Hi everybody, my name is Gabi and today we’re going to talk about four fun ways to learn a language that do not involve munching on your grammar textbooks.
1. The first way is by engaging in creative writing.
Yes, that’s right. Writing can be an exciting and very motivating process of learning a foreign language.
All of us are, without exception, creative and inventive.
This is probably the reason we all love platforms such as Netflix, we love action movies, we love soap operas, tv shows and so on. We love to see our favorite actors performing different roles in incredible and exiting fantastic worlds.
Moreover, writing opens up your consciousness in ways you would have never imagined.
Yes, I know this might sound obvious to you but when you write a story your whole mind becomes quickly engaged and excited by the process of creating something beautiful and unique.
A story that only you could have created. You start to look for words in order to create your story, which means you improve and enlarge your vocabulary and you start to wonder about new ways to express a set of ideas using the right grammar.
In other words, Writing is awesome. Especially if it is creative writing. Most often, such texts take the form of poems or stories.
Creative writing normally refers to the production of texts which have an aesthetic rather than a purely informative, instrumental or pragmatic purpose.
One of the chief distinguishing characteristics of CW texts is a playful engagement with language, stretching and testing its rules to the limit in a guilt-free atmosphere in which taking risks is encouraged.
Such writing combines cognitive with affective modes of thinking. As the poet, Ronald Stuart Thomas once wrote, ‘Poetry is that which arrives at the intellect by way of the heart’.
What are the benefits of CW for learners?
There a dozens of ways in which CW will help you improve your language skills. Here are some of them:
Writing combines logic and intuition, which helps you develop a better understanding of how the language works.
- Perhaps you feel like you can hardly construct a sentence in the language you’re learning?
- Well, that may be true but you probably still know more words than you think!
for more of a challenge, you could try to write a short text about a friend. This is more difficult but can also be a lot of fun!
- Focus on describing your friend, their actions and the sequence of events in the story.
- Even if your sentences aren’t perfect, you can probably think of some adjectives to describe them and some verbs to talk about what they’re doing.
Don’t worry about making mistakes, just try to use the words you do know as best you can and form sentences with them.
At first, it’s best to focus on communicating ideas and meaning, even if your grammar is not correct.
You may not be able to construct perfect sentences, but if you can get your meaning across, that’s a start.
Different ways To Say The Same Thing
If you don’t happen to know how to say one thing or describe a given situation, rephrasing what you wish to say in different ways will help you learn to think and use your limited linguistic resources in creative new ways. Forcing yourself to think in different new ways will help you expand your mind.
Writing will help you reorganize chaotic elements and ideas from grammar and turn them into real stories.
Needless to say that in order to consolidate your knowledge in grammar it is a great idea to put some context around it.
If you use your grammar framed with real life situations you will learn it much quicker and much better.
Once you have your first stories ready to go you will gain confidence and start writing more and more.
Writing will also help you identify and target your weaknesses much better. It will make you realize where you need to put the focus of your effort. It’ll help you fix your mistakes and move forward.
Writing can be the prelude of real life conversations. If you write and hone your language skills, you will become much more confident when you have to use your language in real life.
- CW aids language development at all levels: grammar, vocabulary, phonology and discourse. It requires learners to manipulate the language in interesting and demanding ways in attempting to express uniquely personal meanings
As mentioned above, a key characteristic of CW is a willingness to play with the language.
Much of the teaching we do tends to focus on the left side of the brain, where our logical faculties are said to reside. CW puts the emphasis on the right side of the brain, with a focus on feelings, physical sensations, intuition and musicality. This is a healthy restoration of the balance between logical and intuitive faculties.
Perhaps most notable is the dramatic increase in self-confidence and self-esteem which CW tends to develop among learners. Learners also tend to discover things for themselves about the language… and about themselves too, thus promoting personal as well as linguistic growth, which results in self-motivation.
Regular creative writing activities help you to habitually construct sentences in the patterns of the target language rather than thinking in your native language. Grammar is best learned through examples and practice and this makes creative writing a great way to master grammatical rules.
Let’s hop on the second way of learning a foreign language.
2. Reading literature. Reading literature is the sister of creative writing. Reading and writing are two sides of the same coin.
Robert E. Scholes was an American literary critic and theorist. He is known for his ideas on fabulation and metafiction.
According to Robert, what students need is the kind of knowledge and skill that will enable them to make sense of their worlds, to determine their own interests, both individual and collective, to see through the manipulations of all sorts of texts in all sorts of media, and to express their views in some appropriate manner.
He calls attention to the value of literary study in making students more discerning users and consumers of language. In his opinion, the close and careful reading that takes place when students work with the complex and varied discourses of literature helps them to become more analytical about all forms of language.
Active learning, in this sense, means that students participate in their own education and do active things that result in learning . Furthermore, authors such as Joanne Collie and Stephen Slater consider that in reading literary texts, students have to cope with language intended for native speakers and thus they gain additional familiarity with many linguistic uses, forms and conventions of the written mode: with irony, exposition, argument, narration, and so on.
Through literature, students not only see people they might never have encountered or spoken with in ordinary life, they see the world through the eyes of the characters portrayed in a story. This multicultural aspect of literature can be used to teach readers to identify cultural heritages and understand psychological change.
Wow, that was a mouthful!
In essence, we could summarize that reading literature will help you understand your own interests and views of the world. It will also help you analyze different forms of language. Especially language intended for native speakers. That is a double win for you.
An effective way in which you can learn how to best take advantage of reading literature can be performed by forming small groups of language students who will get together in order to learn a new language.
They will all read a story first and then become involved in the process of learning by participating in what is called Active learning through class discussions and Socratic Seminars.
The students could sit in a circle so they can look at each other directly. Lastly, the questions to be discussed can be divided into three categories:
Opening Questions. Normally, the Socratic Seminar starts when the teacher poses a question that any student in the class who read the book could answer. For instance, “This story is really about….,” or “What character did you empathize with and why?
The aim of the opening question is to give every student a chance to talk, be heard, and ideally gain confidence.
The role of the teacher at this point in the seminar is only to listen, not to critique or clarify.
Core Questions.
These questions are rooted in the text but are still open-ended and challenging so as to promote a thoughtful dialogue. “How” and “Why” questions work particularly well, and also questions that induce students to evaluate characters’ actions, relationships, and motives. As the seminar progresses, the teacher/facilitator may intervene to ask follow-up questions if the arguments are not clear and to invite reluctant participants to get involved.
Closing Questions.
The aim of these questions is to encourage participants to apply the ideas presented to their particular experiences and to have them express their personal opinions. Answering these closing questions does not require use of the text but provides students with the chance to share their own perspectives.
Some examples are: “How do the ideas in the text relate to our lives?” “Is it right that society establishes differences between people’s social class?”
Inspiring and encouraging students to become active participants, use the target language to talk about their personal views and see language and literature as tools for self-development are not simple and effortless tasks, but these should be the new challenges for teachers, or at least for outstanding teachers.
It is not about being the source of knowledge but about having students gain the knowledge by themselves as the practice of the Socratic Seminar illustrates.
Now let’s hop on the third way to learn a language:
learning games and activities is by far the most fun way to learn something new.
The best way to learn a new language is to make it fun. The more you enjoy what you’re doing, the more likely you’ll retain information.
And this is why we should play in order to learn.
Here are some of my favorite games:
Charades:
charades plural : a game in which some of the players try to guess a word or phrase from the actions of another player who may not speak
2. Bingo
You can use the popular game of Bingo by using cards in the language you’re learning. To make it more challenging, the Bingo caller can say words in English and the people playing have to identify the term in the language they’re learning
3. Pictionary
Pictionary is a word/sketch game played in teams. Players work in teams and try to get their teammates to guess the secret word by drawing a picture that represents the word, similarly to acting the word out in Charades.
8. Watch a movie in original version.
This can be great language-learning tools because you can hear the words spoken in the language you’re learning as you read them on the screen. This helps not just with vocabulary, but with pronunciation.
9. Listen to music and read the lyrics.
Listening to music in the language you’re learning can help you master pronunciation and learn to sing in that language as well as speak.
