What Is Important To Learn First



What Is Important To Learn First?

(A Spiralling Walk Outwards) (version 2.0)

by Greg Thomson

What is Your Goal?

Some language learners wonder which words and skills are important to learn first.

First of all, let's agree that you want to learn language to a high level of ability. If your goal were to learn just enough language for a one-month vacation in the country, you might approach matters quite differently. That is, the first forty hours of learning “a whole language” might be different from forty hours aimed at learning “just a bit of a language” and no more. Our concern in this training is to teach you how to start down a path of learning a whole language.

About Frequency, Commonality

As you go about learning a whole language, during your first 300 hours of language sessions you might hope to learn 1,800 or 2,100 vocabulary (that would be an average of 6-7 words for each hour of language session). Now if someone were learning his/her first 1,800 English words, and asked you to rate certain English words as to their importance, how would you rate the words “sneeze” and “bindery”? Probably everyone would agree that “sneeze” is an essential word to know, while “bindery” is something you might know only if you acquire quite a large vocabulary, let’s say, 20,000 words. “Sneeze” is a word that any four-year-old child would know. “Bindery” is a word that even many high school students might not know.

No doubt, “sneeze” is used more frequently than “bindery”. However, when was the last time you actually said the word “sneeze” in everyday speech? In fact, many people may not have said it for a month or more. Unfortunately, though, in order to be able to carry on reasonable relationships in your new language, you will constantly need to be using words that you might only use once a week, or once a month. There are relatively few words that you use constantly, and some of those you cannot really learn at the beginning.

The English word “the” is an example. The use of “the” and “a” in English comes with a high level of English ability, and so even though they are extremely frequent, they aren’t too useful to learners at first. On the other hand, words like “and”, “or”, “but”, “so”, “because” are relatively frequent. However, those are words that join other words together, so before you can use them, you at least want to know a handful of words that they can join! There are other very high-frequency words that may be “easy” to learn, such as question words like “Who, where, why”. For the most part, however, you need invest the effort to learn the names of the common objects, actions, attributes (like color, size) of objects, words for feelings and emotions, and other highly concrete, experiential words.

It would be great if today you could learn only words that you for sure were going to need to use later today and tomorrow. However, there really is no way to avoid the need to learn hundreds of basic words that will allow you to talk about the most common aspects of everyday life and experience. Thus the big pay-off comes after learning hundreds of words, not after learning twenty. Sorry.

Simple Strategy to Learn the New World

It helps to have a strategy for covering the words of everyday experience in your learning. This strategy should spring out of the essence of language learning: “Don’t learn the language. Rather, relearn the world as it is known and shared by the people whose language you are learning.”

Begin by trying to think of which words every four-year-old would know. These will be the words that everyone in your new culture will be using every day.

One way to discover these words is to allow your mind to walk in a spiral, starting from your own body, in your own home, with your own family and friends... then walking in wider and wider sweeps, gradually spiraling out through the world around you, experiencing life in your host community, and learning to talk about it.

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This suggests a sequence of words to learn such as the following:

1. Basic words for people: man, woman, old man, baby, mother, husband.

2. Words about my body: body parts, posture, movement.

3. Words about my feelings, emotions and values: sick, happy, crying, bad.

4. Words for the common objects and actions in the part of the house where I most relate to my language helper, be it the living room or the lab room: table, floor, green, big, many.

5. Moving along my outward-growing spiral now, I learn to talk about objects, actions, experiences, etc. associated with all the rooms in my house: bedroom, sink, tasty.

6. Continuing my outward sweep, words for common experiences and objects in the world outside: the sky, for instance.

7. Next the neighborhood, shopping areas, working areas.

8. Next, things I’ll encounter in the region. That might include the countryside if I live in the city, or the city if I live in the countryside.

9. Things farther removed in space and time: famous people, historical events, far off places, abstract ideas related to government.

10. Out of this world: abstract concepts, poetry, etc.

Visual Aids for Learning

Supplies to help you learn language along the outward growing spiral are easy to find. The parts of your body and the ways they can move are there already(. The parts of the bathroom are just waiting in the bathroom for that language session. All vocabulary to spiral step 8 can be learned through TPR and other communicative activities that use objects, actions, pictures, etc.

It can be helpful to make a big picture of your neighborhood and scenes typical of the region. For example, a drawing of a typical, multifaceted neighborhood in your region, with residential sections, shopping sections, and work places, or a picture of the countryside. You can also buy picture dictionaries which such scenes.

What About Dignity and Skipping Ahead on the Spiral?

Don’t think that 'four-year-old language' is beneath your dignity. Some language learners end up being able to discuss philosophy but can’t say, “I sneezed!” This may contribute to their never learning the language very well, because once they are heavily into adult themes, they may never go back and learn to talk about all those things that any four-year-old can talk about.

In reality, it seems to be nearly impossible for adults to develop their vocabulary systematically going from spiral steps 1 through 10. They end up very quickly exploring the language out in spiral steps 9 and 10, long, long before they have mastered a four-year-old’s set of common words. Knowing this tendency, it is wise to be alert and keep forcing yourself to go back toward the center of the spiral, checking whether you can communicate about the topics in spiral steps 1, 2, etc.

As you progress in your language learning, take time to check periodically, searching out the holes in your knowledge of the language of basic life experience, and filling them in.

( So, at what point are you on your spiralling language journey? And where will you explore next?

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