You didn't waste your time
Unless you choose to never go back
Welcome, aspiring polyglot! I was recently reminded of the power that lies within the human brain. Working again with a new student, a high performing working professional. She went to Mexico on exchange once, but never immersed herself in the language. Still, over the last several weeks we have been able to use all of the latent knowledge she did not even realize was there lying dormant.
One of the mistakes many people make is believing they have to start from scratch just because it has been year or even decades since they last study or spoke their language of choice. Hopefully, after reading this, you will realize that you have access to a ton of knowledge from years past, you simply need to give your brain a reason to remember the things you have already learned.
Years in the classroom
While I may come across harsh when I speak about the public education system, I do not think that the time you spent there was a waste. In fact, the mere act of being exposed to a language for an hour every day for years will necessarily have latent effects. What matters now is being able to awaken that dormant knowledge. This will take a different amount of time depending on how long it’s been since you were in a classroom.
At first, it might feel like you have vague ideas of what you studied, but with enough effort you will discover there is a lot more than what came immediately to the surface. Interestingly enough, everyone I’ve worked with who had classes in high school has about the same frame of reference when we begin class. They know present tense, they know one past tense option, and they know the colors and numbers. While a solid base, it is really unfortunate that this is the result after anything between two and four years of second language education.
Even so, the time they, and by extension you, spent in classrooms was not wasted. The brain is extremely powerful and, when given a reason, the recall power you have access to is unparalleled. It won’t all come flooding back the first day you try this, but if you stick to it for two weeks you will be shocked by how much you still have as a base. And it is always easier to build something on a foundation, that is how your language classes of the past will serve you now.
Forgotten knowledge
This doesn’t just work with languages either. Anything you have studied in the past will, at the very least, look familiar upon review. The benefits you have with language is that inferences you would not have been able to make in high school are now connections you make with ease. Adults do have an advantage over children when it comes to language learning in that they have more life experience.
Not only will the things you knew come back over time, but the things that you absolutely could not make sense of at age 15 make a lot more sense at age 25 or 35 or 45. I have seen people in that entire age range benefit from working a language recovery protocol into their second language acquisition. Even so called “bad students” saw tremendous progress using this methodology because, good or bad, he still went to school and was still exposed to the language.
At the end of the day, all you truly have to do for “language recovery”, as I call it, is be exposed to the language more. This is why I say “if you don’t use it you lose it” is terrible advice. If you don’t use it, it will go dormant. When your knowledge is dormant it is far more difficult to recall. The best way to wake it up is to start needing it. Your brain responds to necessity. Define what you need to focus on and do it for two weeks. Write down everything you remember. You will be amazed.
Step by step
Here is a step by step of how you can start today:
Get a notebook and a pen
Start writing down everything you can remember (5-10 minutes)
Colors
Numbers
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Nouns
Conjugations
Make some sentences, as basic or complex as you can, using the words that you wrote down.
Repeat every day for 14 days
Profit?
If you want a little bit of a more in depth language recovery program, don’t forget to check out the Guides section and download the Language Recovery Guide. It doesn’t have to be complex. As I said above, even listening to music will unlock much of the things you learned back in the classroom. What matters most is that you do not stop after things start coming back. Continue for 14 days straight and make sure you record your results.
Conclusion
I’ve recently been speaking to several people who walked away from their language education because of a bad teacher. For me, that is the worst possible thing to hear because it means the very people meant to provide students of opportunities have been robbing them of opportunities. Mistakes are a necessary part of linguistic progression and without the freedom to make those mistakes, public education will always fail to achieve language acquisition. The good news?
You are in charge. You have control over your own education. Not only for second, third, and fourth languages but for physics and chemistry and engineering. I am grateful that you are here to pick up some Second Language Strategies, but don’t stop here! Keep pursuing your passions, learn new things in new languages, and never stop growing. It will be difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great. So get out and do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.
