Language books

I have taught many students over the years and I never really had a student learn from language books, alone. That is buy a book and start with page 1 and finish the book and speak the language. It can work, in theory, but you have to be very discipline. I have one student who is doing ok with this method, he is an engineer, which is a very specific type of mind, but he supplements his language book with a lot of other audio material. The problem with language books is mostly you need to listen to hours and hours of native sounds in your target languages, and most language books come only with ‘pet phrases’ in their audio tracks or simple dialogues.  You need to hear more vocabulary in your target language. Further language books audio productions are poor because the English speaker’s voice is more dominant than the target language speaker’s voice. I found this with the ‘Teach Yourself’ series.

What you need to learn a language is hours and hours of native speaking repeated over and over in your target language with English only as a background support. Words in language books, usually with a grammar focus, is not enough to make the language come alive. However, once you have a basic command of the language, reading normal books in your target language is an excellent way to make progress in your target language.

Tags: language books