expressions to the other person.(Duration of course: 45 to 60 days)

B2 – Upper Intermediate helps you to learn writing precise and concise texts on your own (Duration of course: 45 to 60 days)

C1 – Advanced helps you to learn higher intermediate or advance level communication which you can use at your workplace ( Duration of course : 60 to 90 days)

C2 – Master or completely proficient (Duration of course: 60 to 90 days)

I made my mind to start with the A1 level and then I asked for the fee structure. I had an idea that they will charge a pretty good amount but to my surprise they offered me the entire 45 days plan at just Rs 12500 I.N.R.

I enrolled and started my journey of learning a new language . I must say that the quality offered by British School of Languages is completely different from the other institutes in various aspects and they are really entitled the right place amongst online institutes because they offer what they promise and you will never regret to join an online course with them .Following features will compel you to join British School of Languages as did I:

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Languages can be learned in groups or in intensive individual lessons. Individual lessons are usually quite expensive and are out of the question for most learners.
In language classes and evening classes different languages are offered.

1. Study the language: Those who do not want to just speak and understand a language, but also want to write and talk in this language in a grammatically correct manner, can not avoid doing a studying a language. Studying a language is very time consuming and is usually offered full-time.
   Of course you can also study a language part time. But the additional burden on your professional and family life should not be underestimated. Those who must control negations and laws in a language or those who want to earn money with the language, can not avoid studying a language.
2. Media sources: Media such as web pages, foreign newspapers, television programs and radio broadcasts are not a language learning method in the literal sense. You can not really learn a language just by listening to programs and reading articles. However, as a free addition to the language learning methods mentioned above, these mediums are perfect.
3. Online courses: Online courses are structured courses and cover virtually all learning methods and topic areas. The advantage of an online course is that you can learn on virtually any computer in the world. Nowadays, there are apps for many online courses, so you can learn on the move at any time with your smartphone or tablet.

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Tips For Mastering New Language

Learning a foreign language can be a very organic, exciting and inspiring process, and bring you health benefits. Yes, health.

According to studies, learning a new language in adulthood can delay the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease by 4-5 years. That is significantly more than the capabilities of modern drugs.

Also, learning a foreign language improves knowledge of the native language, increases attentiveness and creativity, and stimulates logical and cognitive processes in the brain.

Benny Lewis, one of the most famous experts in language learning, is an imposing and inspiring person. He is a real polyglot; Benny learnt seven languages — including Spanish, German and even Mandarin. And each of them took him less than 1 year to master. Benny has travelled halfway around the world, gave speeches at TEDx; he also conducts seminars and has his own website “Learn a language in three months.” 

Benny has his methods and useful tips for how to learn a language fast and efficiently. The main of them is: when he starts to learn a language, he compiles a script of words and phrases to respond to simple queries from strangers. This example gives us the first 5 important studying tips:

1. Learn The Right Words

Many people give up learning a foreign language because there are so many words to learn from scratch. But to form a working vocabulary, knowing all the words is unnecessary. In fact, with the right approach, 20% of your language learning effort will allow you to understand 80% of the material (according to the Pareto principle). 

You can make yourself post-its or use special cards with words; there are even special programmes that form such cards, so you can carry them in your phone everywhere you go, for example Memrise or Membean. The main advantage of such programmes is that you don`t have to learn words in a particular order. 

2. Communicate Or At Least Speak Out Loud In A Foreign Language From Day One

It is really OK to make mistakes — you are just starting to learn the language. Talk to native speakers, translate texts aloud, and arrange to learn a language with someone you can communicate with daily. 

Apps like Tandem or HelloTalk, where people can communicate with native speakers and other learners, might be handy in this case. That way, you won’t have to worry about mispronouncing words or being unable to remember everything you’ve learnt when it’s time to use your knowledge.

3. Learn Useful Phrases First

Imagine you are studying Spanish, and suddenly you have to go to Spain. What will be needed first? Phrases that will help you navigate the city, order food or book a hotel room, meet the necessary people, buy what you want in a store, etc. You can use printed phrasebooks or use Rosetta Stone’s Phrasebook for that.

4. Tell About Yourself

When starting to learn a language, write a short text about yourself, translate it (by yourself or with a native speaker) and add details as you study. This is, actually, a great illustration of your progress level.

5. Listen to the radio

Radio is an even more effective way to get used to the language and understand it faster than watching TV series in the original. This is because you listen to the spontaneous speech live as if you are communicating with the host. Benny recommends the TuneIn resource, which collects radio broadcasts worldwide.