The Toll Men

Do you want to learn a foreign language? Have you already spent a huge amount of time and money on classes, books, audio courses and CD-ROMs to no avail? You are not alone. Every year, millions of people get disillusioned with their progress after starting with plenty of enthusiasm. Do a search on the net for language learning products and you will find many that offer guaranteed results, easy formulas, no memorising necessary etc. But they just don’t work. At least not for you, you think. Here are some guidelines to make your language learning experience more effective and perhaps more enjoyable.

Lighten up!

The one big thing that stops many people from successfully communicating in a foreign language is the fear that they will get laughed at for their mistakes or bad pronunciation. For shy people, this is a major handicap, and can be likened to the fear of public-speaking, which ranks high in the list of fears. You will be surprised at the patience, toleration and even admiration that you will get when you make an effort to speak the language of your interlocutor. I still fall into this trap when speaking French, but most people are usually really complementary, and tell me that they wish they could speak English as well as I speak French! Learn to laugh at yourself, and you will find that others will laugh with you, not at you.

Memorise key sentences

Yes, I said memorise. Advertising that tells you that memorising is not necessary is simply false. I think that they want to tell you that you don’t need to learn parrot-fashion, which is a tedious pursuit. The opposite of memorising is forgetting, and that is even less acceptable! To speak a language means learning words, not reading them once then immediately forgetting them.

You need to learn by heart some correct sentences. By correct I mean a grammatical structure. If you are busy learning new words, you can substitute them for words in your correct sentence to produce other sentences. This is essentially how babies learn to speak, and is far more efficient than learning rules of grammar. Your brain is just not able to make the co-relation between a rule of grammar and using it in conversation. If you have a good vocabulary on the other hand, and you know how to say for example “I didn’t know you were coming” then the chances are it will be easy for you to say “I didn’t think he was working” in your target language. The grammatical structure is the same in both sentences.

Read and listen as much as you can

You have to practise speaking a lot to master a language. But what can you say if don’t know any words? Not much, and that’s the frustrating part. Listen to the radio in your target language every day and read the local newspapers. It’s so easy to do today with the internet. If you are just starting, you won’t understand very much, but it is still really important to do it regularly, in order to “tune” your ear to the wavelength of the language you are learning. Repetition is the key here. Over a period of time you will start to decode what once sounded like a constant stream of language where you couldn’t even tell when one word ended and the next one began. Your passive understanding will eventually turn into active speaking if you keep at it. Good luck!

Jonathan Lewis is a teacher of English as a foreign language in Provence, France. He learned to speak French the best way - by living in the country and practising everyday. He has a site about that helps students to improve their learning abilities, apprendre anglais and a blog about learning English. The advice he offers is invaluable for anyone wishing to learn a language, not just French.

Be sure to inspect this prime source for learning a second language hints…

Pimsleur French I Part 3 by Dr. Paul Pimsleur is certainly great reading, however busy lifestyles make reading challenging to do. Frequently we don’t realize that long journeys and different day-to-day tasks take up large portions of our time. A job, caring for children or even housework all cut down the free-time you have for your interests. If you’re a keen reading fan who finds it challenging to find time, your journey time might provide an opportunity to enjoy an audiobook. Using user friendly media files, it’s easy to relish Last Voyage Of Columbus by Martin Dugard for sale from Download Audio Book Online, or audiobooks recounted by Ray Bradbury without turning a single page.

Multi-tasking is becoming a way of life in the modern world. Audible books like Mary Mary by James Patterson by Download Audio Book Online make the best use of of the wasted minutes in our daily life, whether it is time spent waiting in a doctor’s office or buying groceries. Many audiobooks are available to download in mp3 format including Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey and C. C. Carlson, so if you’ve got an iPod or another mp3 player and use the opportunity to hear the current thriller, such as audio books by John Feinstein without hauling cumbersome books around.

A further advantage of audio books is hiring or purchasing the instructional volume that interests you then enjoying it at your leisure. Interested in learning a new language? Try audio books! It’s easy to review progressive business trends, or you can enjoy studying current thoughts in religious belief. An extensive choice of writing styles and titles exist. It doesn’t matter if you love travel writing, or if you are mad about horror even if your interests lie in self-help, it’s easy to download most audiobooks immediately. Various programs are available; you can take a subscription to a rental program or buy the title online.

Reading will invariably be a necessary skill, nevertheless audio-books offer a convenient alternative. A narrator can enhance the experience of numerous books. Just reading a book isn’t quite the same as enjoying an audio title recounted by Sam Bourne, with nuances of an actual rendition. Listening to audio titles performed by Elizabeth Bohorquez can supply more depth to your reading experience and often will mean more to you than the words on a page. Don’t forget audio-books next time you think of buying a novel, audio-books can give you effective way of squeezing the books you desire into a busy routine.

When I was growing up in a slum in Israel, I devoutly believed that knowledge and education will set me free and catapult me from my miserable circumstances into a glamorous world of happy learning. But now, as an adult, I find myself in an alien universe where functional literacy is non-existent even in developed countries, where “culture” means merely sports and music, where science is decried as evil and feared by increasingly hostile and aggressive masses, and where irrationality in all its forms (religiosity, the occult, conspiracy theories) flourishes.

The few real scholars and intellectuals left are on the retreat, back into the ivory towers of a century ago. Increasingly, their place is taken by self-taught “experts”, narcissistic bloggers, wannabe “authors” and “auteurs”, and partisan promoters of (often self-beneficial) “causes”.

Dismal results ensue: the Wikipedia “encyclopedia” is “edited” by anonymous users with unlimited access to its contents and no credentials; fads like environmentalism and alternative “medicine” spread malignantly and seek to silence dissidents, sometimes by violent means; the fare served by the media now consists exclusively of soap operas and reality TV shows; Reading is on terminal decline; with few exceptions, the “new media” are a hodgepodge of sectarian view and fabricated “news”; the few credible sources of reliable information have long been drowned in a cacophony of fakes and phonies.

It is a sad mockery of the idea of progress. The more texts we make available online, the more research is published, the more books are written - the less educated people are, the more they rely on visuals and sounds rather than the written word, the more they seek to escape and be anesthetized rather than be challenged and provoked.

Even the ever-sliming minority who do wish to be enlightened are inundated by a suffocating and unmanageable avalanche of indiscriminate data, comprised of both real and pseudo-science. There is no way to tell the two apart, so a “democracy of knowledge” reins where everyone is equally qualified and everything goes and is equally merited. This relativism is dooming the twenty-first century to become the beginning of a new “Dark Age”, hopefully a mere interregnum between two periods of genuine enlightenment.

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

One of the most romantic languages on earth is Italian.

There is indescribable quality to the Italian language that makes it sound so florid and expressive - two qualities that lend itself well to missives of love and passionate feelings.

But what could have made the Italian language become so associated with feelings of love and romance?

One very important factor could be the culture. The rich culture of Italy and its storied history could have brought about a subconscious association of anything romantic with the Italian language.

Italy’s culture is loaded with romantic imagery and a pervasive atmosphere of passion. Case in point are the many artworks and architectural wonders that the country possess. The art of such masters Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo may be firmly rooted in the Classical school but you still could not help but feel the passion that emanate from their works. From the virile yet delicate features of David to enigmatic smile of La Gioconda — the celebration of the human form and its emotions and passions are all too apparent. The religious iconography and artwork that is one of the centerpieces of the Vatican (located in Italy) may be not necessarily be associated with erotic love. But the images of saints, Jesus, and of the Virgin Mary convey a different kind of love altogether - divine, pure and aspirational.

Italy’s old world architecture has also contributed in making the Italian language synonymous with love. Every person who has toured the country and visited its old buildings and churches all describe the feeling of awe upon seeing majestic works of beauty that have been wrought by the hand of man. Who wouldn’t be filled with the feeling of love upon seeing St. Peter’s Basilica, the old Roman monuments and statues as well as the old world buildings that dot the quaint streets of Italy?

Italy’s other cultural contributions also convey love and passion. The opera is one fine example. The passion conveyed by this exquisite art form is hard to surpass. From the first notes of any opera piece - whether it be a comedy or a tragedy - is enough to transport the listener to another world that is pure sensation and emotion. The listener is like a boat buffeted by the waves of passion and love, happiness and wistfulness that each aria conveys through melody and words.

Italian literature also brings this kind of fervent passion to paper. From poetry to novels the Italian language has been used to great effect in conveying feelings of love.

But probably the biggest reason why the Italian language has such a strong association with love is the country itself. Italy is such a romantic place that millions of honeymooners, couples and married folk go to the country to soak up the fabled romantic ambience of Italy. There are so many things that couples do in Italy that have become synonymous with romance and love - riding a gondola through Italy’s canals, wine tasting in the countryside, having coffee al fresco, and even walking through Italy’s narrow cobblestone streets.

With all of these reasons it is no wonder the moment you hear someone speak Italian the first thing that comes to your mind is love and romance.

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