| Subject: Re: Learning a Language |
Author:
HK
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Date Posted: 03:29:21 05/13/06 Sat
In reply to:
Ginny
's message, "Learning a Language" on 19:10:03 04/18/06 Tue
You can do it! Anybody can, if they go about it the right way. These ideas are good for dyslexics, but actually for most other people too.
Tip 1: To remember words, don't just read them and repeat them and expect to remember them later. Every time you face a word you have to learn, ask yourself "How am I going to remember this?" Make associations! You want to remember "barco" = "ship": what English word does "barco" remind you of? ("Bark", "bar code" etc) So shut your eyes and "be there", looking at a ship with a dog BARKing on the deck, or a ship with a huge bar code on its side ... Or maybe you find it easier to think about emBARKing and disemBARKing. Whatever works for you!
Tip 2: Re-read and re-think often. Make yourself a personal vocab book, with one column for the Spanish words, and another for their English equivalents. Don't get carried away with filling it up: be strict with yourself and ONLY write in the words you've remembered or thought up a way to remember. You use this book for revision, every day, as often as you can find 5 minutes for it. Cover up one column and test yourself, but take a peek whenever you need to. Sounds like a drag? It will be, if you've written in lots of words you don't know - but you'll surprise yourself and have FUN and feel PROUD and ENCOURAGED if you start to notice that the memory-tricks YOU CREATED really work for you. Put a pencil dot by words you can't remember after a few tries - and make a decision for each - just erase it (and don't feel guilty!) if it really isn't a word you need all the time, OR (if it is a really common word that you're going to keep needing) start over with looking for a way to remember it.
Tip 3: You don't always have to be indoors, huddled over your school-books, to do all this! Go out for a walk, enjoy the great outdoors, and try to remember a couple of Spanish words you were thinking about earlier. After you've recalled any word a few times with the help of the memory-trick, you'll find you don't even need the trick any more; you start just knowing it.
Tip 4: If you don't like grammar, don't think of it as grammar. Sure, some students learn the verb "to be" by chanting "I am, you are, he is" etc BUT that's not the only way. Just write "I am" and its Spanish equivalent as an item in your vocab book, and learn it separately, the same way as you'd learn any other word.
Tip 5: Make sure your teacher knows you're dyslexic, right at the start of your course. S/he may not know much about dyslexia, but you can tell him/her. If you have to start with basics, just say you learn differently, sometimes more slowly, you might easily get embarrassed in class if called upon to answer or read aloud (a situation to avoid because of your panic-thing), but that you are really motivated and you think you can do it, with the right kind of support.
Tip 6: If you decide to get yourself private tuition/help, one option would be that this tutor/friend reads ahead in your coursebook to see what vocabulary is coming up next, and teaches it to you ahead of time (to give you less to worry about in class, so you can feel more relaxed and concentrate better.) If you're able to get hold of J.J.Asher's classic old book "Learning Another Language Through Actions" (probably in your college library), it describes a great, dyslexia-friendly way to pre-teach vocabulary, and this way (called Total Physical Response) is easy enough for a friend to pick up by reading, so you wouldn't have to find a qualified tutor.
Tip 7: Search the web (e.g. Google) with the search term "read this article in Spanish". When you find an article of interest to you that's on the web in both languages, print them both out, or cut and paste them into the same document to print, side by side. Read the English first a couple of times, then try reading the Spanish. Knowing what it means (overall; of course we don't remember every word of what we read), you'll notice that you can understand a lot of the Spanish just by looking at it slowly, and trying to figure it out. And that's when you're still a beginner! It doesn't matter, of course, that you don't understand everything at first; language learning is just like that. You know the pessimist's cup is half-empty, but the optimist's is half FULL. Never focus on what you don't know or find confusing; just smile at the thought of what you DO understad and know already. Still remember what "ship" was?
GOOD LUCK! And please tell us how it goes!
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