This week, and maybe next, we’re comparing adults to kids.
Who can learn English as a second language faster?
(If you missed the recent lessons, you can catch up here: https://mrvig.com/category/blog)
Sure, we’ve all seen the kid who was putting rocks in his mouth one day and then asking questions about the universe the next.
But there are some other factors, hidden, beneath the surface, unseen, that we shall be uncovering in these lessons.
So let’s begin.
Advantage #2: You can choose the new methods
Last night I bought a Kindle book.
I usually buy real books, the kind you can use to kill a fly. But hard copies of this particular book started at $150. Ouch.
So there I was, lying in bed, reading Language Teaching Through The Age on my laptop, when I saw this sentence:
“the first evidence we have of the study of a language is from about five thousand years ago as Sumer developed a writing system and had need of people to learn it for governmental purposes.”
Interesting.
Writing was developed for bureaucrats, not poets. I did not know that.
Then it got more interesting.
1,000 years later, the Sumerians were no longer in charge of the government, they had been conquered.
But their language remained the official language of the government, similar to how Latin remained the language of law, religion and education long after the Romans left England.
And how did the conquering bureaucrats learn the Sumer language? Well, because they wrote on clay, we have the records: they used the translation method.
Summer on one side of the clay tablet, Akkadian on the other side of the tablet.
Oh, if only I could go back in time and ask for their email addresses. I would tell them about all my students who used the translation method as children and now have the translation habit as adults.
I would tell them how still today these adults must translate every word in their head before understanding.
I would tell them how these adults still today must translate every word in their head before speaking.
And I would tell them how they must first break this habit before becoming fluent
(The word “fluent” comes from the Latin fluo = to flow, like a river).
And, of course, I would tell them about my technique to break the translation habit and create a brain that thinks in English.
And I would give them they will learn this technique on day 27 when they join The Society.
And I would give them the link to join: https://master-english.mrvig.com/society-invitation
Cheers,
Mr. Vig