Polyglottist

How to Form a Habit of Studying Languages?

Having been a language teacher for many years, I used to hear students of all different ages claim that they do not have the capacity to learn languages. Meanwhile, many of them could name people they personally knew for whom languages came easily and naturally. These students believed that they needed to have some “special talent” for languages, without which mastery of any language would be difficult, perhaps even impossible. Were these students right? Do you really need some innate ability for languages in order to learn them?

There are a lot of studies that have been conducted about these questions and yet there is no single answer for them. Some people definitely have excellent phonetic abilities and great awareness of grammar patterns. As a result, they likely have an easier and shorter path when it comes to studying languages. People with exceptional languages skills are chosen to work for government interpreting and translation services. Does this mean that other people cannot become fluent in non-native languages? Absolutely not. Learning a language is no different from following a diet, going to the gym, saving money, keeping one’s house clean, or thousands of other activities that require the formation of a strong, consistent habit in order to achieve a desired result. Therefore, the question of if one can learn and how one can learn a foreign language becomes a question of how to form a habit and remain consistent, rather than a test of one’s innate language learning ability.

Each of us has individual goals and desires. We articulate these goals and sincerely believe that one day we will start working toward these goals, but sometimes, often even years later, we come to the realization that we have yet to even start. The main issue most people face is a discouraging mismatch between expectations and reality. Unfortunately, any goal requires hard work and sacrifice in order to achieve it. Another part of this dilemma is not knowing how to start and how to actively improve, so often we attempt a brute force approach, running aimlessly towards a goal until the point of mastery. Here, I came up with a list of steps to take in order to form a habit of learning a foreign language. I hope these steps will be useful.

Decide what language you want to learn and create deadlines for yourself. Be as realistic as possible, do not overdo it.
Decide when you want to start (pick a specific month and day) and how much time you have per week/day to devote to language learning. The time frame can vary from 15 minutes per day to two hours. More than two hours per day is not realistic and will likely interfere with other responsibilities you have. It is much more important to study on a consistent basis than to study for many hours on some days, and then do nothing for other days.
If your day is flexible, you do not have to assign specific time window for language learning. If your schedule is demanding, chose a specific time to study that language and stick to it. This can allow you to set a routine, which, once established, will be quite easy to maintain.
There will be many days, especially at the beginning, when you will find various excuses of why not do it or skip it. Try to fight this tendency. If you end up skipping it, treat the next day like it never happened, don’t allow yourself to dwell on your past mistakes, but rather try to learn from them going forward. A minor disruption to your routine does not need to lead to abandonment of the project/goal all together. Forgive yourself for such minor weaknesses and mistakes and continue according to the plan afterwards.
According to research, it takes about two months to form a habit. If you win the initial internal battle with yourself and continue your language studies for at least 60 days, it will become much easier, if not completely automatic. It will be a part of your every day routine.
All of these tips and recommendations do not mean that in two months you will be able to master a language and then be able to discontinue your studies. Becoming fluent in a language takes a lot of time, and while basic conversational fluency may come relatively quickly, true fluency can take several years. However, if you form the habit of studying your language on a consistent basis (every day or almost every day), it will become a part of your life and you will no longer have to force yourself.
Good luck in the wonderful journey of battling yourself in order to achieve your goals of language fluency!

Olga Sylvia, PhD

Dear future Polyglottist Spanish students,

We will be offering beginner, low intermediate, intermediate, pre-advanced, and advanced Spanish classes for students who travel for pleasure or for work to Spanish speaking countries, who have family members who speak Spanish, and for everyone who wants to be proficient in the Spanish language. All of our classes will meet on Zoom. The registration for all Spanish classes will open soon!

HOW TO STUDY FOREIGN LANGUAGES?

While we often know or read about people who have mastered a foreign language, we still fall into one of two extremes: we either think that we can do it very quickly with minimal effort or it seems as if an impossible task that would devour all our time and energy. I have been on the journey of learning a foreign language many times, and my experience has taught me that the journey gets considerably easier and shorter with each new language. Once you have gone through the many stages of learning a language, they become familiar and therefore less tedious. You also become more patient and forgiving with yourself. Here are those stages in learning languages:

1) The reasons that motivated you to learn a specific language make you excited and eager to start the process of learning. You enthusiastically sign up for a language class and start devoting a lot of time and energy into this new type of learning. You catch every word your instructor says. You meticulously do all the homework. You are so excited to learn about the country where this particular language is spoken. You are making long-term plans to go and study in that country. It is the honeymoon stage in your relationship with a new language.

2) Just as in romantic relationships, the honeymoon stage does not last forever. It is soon replaced with uncertainty and myriads of doubts. The initial burst excitement has passed and now you are faced with the laborious process of repetition and memorizing incomprehensible rules. In this stage, no matter how much you try, it seems hopeless and you do not feel that you are making progress. You still do not understand a single sentence of what native speakers say. When you try to apply the abundance of rules you stuffed your head with, they often fail because languages are full of exceptions. Unfortunately, many students quit during this stage because they cannot fight their sense of profound disappointment with the world of languages and themselves.

3) The students who were able to overcome the calamitous second stage now enter the transitional stage. They become more patient with themselves and slow down, but do not stop completely. They might take breaks, but they do not quit. They can now understand and communicate on an everyday level and they have learned how to apply grammatical rules. They have settled into their routine and they accept the fact that they are in for a long voyage across the unending sea that is a foreign language, knowing the small, continuous rewards will eventually lead to sublime satisfaction with themselves and the language.

4) The fourth and the final stage is the culmination of all the prior efforts, but it first comes unnoticed. In this stage, you suddenly realize that you can express what you want; your stress of participating in a discussion is replaced by the enjoyment of being understood by other speakers of the language. You suddenly get access to an entirely different vision of the world because every language out there is not only a collection of rules and vocabulary, but an expression of different values, mentalities, and histories.

How then can knowing the psychological aspects of learning a foreign language specifically help you to go through this lengthy and challenging process? My primary advice is not limited specifically to languages, as it can be applied many spheres of life. The advice is simply to keep going, even if you only study a few minutes per day, you will eventually reach your goal. In other words, the most important part of this process is consistency. Unfortunately, contrarily to what many websites claim, there are no quick ways to learn a language. Just think about how complex each human’s life truly is. Is it really possible that someone can go through all possible interactions with other people, memorize vocabulary, and be able to construct sentences to explain complex ideas in a short period of time? You need to experience many everyday situations and learn what people usually interact in a given situation. Time is certainly the most important aspect of learning a language.

Now let’s talk about different methods. Over the centuries, people all around the world have used the grammar-translation method. Even today, in many countries and in many American high schools the same method is used which leads to students memorizing very complex grammar rules, yet not being able to construct a simple sentence and certainly cannot understand the dialogue of a native speaker. Another method is a communicative approach in which students learn how to repeat sentences without knowing any grammar rules. This approach mimics how toddlers learn their native languages. Many websites and individuals claim that you do not need to know any grammar and can just learn a language like that. The truth is actually somewhere in the middle in that you need a combination of both approaches to be able to master any language.

Olga Sylvia, PhD

MEET OUR ESL AND GERMAN INSTRUCTOR CAROLYN

Carolyn is a Ph.D. candidate in the German Department at UC Berkeley, where she is finishing up a dissertation on the development of German noun inflection. She began teaching at PLA (in the San Francisco Bay Area location) in early 2019.

Before moving to Berkeley in 2006, she spent two years in Freiburg (Breisgau), Germany, studying German and Scandinavian Linguistics and Literature at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität and exploring the Black Forest. She has been teaching German continuously since 2008 at various institutions including UC Berkeley, the German School of Fremont, the Bay Area Kinderstube (BAKS+, an after-school full immersion program for heritage speakers of German), and, of course, PLA, and has worked with both children and adults at all levels of proficiency. She’s also taught English (both ESL/EFL and composition classes for native speakers) and has done a fair amount of proofreading and translating.

When she’s not teaching or working on her dissertation, she enjoys taking long walks in the Berkeley hills, singing, playing the piano, watching German detective series, and crocheting.

Dear future German students,

We plan on offering German classes for all levels, starting in November. We will be offering beginner, low intermediate, intermediate, and advanced German classes for students who travel for pleasure or for work to German speaking countries, who have family members who speak German, and for everyone who wants to be proficient in the German language.

We have three exceptional German instructors. Two of them hold PhD in German ( the third one is finishing her PhD in German). All three have years of experience teaching German in different countries. We will introduce you to our German instructors in our next post.

Dear current and prospective Polyglottist students,

We hope you are all doing well! Registration will open soon for our November and January sessions.

We will be offering group and individual classes for English, Italian, German, French, Russian, and Spanish languages on Zoom.

PLA News

Over the summer we hired several new, highly qualified instructors for various languages. Please read their bios below.

Spanish and Italian Instructor: Arianna Contreras, a second generation Mexican-American, was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Since childhood, Arianna has spent part of her summers every year in Sonora, Mexico with family. Arianna holds an M.A. in Italian Studies from Florida State University where she taught and studied Italian in the Department of Modern Languages & Linguistics and is currently working on her second Masters in Italian Literature at Middlebury College. She has also taught as an Instructor of Italian at Saint Louis University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is a published translator of the work of contemporary Italian poet, Guido Caserza (Rivista di Studi Italiani, 2021). It was through learning about the Italian language and culture where her desire to learn more about her own Mexican heritage grew, living in Mexico for part of a summer to reconnect with her own heritage.

German Instructor: Anja, a German native from Münster, started her teaching career in Germany after completing her BA. and M.A. degrees in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. In 2005, she moved to North Carolina and completed her Ph.D. in German Literature. Since then, she has stayed in the academic world and taught German language, literature and culture classes. Anja believes in a communicative, student-centered approach to teaching, in which students not only feel comfortable using the target language but also engage with the language creatively. Anja enjoys designing personalized lesson plans in which humoristic elements always find their way. In her free time, Anja enjoys traveling and learning about different cultures, especially trying and replicating specific cuisines. Since she loves mountains and lakes, Austria is frequently on her travel list. One of her favorite holidays was a hiking tour through the Wachau area, which she topped off with a visit to Vienna. On her travel bucket list is her newfound passion for Montenegro. She hopes to visit the old town of Kotor and Budva and indulge in the original produce at the weekly farmer’s markets.

Warm wishes,
-Olga Sylvia, PhD
PLA Program Director

FACTS ABOUT POLYGLOTTIST

The word Polyglottist is a synonym of “polyglot” which describes someone who speaks multiple languages. The origins of this word are Greek: polyglōttos, from poly-(many) + glōtta (language). In accordance with our name, our school emphasizes the learning of multiple languages.

Our first location in San Francisco Bay Area, California opened its doors for students in January 2014. We have just opened our second location in The Hague, The Netherlands.

STATISTICS ABOUT OUR INSTRUCTORS

We currently have 25 instructors.

Three Polyglottist instructors hold PhDs, while another three are PhD candidates, sixteen of our instructors hold MA degrees, and three hold BA degrees.

All of our instructors hold degrees in languages they teach, linguistics, literature, history or pedagogy.

The average teaching experience of PLA instructors is ten years.

Our instructors come from 17 countries (Belarus, Brazil, China, Colombia, Eritrea, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Ukraine, Uruguay, Vietnam, and the US).

21 of our instructors are native speakers.

Eight PLA instructors are actively involved in academic research.

Meet our Italian instructor Rossana.

Rossana is a native Italian speaker, born and raised in Napoli, Campania. Rossana holds a Bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the State University of New York and a Master’s degree in Italian literature from New York University. Rossana has taught Italian language and civilization at various universities in the United States and at the United Nations in New York City. She is very passionate about teaching Italian language and loves to see her students succeed. In her free time, Rossana loves to travel with her family and discover new places. She is also an avid student and teacher of Yoga.

Learn more about our Italian classes which will be offered starting in November! We are currently finalizing the details about classes. Preview our schedule of Italian classes by clicking the link below.

https://www.polyglottist.nl/italian

Learn about our French program! We will be offering French classes for all levels, starting in November.

https://www.polyglottist.nl/french

What does the word "polyglottist" mean?

The word Polyglottist is a synonym of “polyglot” which describes someone who speaks multiple languages. The origins of this word are Greek: polyglōttos, from poly-(many) + glōtta (language). In accordance with our name, our school emphasizes the learning of multiple languages.

Meet our wonderful Polyglottist instructors! Check out our instructors' page!

Our Instructors — Polyglottist Polyglottist Program Director Olga Sylvia started Polyglottist Language Academy in 2014 when she was a graduate student. She now holds a PhD in French from the University of California, Berkeley where she taught French for six years. She also taught French and Spanish at the University of the Pacifi...