How to Learn Any Language 19

How to Learn Any Language 19

Eye-Ear and Ear Only Moments
So far your hidden moments have been those that could be utilised either for reading (flash cards) or listening (cassettes). Let’s call them eye-ear moments. When you’re walking through town or through the park, jogging, riding in a bus or train too crowded for reading, or driving or riding in a car at night, obviously you can’t play with flash cards. These are, however, also hidden moments that offer exquisite opportunities for foreign language infusion.
Let’s call them ear only moments.
A good rule is to use eye-ear moments for eye functions (flash cards, grammar book, newspaper) leaving ear functions (cassette listening) for those moments when you couldn’t be reading anyhow. More simply, when you can listen or read, read. Save your listening for when you can only listen.

Cassettes En Route
When I dramatize this system of language learning at seminars for the Learning Annex in New York and other educational organisations, displeasure clouds the brows of the students when I urge them to “wrap the university around their heads” (put on their headphones) and study their cassettes as they walk, run, amble, or do errands around the neighbourhood. There’s an attitude of “Enough, already. I’ve done my language workout for the day. Let me enjoy my walk or my run and take in nature and the landscape.”
This claim may sound inflated until you test it, but leisurely strolls and nature walks, far from being dampened, are actually enhanced by cassette learning en route. You can invent little listening games that make it fun. I, for instance, may start the cassette and listen until I reach the first word in the target language I don’t already know. I’ll then stop the cassette player and concentrate on capturing that word for the remainder of the city block. When I reach the curb of the next block, I’ll start the tape until I reach another word I don’t know and repeat the process.
There’s a happy kind of synergy when you realise you’re exercising and you’re learning; you’re enjoying the beauty of the surroundings and you’re growing. You can slow down. You can settle for “collecting a few new words” as you might collect a few blossoms a few seashells. You can turn off the tape for a while and throw the headphones back over your neck and inhale and enjoy. Don’t separate your life into “fun” and “study.” Harmonise language study with your activities.
Get your cassettes into action when you wake up, stretch, make the bed, fix breakfast, brush teeth, dry off after a bath or shower, wash dishes, and so on through all the moments when those less ambitious turn on the radio or TV. Don’t forget, passive listening is better than nothing, but not by much! Engage the English mentally and try to beat the voice on the cassette to the foreign word.
“Harnessing hidden moments” is a three word course in language learning all by itself. It offers a side benefit that has nothing to do with learning languages but has a lot to do with enjoying life.
Look at those other people, those unfortunates who, unlike you, have no intention of harnessing their hidden moments to learn languages or anything else. Look how they wait like zombies in line, their faces masks of boredom and pain. Your boredom and pain will vanish the instant you get into line and whip out your flash cards.
Learning languages can become incidental to daily life. It’s often fulfilling enough just having something useful to do! Remember what Dean Martin said to the slowly sipping starlet: “I spill more than you drink!” Just by using the minutes you’d otherwise spill, you can learn another language.

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