Tips and Tricks

Introduction

The First Principle

The Basic Course for General

The Grammar

The Vocabulary

To Hear and to Understand

To Speak and to be Understood.

To Reed

Introduction

Actually I wanted to start here with most different suggestions for learning foreign languages better. I think to be able to contribute much to this topic since I have long-standing experiences as a practitioner.

I won't give up this plan of course but I must defer it, however. Why?

Well, in the course of the erection of this Web site I have started to look for information about "foreign languages" and learning the same so specifically and exactly like never before in the internet.

The result was amazing, maybe better to say crushing, concerning the  mass and also the quality. Many of all the informations I have found here I knew allready and I have noted them down before, but still more are new for me too. A lot of these things would have helped me already many years before, when I have started to learn languages intensively. (I have my internet access after all since 1994!) 

Well at short notice, I also have wondered whether it still makes sense to add another Site to this topic at all after so much is already available. After another check I had, however, myself to notice that it isn't simple to orientate well in the net. The question primarily rose for me: How and where could I find what I really need? How and where could I find all those things I  would like to show you unconditional?

If I think now how much contents has the internet to offer in the other languages still to this topic, then we still have a very interesting journey ahead of ourselves. I hope you accompany me at this!

Long talk, short meaning:
I will confine myself to steer your attention on all those possibilities to those Websites which can help you and me along, in the first phase.

My own, quite special tips and tricks I will let flow increased in a later phase and ask for your understanding regarding this. Many thanks.

The First Principle

We want to fix one just together from house:
There isn't the ideal language course for everyone!

There doesn't even exist the ideal course for one particular of us although  sometimes this is represented so. But each supplier has to represent his products this way to convince us that we'll need them to buy. (Their utilization then stands on another sheet.)

But It isn't our task to get single suppliers at the life but to learn the foreign language chosen by us as efficiently as possible, however. Agreeable?

So we will have to search, to check, to judge and to fix in the end, which materials we will use for our studies.

Primarily at the beginning it is very difficult to fix all the pros and cons now, however. So the first step will be to indicate all the individual links  to the most important topic relevant Sites therefore only in such a way.

The Basic Course for General

An elementary course consists of many different contents together, and it's the same if we attend to a course at an institute with personal lessons, if we are learning with a course on a PC or if we prefer an audio or video based course for alone learner or maybe a composite course now.

However, the individual components decide at each of these courses. Each one has its own methods, ideas of teachings and studying and each of them has its strengths and weaknesses teaching and learning.

I suggest you therefore that we look at once the individual modules of learning languages for the time being.

The Grammar

To acquire theoretical knowledge does'nt suit to everybody. The one doesn't have the required patience, the other is missing the self-confidence to this, the third party has a good language feeling and thinks to get by without learning the grammar.

But anyway: The grammar is indispensable. It is indispensably primarily when you liked to use the language actively, if you liked to speak and write in the language which you learn. However, who doesn't want this?

The grammar is important in the first phase to be able to build sentences. Only using a language actively secures for you establishing the same. As long as you don't attain a certain basic safety at this, you probably won't be able to overcome your language obstructions.

In the other phases the grammar knowledge will still be more important, around newly learned phrases and words to install into your system and perfect the language fluency.

Without the grammar this doesn't really go smoothly! As for the rest that applies to the topic "vocabulary" too. 

The Vocabulary

You may be able to speak thousends of words,
but as soon as you can't find those,
which you would need in a certain situation,
all of them are useless to you.

What would I like to tell you with above words?

- First it matters now of course whether you and how you learn the vocabulary.
- But it also depends on which words you learn first, which words you study in which connections and in which phases of your studies of foreign languages. 

"I don't need to learn the vocabulary, I do have a course/a method where I am able to study intuitively, like me as a child have learned my mother tongue ".

Oh, that's great! Congratulations! How good for you. 
Yes, I know these publicity slogans, the introduction texts in various courses. To it, however, I have a request to you now:

Please close your eyes to think yourself back again to the different phases of your personal development of your childhood briefly.

- Have you done so? Did you remember to this time, did you have the feelings, the imagination of that period? 
- Do you really think now that you have those prerequisites today for learning languages which you had at that time?

Are you sure?

  At that time, you didn't have other tasks than playing,  listening, prattling and learning at it completely unconsciously, 
- and what is your situation today?

  You could on this babble without fear of saying something wrongly now without being schoolmasterly corrected and instructed again and again no matter whether you wrongly said it or not.
- and what is your situation today?

  You didn't have closed the compulsion, to think over three times or more not to say anything that could be wrong,
- and what is your situation today?

  You had not to toil yourself with everyday worries, with the question what to eat today, how to spend the day and ....,  
- and what is your situation today?

  Your head wasn't crammed full of morning till evening with radio or television programs, with the various statements of most different persons in your environment. 
- and what is your situation today?

 Your knowledge about the most different things of human life still was very limited and unloaded, you didn't have trouble yet what you needed just to information from your brain cells, 
- and what is your situation today?

  Your parents, your social environment, your teachers had the task for years, improving more or less effort to promote your linguistic competence, encouraging you to read, to learn and to investigate something new,
- and what is your situation today?

Don't you think this list could be continued arbitrarily? So do you really have the same prerequisites to do justice to those methods which build just on it?

Therefore I do have an urgent request:
Please check whether you really can reach that foreign language standard you strive for with that method to which you intend to entrust yourself!

I would have a special recommendation to the  topic "Vocabulary", but unfortunately this Site is only available in German language. (Maybe a reason to start learning German? If this is so please let me know, I am eager to help you then.) Here is the link:
http://www.pohlw.de/lernen/kurs/lern-05.htm. 
These contents correspond fully and completely to my own experiences.

To Hear and to Understand

Do you know this? If you read the texts, the language understanding is at least fair. Blow, however, if the text is transmitted phonetically, i.e. if you hear it instead of reading it. Then it is past with understanding and one wonders from time to time what one has done actually till now.

Don't worry, this is completely normal. This often isn't only due to the way of speaking or giving a lecture, but also at the differences of the document to the sound language. A good example of it is the French.

To Speak and to be Understood.

A quite essential factor which consists of different abilities.

It is here around the respective language just like around the handling all about pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and the knowledge for the same, i.e. the exercise in the working with it.

The better every single ability is exercised, one also will understand you all the better.

To Reed

Reading literature in a foreign language is for a quite special genre of essential importance, yes, for those people this is a daily compulsory exercise: For all those common service employees like James Bond which are employed in foreign countries with a foreign language.

Which language should I learn, or better, 
which one should I learn first?

Here I do have a serious problem! You read these lines now in English, so it would be a little bit funny to recommend you to start with English. 

For all those people with English native language I can't give any recommendation. Here it depends more then elsewhere to the purpose of your learning. In this case you have a better start position than we others. But some of the tips may be helpfull for you too.

The question what to start with for all other people remains: To start with which language?

If you want to learn a language and if you don't already have a certain imagination yet anyway, for professional or private nature you will stand soon before this question.

But if you would like to improve your competence in foreign languages, there could be only one answer:

Start with English!

Why? Well, therefore exist many reasons:
- This is a relatively easy language.
- Normally will you bring already much knowledge with you,  knowledge from school and everyday life.

- It is indisputable the world language and in diplomacy and specially in business and money the absolutely dominating language
- English you can meet at almost every time, anywhere, anyway if it is music, in TV, and so on.
- With English you can communicate almost everywhere. On almost every place on earth you will find someone who is able to understand speaking English.
- Especially for learning some of the more offbeaten languages you will find courses, books and much more probably only in English. 
- It is the quickest way to get in touch with other people, with tourists, natives, business partners and maybe your next lover too.
- With English you will acquire a fundamentally better platform to other languages, a much better entrance especially to the romanic languages like French, Italian, Spanish. Portuguese and Romanian. (One of uncountable examples: The word "round". The translation in French is "rond/ronde", in Italian "redondo/redonda", in Spanisch it is "redondo/redonda" and in Portuguese it is "redondo/redonda".
- Last but not least English is indispensable in connection with the Internet, where the Sites are written primarily in English.

However, there is a reduction for this recommendation:

If you are in a situation where you could use another foreign language easier and sooner than English so you should prefer this language or at least try to learn it beside of English.

Example 1: You live in bordering proximity of a country from another language area and you have the possibility and opportunity to use this language often and regularly. Or if you have good connections to people of a Spanish Community so it would be better to choose Spanish than French or something else.

Example 2: You or your children have relatives abroad and those could be of any assistance both learning and using the future second language so it would be advisable to choose this language first.