Weekend Words 1st March - a podcast by Alan Palmer

Hello everybody,

I hope you are all well. It has been a little while since I made a podcast. Thank you for all you nice messages.

Today I would like to talk about being positive and relaxed about learning languages and also being willing to take risks with language too.

Learning a language is a difficult thing to do, but as I have said before, we can always enjoy our language at any level. Young children do this. When we see a small child start to learn their mother tongue – they maybe don’t say so much at the beginning, They listen and maybe try some sounds that don’t sound like words. But later, when they start to say words, their mother or father will be happy to hear them say things and then they encourage them by speaking back to them – usually in a kindly way.

That way, a small child learns in a positive place with a friendly teacher (mother or father) and then the child enjoys using whatever language they have – they often don’t want to stop talking!

I think that as adults, we should try to copy this method a little. Of course we can’t act like a child, but we can use some of the attitude of a child: positive about learning, relaxed when we speak, read, write or listen. We can also not worry about mistakes – of course, try to correct these mistakes when we can or when someone helps us – for example if we are in a class.

My belief is that we can learn and at the same time make what we have already important.

We can also be willing to take some risks too. For example, when we speak with people we know who speak the language as a native speaker – try to see if we can push the language level a bit higher when we speak with them. If we make a mistake or use a wrong word, then maybe our friend will kindly advise us – without criticising us. It is the same with writing letters – try some things that are new to us. Of course, in exams this is different, because this is a test of what we know. But with letters, e-mails, text messages with friends – always try a little extra and see if you can get things right and learn more. When we listen – try to listen to language that is a higher level than we have ourselves – because we always understand more than we can speak.

The same thing with reading. Read short articles, magazines where there is conversation or interviews written down for reading like a conversation would be in reality.

So, we can be relaxed and happy to learn and still try hard to become better at the same time if we think about things carefully and we can keep getting better and better.

Take care and bye for now

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