17th January 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A tutor has explained what she feels are the 5 most common barriers to learning a language in a recent article in the Telegraph. Anne Merritt says that it’s a myth that intelligent people are better at learning foreign languages, and that, while intelligence helps, there are more critical factors that affect one’s grasp of an unfamiliar tongue.
Anne says that the first mistake students make is not listening enough. When we are babies we acquire our speech by listening to others talk and mimicking their words, even when we don’t know what they mean, and Anne thinks that every new language student should spend some time simply listening to recordings in the new language, rather than jumping straight into speaking and writing it.
The second factor is having an interest in the culture of the new language. A study in Canada showed that in areas containing Anglophones with a prejudice against French speakers, the acquisition of French was much poorer than elsewhere.
Anne also thinks that rigid thinking can badly affect someone’s ability with a new language. Something that it usually seen as a positive aspect, the desire for completeness and structure, can impede the learner because he/she will be too quick to pick up a dictionary, rather than guess the meaning of an unfamiliar word.
The last two common problems are relying on a single learning method, and being afraid to speak the new language aloud. The former means that the learner doesn’t practise every necessary language skill, and the latter reduces confidence in actually speaking the language, which is the whole point of learning. It also means that any pronunciation errors go unnoticed until they’re ingrained the in student.