A teacher in Dallas, Texas, is trying to learn Spanish in order to chat casually with some of his students. He’s having some success with the smartphone app DuoLingo. But an app won’t necessarily give him the slang vocabulary he needs. A good way to learn a new language is to approach it as you would a fitness program. Set reasonable goals, commit to the long term, don’t expect results overnight, and if possible, practice with a buddy or a trainer. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Foreign Language Fitness Program”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Sean McDonald from Dallas, Texas.
Hello, Sean. How you doing?
Hey, Sean.
Well, I am a teacher here in Dallas, and the student population, most of them are bilingual, Spanish obviously being their first language. And so I decided to start learning Spanish to better communicate with my students. And I was just wondering if you guys had any tips on learning a second language as an adult.
How are you doing this?
Are you using an app or going to classes or what?
I use an app called Duolingo.
Yep, Duolingo. And then I also have a couple workbooks that I work out of if I have the free time.
I think when you’re trying to learn a language as an adult, it’s important to focus on what your purpose is. You know, it’s sort of like there comes a point in your life where you realize you’re never going to be an Olympic athlete. So you kind of have to scale down your expectations. And so I wanted to zero in on what your focus is. What’s your purpose in learning?
Well, I mean, I guess it’s just to communicate better with those students, specifically the younger students, because they don’t have a handle on English at all. So I have to use more Spanish with them if I want them to understand.
Okay.
You’re talking about having problems with the grammar, and you’re using a workbook and an app. I’m just wondering if it wouldn’t be better to try to learn it on a conversational basis, either with a tutor or in some kind of conversational class.
Yeah, and there are a few services online that let you do video conversation, and some of them are free. You might just Google that, video conversation practice. So you just fire up Skype or Google Hangouts, and you just trade a language with somebody else. You speak English to them, they speak Spanish to you, and work it out.
Martha’s point is Duolingo is great, but it’s teaching you things like apple and dress. And you don’t need apple and dress. You need words like homework and book and lesson and due date, right?
Yeah.
And so you also need to find that specialized vocabulary that’s useful for the class.
Exactly. The other thing I would add to this is how deep are you submitting yourself into the process? I mean, how deep is your immersion? Just the app or a workbook or even video chat aren’t going to do it either. Are you listening to Spanish language radio?
Yes, all the time.
Awesome. Perfect. Like sports or something, something like really easy and conversational, right?
Yeah.
-huh. Yeah.
Yeah, I think Grant makes a really good point in that at this point, you should focus on what you like.
Yeah.
If you like to listen to sports news, then try listening to it in Spanish. Or if you like People magazine, read it in Spanish. When you get farther along.
Yeah, because people torture themselves with Cervantes when they learn Spanish, and there’s no point to that.
Right.
Yeah.
Sean, one more question. Do you work out at all? Are you into fitness or weightlifting?
I do.
Then I think you should think about this as a fitness program because there are a lot of different things that are the same when you’re learning a language as an adult and working on a fitness program. It’s a lifelong commitment, first of all.
Yeah.
You may not get results right away, but you can’t lift 50 pounds necessarily right away. But you will make progress. It’s often good to exercise with a buddy or with a trainer. And I think that that can be really good when you’re doing language learning as well.
So we hope that helps.
Yeah, we hope it helps. Duolingo is great.
Thank you.
But I think you need a lot more than that. The first, like, 20 lesson plans are still going to be like this basic household vocabulary, this basic, not the classroom stuff that you need. The other thing I would say is don’t forget to seek out vocabulary lists of classroom words so you have those very strongly in your brain, all right?
Yeah.
All righty.
Cool.
Okay.
Buena suerte.
Thank you so much.
Sean, let us know how it goes, okay?
Okay.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
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