When I lived in Istanbul in 2003, I did everything wrong to learn Turkish.
Everything.
- I took Turkish classes instead of speaking in Turkish with Turkish people.
- I spoke in English or French with the Turkish friends that I had made, instead of speaking in Turkish.
- I studied Turkish from a textbook used in my class, instead of reading stuff that Turkish people read.
- I listened to recordings accompanying the textbook, instead of listening to real conversations and stuff that Turkish people listen to.
I don’t speak Turkish very well today despite all of my hard work. I can have simple conversations, but it’s far from what I’d actually call knowing how to speak Turkish.
If I could do it all over again, here’s what I’d do:
- Never attend a single Turkish class ever again in my life.
- Consult a textbook only very occasionally, mostly to resolve a doubt.
- Speak in Turkish with the Turkish friends that I had made. (Duh!)
- Perhaps use recordings made for learners, but keep it to a minimum.
- Listen to insane amounts of real conversations in Turkish and authentic materials (TV, radio).
- Cultivate my sense of adventure and throw caution to the wind.
In fact, that’s exactly how I learned Spanish.
With Turkish, I took a much more “traditional” approach. By that, I mean that I studied it like a subject. How stupid of me! I was much smarter when the time came for me to learn Spanish.
The truth is that I really didn’t care about learning Spanish at the time. This indifference towards Spanish allowed me to get rid of all my inhibitions.
I spoke when I wanted to, said it any old way I knew how, and just didn’t give a damn what people thought. I listened to anything in Spanish just for the hell of it. I didn’t care if I understood it or not.
I speak fluent Spanish today.
Turkish, on the other hand…
I cared very much about learning Turkish. I might even say too much. I tried to “manage” my learning. I tried to do everything in graded doses so that I wouldn’t scare myself too much by coming up against what I couldn’t understand.
What I should have done was just say to hell with it like I later did with Spanish.
I’m not saying you should stop caring about learning French. That would be silly.
What I’m saying is:
- Stop worrying about learning French.
What I’m also saying is:
- Expose yourself to lots of French that you don’t understand. If what you don’t understand exhausts and frustrates you, you’re worrying about learning French. See the bulleted point immediately above.
- Ditch your inhibitions. They are not your friends. They will only hold you back.
- Stop trying to manage your learning like at school. You’ll never feel at home in French unless you stop doing that.
- To hell with what you don’t understand right now. You’ll understand it someday without having to force it.
- Drop your guard and make mistakes. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not even trying.
Great post! The only thing is, exposing yourself to language you don’t understand won’t speed acquisition. Acquisition occurs when incoming language is accurately matched to meaning. That can’t happen if you don’t understand what you’re hearing. Your comments about inhibitions and so on are spot-on, but without satisfying the basic mechanism of language acquisition — comprehensible input, not just input — the learner cannot optimize his experience.
It’s difficult to find enough authentic and comprehensible French to learn from in the beginning. If you limit yourself to that, you might struggle to move forward. That was my problem with Turkish.
If you’re listening to lots of French, there should be bits in there that are comprehensible to you, or that become comprehensible to you — even if a lot of the rest of it goes over your head.
The theory you mention makes sense, but I don’t believe it means that we should shut out the things we don’t understand yet. That seems to go against the spirit of learning to me.
If you want lots of comprehensible input, the only way to get enough of it in the beginning, I think, is to spend A LOT of time with a person (a real living-breathing one in front of you) who speaks to you in such a way that you can communicate.
Even then, along with that, I still recommend listening to things that you don’t understand yet. I don’t feel we should be afraid to expose ourselves to what we don’t yet grasp.
Learning a language is a long-term endeavour. You’re right, listening to things you don’t understand yet won’t produce immediate results, or at least not ones that you can measure easily. I see nothing wrong with that. 😉
I realise now I’ve been reading your blog since the first month I started learning French. Before it was just a novelty blog I’d read to get excited about one day being able to understand and converse with Quebecois, now it’s my favorite resource to access when trying to learn new expressions. All the points on what you’d do if you had to do it all over again, are things that slowly came to me over the months (almost 12!) of learning French outside of a Francophone environment. Not exactly in that order, but I learned quickly from what was slowing down my progress, especially with reading yours and other language learning blogs. I can say first hand: IT WORKS!
In general, you always give very effective tips on learning the language. Now I realise, it’s probably because you’ve experienced them first hand with your own attempts on acquiring other languages. In terms of quality (although also quantity) you provide your readers with better advice and material than the most expensive language learning courses, short of living in an immersive environment.
One of my friends from France told me yesterday that my accent had immensely improved since the last time we talked (3 weeks ago) so great success, but I still can’t really get my boyfriend to converse with me in French, despite it being me who tries to change the language of the conversation. Perhaps, over a years time, we have just gotten too used to speaking English. Not discouraged by it though, because I still spend about 5-6 hrs a week speaking French with other people from all over the world.
Ha! moi aussi, j’affirme que c’est extrêmement déçevant quand t’es inscrit dans un cours de français de _conversation(!!)_ avancé, pis une fois le cours fini, tes camarades te regardent tout croche quand tu leur addresse en français – c’est une phénomène que je n’ai jamais comprise o.O
Je suis d’accord que c’est en s’immergeant dans le «monde culturel» d’une langue qu’on l’assimile le mieux. Même si j’ai trouvé que mes cours de français m’ont guidé, directé et permis de connaître les bases fondamentaux (autrement, je ne saurais pas à écrire… faut pas jeter le bébé avec l’eau de bain, bien sûr…), c’est la télé, les conversations, la radio, (… et mes profs baveux qui se lancaient toujours dans des digressions…) qui m’ont séduit et qui m’ont donné faim pour plus apprendre 😉
Peut-être que les cours de langue conviennent mieux aux «vrais débutants» (pour connaître les bases) et aux plus avancés (pour aller plus loin dans la littérature, la grammaire, etc) – et pour les intermédiaires, c’est l’immersion directe la plus importante?
[nouvelle signature pour mes commentaires ici : les étudiants de langues ont tendance de s’excuser pour les fautes qu’ils font… mais moi, je m’en fous – comme l’a suggéré Félix ! ]
i agree 100%1 but: spanish is a very easy language to learn compared to turkish. totally different from what we know, neither romanic nor germanic.
I have a question about certain shows on tou.tv. I listen to 98,5 all the time and can follow everything pretty well but when i watch shows like “dakodak” i cant only catch every third word and have to playback s lot. I am curious because i was just in montréal for 10 days and i didnt meet anyone who speaks with that accent. So do a lot of people speak like the characters in “dakodak?”
Very very true. It’s obvious that you are smart enough to understand that exposure to a foreign language on multiple levels, just like children learning their native language, is the most effective way to become fluent.
As a Turkish person who has been learning French for 5-6 years and recently started learning Korean tavsiyen için teşekkürler!
Sana kolay gelsin! 🙂
Teşekkürler!
I am actually a certified Turkish and English teacher. Currently struggling with Quebecois (your website is a huge help) and looking for a language exchange partner in Mtl. Casually throwing it out here so maybe someone is interested 🙂