Image courtesy of Pawel Maciejewski

You’re stressed, overworked, and tired. You feel like you’re dropping the ball on so many things. You find yourself lying awake in the early hours, thinking about those items still on your to-do list, those emails not yet cleared.

One day, some little incident makes you blow up. For me, it was my printer malfunctioning and my stapler breaking in the middle of a very busy week, when I was trying to sort out some last-minute handouts for my post-grad classmates.

Have you ever heard the phrase “don’t sweat the small stuff”? There are so many things that we waste huge amounts of energy on (and worry is always wasted energy), which just won’t matter in a week, let alone ten years.

Here are ten examples of things you might be stressing about today that will not matter a jot in ten years’ time:

1. That embarrassing misspelling in the email you just sent
2. The jerk who cut you up on your way into work
3. How clean your kitchen is when your mother-in-law comes to visit
4. One of your kids acting up
5. A nasty email from a stranger
6. Missing a deadline
7. Losing out on a job interview to a better candidate
8. Slipping up on grocery shopping and offering your family a choice of cereal or sandwiches for dinner, one night
9. Making a small mistake in a report – and being called up on it by a client
10. Your library books being overdue

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Language learning is essentially fun, or should be, if it is done naturally, in line with how the brain learns. We learned our first language quite well, without explicit instruction. Unfortunately, the teaching of second languages has been turned into a complex classroom ceremony, consisting of obtuse grammar rules, annoying drills, rote memory and tests. The result is that many people are discouraged from learning languages. Maybe they would not learn their first language if it were taught in this way.

One of the most innovative thinkers on language learning is Stephen Krashen, who has pointed out that languages are acquired through meaningful input and not deliberate instruction. His insights are being confirmed by the latest research on how the brain learns, as described in an excellent book by German brain researcher, Manfred Spitzer, Learning: The Human Brain and the School for Life. As Spitzer says, learning takes place in the brain, not at school.

Here are seven concepts of natural language learning that reflect the most recent research on how the brain learns.

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As a lifelong bookworm, I admit that I’m more passionate about books than the average guy or gal on the street. Even so, it shocked me when I first read that the average American never reads another book after college.

There’s so much to be gained from reading books. The mind-expanding benefits are huge – and bear in mind that, while there’s a lot of great online reading (like Pick the Brain ), anything written by great thinkers in the past is often only available in books.

If I’ve not convinced you yet, here are just some great reasons to pick up a book regularly:

Escape

When life feels like it’s all getting too much, escaping into a book for half an hour can really make a difference to your mood. The great thing about reading a book is that it’s something that can completely absorb your mind: you’ll find that you can often tune out background chatter on a train, or the TV blaring on the other side of the room.

Entering into a world of fictional characters and their problems also lets you “tune out” the chatter in your own mind. When you’ve got a to-do list that never seems to get any shorter, or when you find your attention jumping between a dozen different things (as is often the case when reading online), you’ll find that books form a welcome oasis where you can escape from the stresses of life.

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Image courtesy of Hapal

As infants, we’re presented with a strange new world to discover. And with nothing else to do, we dive in headfirst, devoting all our time to learning how to use our five senses. At first we appear completely hopeless, not even realizing that our arms and legs are parts of our body. But soon enough, we start figuring some things out. Within a few months, we learn how to recognize faces better than a computer can. Our rate of learning in those early days is truly extraordinary if you think about it.

As kids, the world is our classroom. First we learn some basics like how to sit Indian style, how to hold a crayon, how to cross the street, and how to share. Not to mention learning thousands and thousands of words. We get older and learn about Romeo and Juliet, World War II, and photosynthesis. Every year, we can look back on ourselves the year before and be amazed at how much we’ve learned. In college, things get a lot more specialized, but we’re still continuing to learn all that we can.

And then, we just stop.

42% of all college graduates never read another book again. Ever. But continuous learning is vital to making the most of what the world has to offer. You could say that it’s what separates us from the animals. And there is evidence to suggest that it plays a role in staving off mental diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Here are some ways to make sure you don’t break the habit of learning that most people abandon after graduation.

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Image of a defibrillator courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Lists of seven ways to improve yourself are popular on the web. Here is a seven-item list that could save lives. But first a little background.

A few days ago in Russia, one of the most promising young hockey players in the world, Alexei Cherepanov, died when his heart stopped working during a game in the Russian elite Continental Hockey League. Apparently there was one non-functioning defibrillator in the building.

How may people know what a defibrillator is and how to us one? A week ago I didn’t. Now I do. Here is my story and I hope it helps someone some day.

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“You are what you eat” – popular saying

In the global information age, maybe it should be “you are what you can say”. Language, in its varied manifestations, is mankind’s defining achievement, and it also defines us. Language can be social, political, technical, practical, entertaining, sensual, philosophical, and much more. At the banquet of life, each language is another course. The better you can use languages, your own and others, the more you can enjoy the feast. At least that has been my experience.

I have achieved varying degrees of fluency in 12 languages, and look forward to learning more. To me, there are three natural stages in language growth, which I outline here. Billions of dollars are wasted on ineffective language and literacy instruction programs, which ignore these natural stages.

The First Stage: Connecting With the Language (60-90 hours)

When I begin, I need to “connect” with the new language and overcome my resistance to its strange sounds and structure. I don’t need to speak. I don’t need to understand any grammar. I don’t need to get anything “right”. I am not interested in mastering a few phrases or simple greetings. I want to get into the language, to get a feel for it.

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We all have the ability to learn to speak more than one language. Throughout history, whenever languages co-existed in close proximity, people managed to naturally communicate across the language divide. They had to. That is still true today. Where different languages brush up against each other, people have no trouble learning another language and using it, whether it be children selling souvenirs in the market, or business people in international meetings. This is true in Asia, Africa, America and Europe.

We don’t need a special gift for language learning. Doing so is natural to us all. Today, in the Internet and information age, we no longer live in isolation, linguistically or culturally. The opportunity to engage with other languages is greater than ever.

So why don’t more people learn other languages, especially in North America? In part it is because of the seven common misconceptions about language learning, which confuse people. There are also five common excuses for not learning a language. But are they valid?

1. I am not interested in languages, I don’t need them

Is this really true? What if you could do it for free, free of cost and free of effort?

I sold encyclopedias door to door, almost 50 years ago. My door-opener was, “if you could get a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica, free of charge, would you be interested?”. That often got me in the door. Parents could visualize an encyclopedia to share with their children. Once I explained that it was not free, “but for less than you spend on coffee or cigarettes…,” I was usually shown the door.
I use the same question with reluctant language learners. “If you were guaranteed to learn to speak another language, without a lot of hard work, would you be interested?” The answer is usually “yes”.

Many people who say they are not interested, would really like to speak another language. Some may even have heard that language learning is excellent stimulus for the brain. But too often the image they see is one of tedious study. They do not have the experience of speaking another language. They cannot visualize the feeling of satisfaction that this brings. So in many cases the interest is there, it is just a matter of getting started.

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There are over 6,000 languages in the world. Some are more important than others, not better or more advanced, just more important. Why? Because they are spoken by more people, in more countries. That does not mean that Finnish is not important to the Finns, and Maori is not important to the Maoris. It is just that these languages are not so important to the rest of us.

On the other hand, Mandarin Chinese is spoken by over one billion people. Chinese origin words account for 60% of Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese vocabulary. Knowing Chinese will help you learn these languages too. It helped me. Chinese culture has influenced the world for thousands of years with its art, philosophy, technology, food, medicine and performing arts. Today China’s economy is booming. Chinese seems well worth learning.

Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese are essentially dialects of the same language. If you learn one, you can learn the others. I did. If you learn Spanish, you open the door to the culture, music, history and possible business dealings with 800 million people in 60 countries, including the US and Canada.
If you get ambitious you could try Russian, as I have been doing for the last two years. Once you have Russian you can probably communicate with other Slav speakers.

But hold it here! Before getting carried away, let’s look at the present situation of language teaching. According to one Canadian survey, after 12 years of daily French classes, only one high school graduate out of 147 (0.68%) achieved “intermediate” proficiency. Another survey of immigrants learning English in the US showed that “classroom instructional hours” had little impact on progress.

If we cannot teach our own official languages in North America, what hope is there for other languages like Chinese or Spanish, let alone Russian, Arabic or Hindi?

As a speaker of 10 languages I know the benefits of speaking more than one language. We simply have to change the way we go about teaching languages. To start with we need to dispel seven common misconceptions about language learning.

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Nearly all great minds have one thing in common; they had great mentors.

I’ve learned that if you don’t have any great teachers in your life, that doesn’t mean you should sit around and wait for one to find you. You need to be willing to seek them out. Fortunately, you have an endless number of great teachers to choose from. That is, if you accept that many of these great teachers will be dead.

Many of the greatest thinkers made a habit of documenting their discoveries. So while they are no longer alive, their words are still here, and in them their wisdom.

But before seeking out a great teacher, you first need to…

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No matter what your age, throughout your life you will be learning. Your formal education ends with high school, but for many the learning never ends. You may attend a university, trade school, night school, community college or adult school. You may enhance your knowledge via business seminars, lectures, books, e-courses, and whatever else shows up in our information society. So wouldn’t it be helpful to have some good study habits and some tools to increase your ability to learn?

Although you may not be studying information to get good grades, retention of what you are learning can help your career, your parenting skills, your business, your relationships, your hobbies, and so much more. So it makes sense to acquire good learning skills sooner than later. Skills such as speed reading and good comprehension are useful for all the great information you want to take in.

Here are some more secrets for improving your ability to learn. Most apply to classes, but you can adapt them to any learning situation.

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