Tips for Language Learners by Nola Marshall

Tips for Language Learners

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Contents

Page

Section 1:

Tips for Language Learners

Section 2: The Four Language Skills Tips for Speaking Tips for Listening Tips for Reading Tips for Writing Section 3: A Guide to Grammatical Terms Grammar â&#x20AC;&#x201C; who needs it? Nouns Articles Singular and Plural Gender Case Pronouns Personal Pronouns Interrogative Pronouns Possessive Pronouns Demonstrative Pronouns Adjectives Comparative and Superlative Possessive Adjectives 2

6 6 7 8 9 10 10 12 12 12 13 13 13 13 14 14 14 14 14 15

Verbs Infinitive Verb Forms Regular and Irregular Negative Tense Reflexive Verbs Auxiliary Verbs Participles Imperatives Active and Passive Voice Adverbs Sentence Word Order

Page 15 15 15 15 15 17 17 17 17 18 18 18 19 19

Prepositions

Conjunctions

Section 4

Using a Dictionary

Section 1: Tips for Language Learners Know what type of language learner you are. Everyone learns differently. If you understand how you learn, you will be able to develop strategies which will work for you. Ask yourself: • Do I learn better when I see things written down? (visual learner) • Do I only need to hear something a few times before I learn it? (auditory learner) • Do I like to learn grammar rules by heart? (theorist) • Do I like to learn through actively doing things? (activist) When learning words and phrases, try out different approaches and find the one that works for you. Try writing words and phrases on postit notes, record them on cassette, or make lists in the target language - phone numbers, lists of things to buy / pack / do, etc – and say them out loud. Active learning is key – we tend to remember 20% of what we read, 30% of what we hear but 90% of what we see, hear, say and do. The more you use words and phrases, the more you will remember them. Make time to study outside of class. It doesn’t have to be too long – 15 minutes a day is often more effective than one longer session each week. Go over what you have learnt in class several times and use every opportunity you can to practise. For example, listen to language cassettes when you are travelling to work, at the gym or at home doing the cooking and ironing. Browse the Internet to access websites where you can practise your language. Try the BBC site ( www.bbc.co.uk/languages) for a wealth of language learning materials.

Be realistic in your expectations - two hours a week is a very short time! Language learning takes time and commitment and it can take several years to become really fluent. It is not always easy sometimes you may feel you are making little progress but suddenly things will ‘click’ and you will move forward again. Don’t worry about making mistakes – it’s part of learning! It’s much better to try to say something, even if it’s not quite right, than saying nothing until you are word perfect. Reflect on what you’ve learnt at regular intervals. It is easy to underestimate your progress and feel you aren’t learning quickly enough. When this happens, think back to something you learnt early on to see how much progress you have made. Don’t compare yourself with others in your class. Everyone learns differently and we all have different strengths. Remember your tutor is there to help you. Please talk to him/her about any concerns or difficulties you may have. Do try to come to every class but, if you have to miss a class, tell your tutor. S/he will be able to suggest things you can do to catch up and prepare for the next class. Don’t drop out just because you have missed a class and feel behind – get in touch! Finally, learning a new language is challenging but very rewarding. Enjoy it!

Section 2: The Four Language Skills All languages comprise four skills - speaking, listening, reading and writing. It is quite common for people to be good at one but less good in another. • Speaking and writing are ‘productive skills’ – language you need to produce yourself. • Reading and listening are ‘receptive’ skills – language you need to understand. Although they are different skills, they are inter-related. Even if your aim is to speak the language, you will need to develop your listening skills to understand what people are saying. Writing things down is a good way of consolidating what you have learnt and helping you to memorise it. Reading also helps fix words and phrases in your mind and helps you to absorb the patterns of the language. In class, your tutor will use the target language as much as possible to help develop your speaking and listening skills. Early on, you will learn phrases like ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand’ – don’t be afraid to use them when you need to! Tips for Speaking • Keep it simple. A little language goes a long way. A few words, pronounced sufficiently well for a native speaker to understand, plus facial expressions and gestures, will help you get your message across. • Listening is the best way to learn good pronunciation. It is often better to hear the word first and practise saying it before looking at the written form. This way, you will learn correct pronunciation, and will not always be trying to pronounce it like English. • Don’t be afraid of making mistakes and don’t be afraid of having your mistakes corrected – this is how you will learn and improve. 6

• Practise speaking as often as you can, even if it means talking to yourself! Say new words aloud to help you to remember them and to practise your pronunciation. • Record yourself and listen to what you sound like. You might try reading a dialogue from your textbook and compare your pronunciation with that on the recording. Tips for Listening • Audio or video recordings are good ways to practise your listening skills. When listening to recorded material, don’t expect to understand everything first time round. If you hear the same piece several times, you will probably understand something new each time. • If you are a relative beginner, you may find it hard to understand anything you hear. Let the rhythm and intonation of the language wash over you and you will subconsciously absorb some of the sounds and patterns. • Remember you don’t need to understand everything – in your own language, you automatically select what it is important to hear and ignore the rest. • Think about the context of the recording. For example, if you are listening to a weather forecast, there are key words you would expect to hear, e.g. hot, sunny, cold, wet. Start by listening for these key words. When you have identified these, play the tape again to see what further information you can understand. • At more advanced levels, you might want to start by trying to understand the general meaning. There may be clues to help you – for example, where is the conversation taking place? Does the speaker sound happy, sad, angry? If you are watching a video, visual clues and body language may help you.

• Once you have established the general meaning, play the recording again to listen for detail. Start by listening for key words and, finally, listen for specific information. Tips for Reading • Reading is not just about reading books – the written word is all around us, on signs, in shops, on food packets, leaflets and timetables. When you are visiting the foreign country, take every opportunity to seek out things to read. You can also use the Internet to find authentic materials – newspapers, recipes, tourist information, hotel guides. Several internet sites offer language options. In this case, look at the foreign language version first to see what you understand, then check the English version. • As with listening, you do not need to understand every word. Scanning and skimming are two fast reading techniques which can help you to read more effectively. Scanning Scanning is a way of reading to look for specific information in a text. Scanning can be used to look up a phone number, read through the small ads in a newspaper or browsing TV listings, timetables, lists, catalogues and web pages. It is also useful when looking to find specific information from a book or article quickly as there is not always time to read every word. • To scan a text, don’t try to read every word. Let your eyes move quickly across the page until you find what you are looking for. Use clues on the page, such as headings and titles, to help you. • If you are reading for study, write down the questions you want to answer. Doing this can focus your mind and help you find the facts and information you need more easily.

Skimming Skimming is a technique that can help you to decide if the text is interesting and whether you should read it in more detail. Use it to obtain the ‘gist’ of a piece of text – the overall sense and main ideas. • To skim read, you don’t need to read the whole text word for word. Let your eyes skim over the text to find the key words, using any clues in titles, headings and pictures, to help you. • Read the title, subtitles and sub headings to find out what the text is about. • Look at any pictures, diagrams, etc. to give you further information about the topic. • Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph. • Don’t read every word and sentence. Let your eyes skim over the text, taking in the key words. • Continue to think about the meaning of the text. Sometimes you can use both reading methods. After you have skimmed a piece of text to identify the overall gist, you may wish to use scanning techniques to locate specific information. Don’t despair when reading is a struggle. You may be learning a lot without realising it. Tips for Writing • Writing down new words and phrases can be a good way of consolidating what you have learnt. If you are a beginner, this is probably the only writing you will need to do. • As you progress with your language learning, you may want to write messages, postcards, letters and reports, either for personal or business purposes.

• Keep it simple. Try not to form sentences in your own language and then translate them into the foreign language. Instead, try to think in the target language and use words and structures that you are familiar with to express what you want to say.

Section 3: A Guide to Grammatical Terms Grammar – Who Needs It? A language is defined as ‘the words, their pronunciation and methods of combining them used and understood by a community’. The methods of combining them are what we call ‘grammar’. Many people say they want to be able to speak a foreign language but they don’t want to learn any grammar. This is a little like saying that you want to build a brick wall without the cement. Grammar is the ‘glue’ that holds a language together. It is a set of rules that governs how you can put words together. As a beginner, you will be able to get by without knowing any grammar. To communicate at a very simple level, you will need to know some words (vocabulary) and be able to pronounce them reasonably correctly. As well as learning how to pronounce the sounds, you need to know where to put the stress. Once you have learnt this, you should be able to make yourself understood in very basic everyday situations. However, as you progress and want to converse on a wider range of topics, it helps if you have a basic understanding of the grammatical structure of the language. Imagine someone says to you in poor English ‘me want to a restaurant go’. You would understand perfectly what s/he means, but the conversation over your meal would be very limited. Using correct grammar will help you speak more accurately and avoid misunderstandings. 10

Children learning their mother tongue are immersed in the language from the moment they are born and absorb the structure of the language subconsciously. At first they make mistakes, e.g. ‘Me want …’ rather than ‘I want …’, but gradually they acquire more sophisticated language structures without any formal grammatical training. As adults, we can all speak our mother tongue in a more or less correct grammatical fashion without any conscious or formal knowledge of grammar or of the words we use for talking about grammar (noun, subject, adjective etc). Even if we have studied grammar formally, we don’t consciously think about it when we speak. Why, then, can’t we learn a second language in the same way as we learn our mother tongue? Studies have shown that children tend to be better at ‘acquiring’ knowledge - picking it up instinctively without rules or formal explanations. Adults tend to seek a framework to help them learn new things and understand what they are doing and why. In language learning, a knowledge of grammar helps provide this framework. That said, grammar is only one aspect of language learning. The emphasis should always be on effective communication. Using correct grammar will not, on its own, guarantee that you will be understood. Good pronunciation and a knowledge of cultural considerations (i.e. what is acceptable or unacceptable to say) are equally, if not more important. Learning how a foreign language works is a great way to improve your understanding of how your own language works. As the famous German poet Goethe said: ‘Whoever is not acquainted with a foreign language knows nothing of his own”. The following is a guide to grammatical terms. It is not a grammar guide, although it may help you to understand better how English 11

works. If you would like to know more about English grammar, go to the BBC Skillswise website: www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise. Alternatively, if you haven’t got a GCSE in English and would like to join a class to improve your English, ask at Reception about our free Skills for Life courses. Nouns Nouns are ‘naming words’ – they denote the name of a thing, person, animal or place. A common noun is a word that names a thing, e.g. chair, child, supermarket. A proper noun is a word that names a specific person or place, e.g. Sam, London. An abstract noun is a word that names a feeling or concept that you cannot see or touch, e.g. anger, beauty. A collective noun is a word that names a group of things, e.g. a flock of sheep. Articles An article is a tiny word which introduces a noun, e.g. the chair, a fork, an apple. The word for ‘the’ is called the definite article because it refers to a specific person or thing. The word for ‘a’ or ‘an’ is called the indefinite article. Singular and Plural Nouns can be singular or plural. Singular means one single item, e.g. an apple, one man. Plural means more than one, e.g. apples, two bananas, the grapes. In English, we normally make the plural by adding ‘s’, but there are some exceptions, e.g. men, mice. Every language has its own set of endings which show that a noun is in the plural. 12

Gender Nouns in many foreign languages belong to certain groups called genders. Some languages, like English, do not have gender. French, Italian and Spanish have two genders - masculine and feminine. German has three - masculine, feminine and neuter. In these languages, words for things as well as people have a grammatical gender. In many languages, you can tell the gender of a noun by the article used with it. In certain languages, such as Italian, Spanish and Russian, the word ending will often indicate the gender. Case (see also Sentence on page 19) The case of a noun shows which grammatical function that word has in a sentence. In some foreign languages such as German, the case is shown by changing the ending of the word or the article in front of the noun. The nominative case is used for the subject The accusative case for the direct object The dative case for the indirect object The genitive case shows possession or ownership Pronouns These are words used in the place of nouns, e.g. I, she, him, them, etc. Once you have established what or whom you are talking about, you can use pronouns instead of repeating the name of the person or thing, e.g. Tom bought a new car. He likes it very much. Personal Pronouns These are words used in the place of persons, e.g. I, we, him, them In English, if we use a pronoun before a verb we use the forms I, you, he, she, it, they. These are known as subject pronouns. If we put the pronoun after the verb, we use the forms me, you, him, her, it, them. These are known as object pronouns.

Interrogative Pronouns These are question words such as ‘where?’ ‘when?’ ‘who?’ ‘how?’ which stand at the beginning of questions. Possessive Pronoun A possessive pronoun shows possession, e.g. mine, his, hers, ours, yours, e.g. That book is yours. This is mine. In languages with gender and/or case, the ending of the possessive pronoun changes to reflect different gender and/or case of the thing/person owned. Demonstrative Pronoun A demonstrative pronoun demonstrates which of two or more things you are talking about, e.g. Which cake do you want? I want this one. You can have that one. Adjectives An adjective is a word which describes a noun or pronoun and says what it is like, e.g. big, new, rising, cheap, clever. In English, adjectives stand in front of the noun they describe (red wine), but in some languages, they follow the noun (vin rouge). They can also stand on their own (the car is red). In some languages, adjectives change endings to ‘agree’ with the noun they describe in gender, number and case. Comparative and Superlative Comparatives and superlatives are special forms of adjectives. They are used to compare two or more things. In English, they are often formed by adding the following endings to the adjective: -er for the comparative and –est for the superlative, e.g. taller, tallest. The comparative form of an adjective is used to compare two people or things, e.g. Bill is taller than Ben. The superlative form is used to compare more than two things, e.g. Ben is tall, Bill is taller but Bob is the tallest.

Possessive Adjectives These are adjectives which tells us who or what owns something, e.g. my house, his book Verbs Verbs are ‘doing’ words which describe an action, state or process, e.g. to cook, to love, to be, to grow. Infinitive This is the very basic form of the verb – the one you’ll find in a dictionary. In English infinitives have ‘to’ in front, e.g. ‘to go’, ‘to be’. In many other languages, the infinitive form of a verb has a special ending. Verb Forms All verbs ‘conjugate’ - they change their form to show (a) the person or persons doing the action and (b) the time -past, present or future - when the action takes place. For example, in English we say I work, you work, he works – the verb form changes to ‘agree’ with the person doing the action (see table on p.16 showing examples of verb/subject agreements). Regular and Irregular Verbs can be ‘regular’ or ‘irregular’. Regular verbs all conjugate according to the same specific set of rules. Once you have learnt these rules, you can apply them to all other regular verbs in the same category. ‘To work’, ‘to listen’, ‘to jump’, ‘to talk’ and ‘to like’ are all regular verbs in English. However, some of the most common verbs are irregular - they do not follow the set pattern. In English, the verbs ‘to be’, ‘to go’, ‘to do’ and ‘to have’ are all irregular. Negative To make a negative statement in English, we insert ‘not’ before the verb, e.g. I do not understand (often shortened to ‘I don’t understand’– the apostrophe between the n and the t shows that there is a letter missing). ‘Never’, ‘no more’, ‘no longer’, ‘nothing’, ‘nowhere’, ‘no-one’ and ‘nobody’ are other ways of expressing a negative. 15

Examples of verb/subject agreements (see also section on Verb Forms on p.15) You will note that English actually has very few verb forms. The verb ‘to walk’ has just 4 forms – walk, walks, walked and walking. Other languages have many more verb forms. mnn

1st person singular

jhjkh

2nd person you singular

Past Tense to be

to walk to be to to be walk

walk

walked was

walk

are

walked were will will be walk

he/she/it walks is

walked was

1st person plural

3rd person plural

they

Future Tense

to walk

3rd person singular

2nd person you plural

Present Tense

will will be walk

walk

are

walked were will will be walk

walk

are

walked were will will be walk

walk

are

walked were will will be walk

Tense The tense of a verb shows us when the action or state happens – i.e. in the present, past or future. The present tense is what is happening now, e.g. I go, I am going The past tense is used to talk about something that has already happened, e.g. she went, she was going, she has gone The future tense indicates an action yet to take place, e.g. we will go, we shall be going. Each language has its own pattern for forming tenses. You cannot translate word for word from English as this will lead to mistakes and confusion. Reflexive Verbs These do not exist in English in the same way as they do in some other languages. Reflexive verbs show that someone is doing the action to him/herself, e.g. I washed myself. In English, we can omit the word ‘myself’ without changing the meaning. In some languages, the word ‘myself’ must always be used, otherwise it becomes unclear what you washed. Auxiliary Verbs An auxiliary verb is used together with another verb to make a question or to show the tense. ‘To be’, ‘to do’ and ‘to have’ can all be used as auxiliary verbs, e.g. I will call you! Did you see? Have you seen? Modal verbs are another form of auxiliary verb which modify the main verb to express possibility, probability, necessity, etc. ‘Can’, ‘could’ ‘may’, must, ‘should’ ‘will’ and ‘would’ are all modal verbs, e.g. I must go, Could you help? Participles There are two forms of participle: the present participle and the past participle. 17

The present participle ends in –ing and is used to show an action in the present that is ongoing, e.g. I am walking. The past participle is the part of the verb which in English follows ‘have’ or ‘has’ to indicate a past action. It often ends in –ed, e.g. I have finished. However there are many exceptions, e.g. she has eaten; have you done? Participles can also be used as a noun or adjective, e.g. swimming is fun, he had a sprained ankle. Imperatives The imperative is the command form of the verb, e.g. Go! Don’t move! The imperative is often used in signs, recipes and instruction manuals. Active and Passive Voice In the active voice, the subject of the verb does the action, e.g. The policeman caught the burglar. In the passive voice, the subject receives the action of the verb, e.g. The burglar was caught by the policeman. The passive shows what was done to someone or something.

Adverbs Adverbs are words which tell us more about the verb. They tell us how, where or when the activity is done, e.g. he sings loudly; she came yesterday; we live nearby. In English, adverbs are often formed by adding –ly to an adjective. If we want to compare two actions, we need to use the comparative form of the adverb – faster, higher, earlier. To compare three or more actions, we use the superlative form – fastest, highest, earliest, e.g. Jane jumped higher than Ben, but Rob jumped the highest. If an adverb has two or more syllables, the comparative and superlative is often formed by putting ‘more’ or ‘most’ in front of the adverb, e.g. more forcefully, most forcefully. 18

Sentence A sentence is a sequence of words which conveys a statement, question, exclamation or command. In English, sentences start with a capital letter and end with a full stop (.), question mark (?) or exclamation mark (!). The very simplest of sentences consist of a subject and a verb, e.g. I was dreaming. All sentences are made up of a number of ‘clauses’ – sometimes just a main clause that make sense on its own, e.g. I am going to lunch, sometimes a main clause plus one more, e.g. because I am hungry. Each clause has its own verb, subject and possibly objects. The subject of the sentence is the person or thing carrying out the action. The direct object is the person or thing having something done to him / her / it. The indirect object is the person or thing which benefits from the action, e.g. The girl (subject) gave the bone (direct object) to the dog (indirect object). Some languages use ‘cases’ to express the idea of subject and object (see Section on Nouns).

Word Order Each language has its own rules on word order. For example, in English we say “I gave it to him yesterday”. It would sound odd if we said “I it to him gave yesterday”, but this is the normal word order in French. In German, you would say ‘Yesterday gave I to him it’. The more you listen to and use the language, the more you will get used to word patterns.

Prepositions These are small words which usually come before a noun or pronoun to indicate time, place, direction or position, e.g. in, on, near, with, for, into, at. E.g. ‘She went into the house.’ ‘I left at noon.’ ‘These are for you.’ ‘Meet me in front of the cinema.’ Some languages use postpositions instead of prepositions. These are the same kind of little words placed after the noun it controls. Some languages use cases for the same purpose, so the noun endings change.

Conjunctions Conjunctions are little words which join two or more parts of a sentence together, e.g. ‘and’ , ‘or’, ‘but’, ‘because’, ‘although’, e.g. Jim painted the door but it was raining and the paint was washed away.

Section 4: Using a Dictionary A dictionary can be very useful to look up unfamiliar words, but there are certain pitfalls of which you should be aware: Know which category of word you are looking for. - is it a noun, a verb, an adjective etc? For example, if you want to find the foreign language equivalent of the English word ‘talk’, you need to know whether you want the noun (n) ‘a talk’ or the verb (v) ‘to talk’. In the foreign language, they may be two completely different words. Most dictionaries will indicate after the word whether it is a noun, verb, etc. In addition, foreign language dictionaries will tell you if a noun is masculine (m), feminine (f), or where applicable, neuter (n). Your dictionary will usually also tell you the plural forms of nouns, especially if these do not follow the normal pattern. 20

Get to know the abbreviations used in your dictionary so that you can choose the correct version of the word. Some words have more than one meaning. For example, if you look up the word ‘bank’ in an English dictionary, you would get the following meanings: bank n 1. an institution offering financial services. 2. the building used by such an institution. 3. the ground beside a river bank v 1. to deposit money in a bank. 2. to cause an aircraft to tip, esp. while turning It is important, therefore, to choose the right one. Rather than pick the first word listed, quickly look through all the entries to find the grammatical form you need (i.e. noun, verb, etc). Where several foreign language options are listed, you may be able to select the correct word from the meanings given. If you are still unsure which to choose, go to the foreign language > English part of the dictionary, look up each option and choose the one which best conveys the English equivalent. The form of the word you need may be different from the form found in the dictionary. For example, dictionaries may only give the infinitive form of the verb, e.g. ‘to go’. When you are working from English to the foreign language, you will need to change the verb endings from the infinitive into the form you need, e.g. ‘he goes’, ‘I went’. If you look up the word ‘went’ in an English dictionary, you might not find it unless your dictionary tells you that it is a past tense of the verb ‘to go’. The same applies when you are looking up words in a foreign language dictionary. If you do not find the word you want, there is a chance that it could be a verb form. Many bilingual dictionaries have verb tables to help you identify the infinitive form which you can then look up to find the English meaning. In most languages, verb changes follow patterns so, once you know the pattern, you can often work out what the infinitive is likely to be. 21

For example, in German, the verb forms for the perfect (past) tense mostly start with â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;ge-â&#x20AC;&#x2122; which you need to remove to identify the infinitive. In languages which use cases (such as German and Russian), dictionaries give the nominative form of the noun, and you will need to change the endings for the other cases. In German, some case endings may be given in the German/English section. Check the explanatory pages in your dictionary to check the order in which they are given, so that you can choose the correct form.

For further information on English grammar, visit: www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise

If you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a Level 2 qualification in English and would like to brush up on your skills, ask at Reception about Free Skills for Life classes. The Adult Community Learning website gives more information on our free English and Maths courses, as well as details of all other courses we offer.

www.essex.gov.uk/adultlearning 23

This document is issued by Essex County Council, Adult Community Learning You can contact us in the following ways: By post: Essex County Council Adult Community Learning P O Box 47 County Hall Chelmsford Essex CM2 6WN By telephone: 01245 436606 By fax: 01245 436319 By email: lifelong.learning@essex.gov.uk Visit our website: www.essex.gov.uk/adultlearning

Published November 2008

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