Join our Newsletter
|
|
Is It Possible To Learn More Than One Language At A Time? |
|
|
|
|
Written by Clare Innes
|
|
Monday, 15 September 2008 |
No! If you have been deeply engrossed in learning a language, but are now approaching the home run, it can be extremely tempting to start to look towards learning a second language.
Language lovers have a natural curiosity about different languages, but you need to decide whether you wish to speak one language (to start with) fluently, or you just want to pick up a little bit of a number of languages. You must be aware, however, that the second choice can lead to you being fairly bad at any of the languages that you chose!
Right at the beginning you will need to make the decision. You go for ONE language, and then you set your target. How many hours in each week can you dedicate to studying, and stick to them.
Whether you wish to become totally fluent in your chosen language, or would be happy with relatively simple conversational abilities, stick to this one language until you have achieved your goal. Only then is it the right time to move on to a second new language.
It needs a lot of time and hard work to learn a new language. Even if you are smarter than average, have the best teaching program in the world, and are aiming to learn a fairly easy language (something not too far away from your mother tongue) it can still take hundreds of hours of study. If you think that you can just include a little bit of study on a different language here and there so that eventually you will know them all, think again, because you won't.
If your heart is set on learning a little bit of a few languages, then you need to find a method to optimise your learning potential.
When you buy a grammar book for French or German, for example, make sure you tell yourself loud and clear that you will finish learning Spanish first - and that this is just to satisfy your curiosity for other languages. If you do a few lessons of German for fun, make sure you are clear about why you do this - you just want to see what German sounds like.
Don't get carried away and do an entire volume of German while you are only half way through the Spanish still!
So, as an overall view, learning more than one language at a time is not such a great idea.
About the Author: About the Writer: Clare Innes has a number of health, fitness and lifestyle websites including one devoted to how to learn a new language. Look out for more of her lifestyle websites in the 'First For....com' series that is currently under development.  Advertise in this article
» No Comments
There are no comments up to now.
» Post Comment
Only registered users can write a comment. Please login or register.
|
Other "Reference & Education" Articles
 | | Written by Dr Marc R. Dussault | | (09.17.2008) | | I bet you've just read the title of this article and are thinking that "it's not possible to get better scores in less time!" After all you've always struggled, you've always been the one who's had to study so very hard just to make "average" grades, right? | | Advertise in this article | | Read more... |
|
|
Find a Domain
|
