We people quite often don't understand each other and call idiots each other. Sometimes bloody idiots. Most of the times problem lies within a language, especially when it's a foreign one. Believe me or not but while speaking poor language you may appear as a totally different person. From a confident, articulate and sarcastic man you may transform into a straight-forward and limited dork.
Or an idiot. Not the idiot who is so smart and exceptional that nobody understands him but an idiot-idiot, the one who can't express himself and show his true self because of poor language knowledge.
By the way, smart idiots have the problem with communication, too. They use so complicated and posh words that they can't communicate well. It's a real art to be able to pass the arcane and secret knowledge you have to others. The best way, I think, is to start with basics, hiding away all details. Get into the details slowly, step by step. If you feel somebody doesn't understand you, you need to stop and explain. Tell a story or a live example. Whenever I have a customer or a non-technical person on the line and I need to explain technical difficulty I encountered I know I must use different language than I use normally within a team.
It's not: "Jennifer, J2EE app we have here haven't been deployed correctly. Web.xml isn't well-formed. We need to check it once again, update it and hot deploy it..."
It's rather: "Hi Jennifer, how are you...? Good to hear that. We ran into some technical difficulties here and can't update the webpage now. We're working hard on a quick fix now and we'll deliver it as soon as we can... We'll keep you updated and let you know when we're back on track. Alright?"
Anyway, I think it's far better to be smart-idiot than idiot-idiot. Lack of language knowledge is indeed a high obstacle to overcome. You could say: "But wait a second! I don't need no stinking language improvement. People communicate without words. It's body language that counts!" Well, yes, I agree but only if we're talking about simple things like greetings, playing games and being able to do simple bring-take-clean jobs. It appears that our lives most often consist of far complex tasks. On a daily basis we need to negotiate, buy and sell, solve difficult problems and discuss different topics. And without knowing language well it's really hard to be successful in this area.
To improve your language skills you need to be aware that to communicate is to listen, to speak, to read, to write and to think. Here are a few ways to learn and improve the language, especially when it's foreign to you.
- Listen to the talks on the radio and watch movies with long conversations but without subtitles. Turn the subtitles on when you don't understand anything and switch them off when the easier parts are back again. Ideally, the program or movie should have more known words than unknown. Good selection of radio talk programs can be found here and here. Free and public domain movies are here. Check them out!
- Try to play a little game with your friends. Imagine you don't know your native language and try to speak the foreign language you want to learn for as long as you can.
It may be fun while being on the train, going through the city or doing shopping. You may take it to a different level and pretend you're somebody else and do a little bit of role playing. Or try playing werewolf. But be careful not to harm anybody. Bear in mind you want to improve your language not to start war. You probably don't want Police looking for werewolves, either. Use words not gauntlets! - Go abroad to the country where everybody speaks language you want to improve. It may be hard to get around at first because you will definitely feel the language barrier but you will need to be strong and never give up. Maybe it would be reasonable to take the classes and the part-time job there. Anyway, it seems to be the most efficient way to improve the language, although it may be not the best one for absolute beginners who don't understand explanations.
- Be with other people who want to improve the language. Take the classes. Others are always good source of motivation. And learn from the best. A good idea is to go to a language camp for couple of weeks or weekend (British Council organises weekends with English). Browse the web for these there should be something in your country. Excellent weekly English residential courses are offered by English Language Centre in Poland.
Read books. Books are great source of new words to learn. Pick the book that is not too hard. Leave A tale of two cities for academic studies and choose a book that has more known words to you than unknown. A little hint: while reading keep the dictionary beside you and using pencil underline all difficult words and explain them in the book. By difficult words I mean the unknown or the ones you heard but you're not sure about the meaning. And yes, use the eraser very gently otherwise you may damage the page.
If you know any better method to learn languages
I am all ears.
Bottom line: Because of cheap flights (
Ryanair in Europe,
TigerAirways in Asia) and appearance of Internet learning languages never been so easy as it is now. I know that Internet
distracts like hell but basically it's just a matter of your will and persistence. Don't give up unless you want to be an idiot.
Labels: Languages
