How to become fluent

So, yesterday, I told all of you how I felt about flash cards.  They are not bad really.  They just tend to slow me down, so, no thanks.  I once used flash cards.  I liked them.  But, then I made a discovery.  I was going to need a whole bunch of flash cards.  My house is small.  Really small.  900 square feet, in fact.  My wife and I have come up with some very creative ways to store what we need.  There are shelves everywhere.  Bringing a wheelbarrow full of flash cards is, for me, not an option.

To reach fluency in a language, you are going to need to learn a lot of words.  I have heard different estimates over the years.  They range from 2500 words to 5000 words.  I have learned, or am learning, 5 foreign languages.  I like to shoot for 5000 words.  That would be 25,000 flash cards!  Let’s say X = 25,000 flash cards and Y = small house.  X + Y = angry wife.  Not interested.

I had to come up with another strategy.  Here it is.

1. The first thing I do when I decide to learn another language is find a Bible in the target language.  If the alphabet is a non issue, I start reading.  When I started learning Greek, I had to start with the alphabet, and then start reading.
2. Next, I find a dictionary in the target language.  I will use it to look words up, of course, but I also start reading it.  That’s right.  I start reading straight through the dictionary.  Sounds boring, I know.  Doesn’t matter.  I don’t have many friends.  Of course, I probably don’t have many friends because I am inside reading dictionaries.  I may need to ponder that.
3. The third thing I do is, (are you ready?) learn the grammar.  Okay.  I am about to go off here.  Brace yourselves.  Or, you could just go watch something on YouTube.  “Charlie bit my finger”, or something like that…  Here goes.  I am sick of language courses that promise fluency without grammar.  C’mon.  There is no way around it.  If you are going to really learn a language, you are going to have to learn the grammar.  If you just need some phrases like “Where is the bathroom?” or, “The cheese is old and moldy.” then, sure, you can skip the grammar.  If, however, you want to become fluent in a language, you are going to have to face the grammar.  There is no way around it.  Sure, grammar is tough.  But, it is good.  It gives us a skeletal structure of the language.  For adults, it is actually a shortcut.  We can’t become children again spending 10,000 hours listening and practicing a new language.  But, we can use the grammar to spur us forward in our study.

I loosely used this method to learn German, Latin, and Spanish.  Then, a few years ago, my wife read a book to my kids called, Carry On, Mr Bowditch.  The main character uses this method to teach himself French, Spanish, and, I think, Portuguese.  Interestingly, he did it after teaching himself Latin.  Latin, he pointed out, made learning the other languages easier.  Not easy, but, easier.

Since reading Carry On, Mr Bowditch, I have used this method to teach myself French and Greek, though I still have a long way to go in both those languages.

One last thing, and this is a total plug for Visual Latin.  (Just wanted to warn you.)  I admit that learning grammar is usually more of a chore and less of a delight.  That is why Compass Cinema and I tried very hard to make Visual Latin educational and entertaining.  I have met many teachers who became teachers because they did not have enough personality to become accountants or lawyers.  It does not have to be boring.  Language is the tool of humor.  Most jokes are not funny without words.  We decided that if we were going to be using words to teach grammar, we might as well use some funny ones.