Lesson One——Several Key Factors for Language Learning

In the process of learning a language, many people give up before achieving their goal. And those who giving up hardly not keen on discussing about which institute teach batter, which textbook highly recommended.  These factors are important, without argue, but during the discussion the most important factor are often ignored. In fact, what you ignored is exactly the most important.

 

The most critical element confined to the following seven items, when you miss any one of them, even instructed by the excellent teacher, the results will be in vain. The ordering is based on the degree of importance, the first term is the most important, and so on.

1.Desire - Making a decision for choosing something to learn, it is better giving yourself three month of Cooling-off Period, asking yourself whether you are serious. Listing out all the reasons why you want to learn it, marking it with scores from 1 to 10.  those reasons include: 1. Interest, 2. Necessary for Profession,  3. Future Development, 4. Social Contact(people from certain countries you want to contact),5. Other (to favor your boyfriend / girlfriend, etc). Besides, by the same way listing the things yous have to give and score them also, including: 1. Money, 2. Time, 3. Physical and Mental Energy, 4. Opportunity Costs (because you have other options), 5. Pressure. Exactly like a balance sheet, benefits write on the left, things which have to sacrificed written on the right. The importance should be score, the score of each item will then multiplied by the score of importance. Take Interest as an example, you score your degree of Interest with 3, and the importance of Interest is 5, therefore the item of Interest is scored with 15.

Is your desire really such intense?

2.Commitment - After the Cooling-off Period, if you really want it, then swearer to heaven and demand a curse when you don't keep your promise(no joke), claiming that in the next decade you will never give up until you succeeds, otherwise....(up to your imagination). Expensive? Imagine, after you have learning something with a few years and one day, suddenly, you want to give up....

3.Target - Made it clear when will you reach a certain level.  After you have a long-term goal, then cut it up to several short-term goals. For example, within three years you can master 30,000 vocabulary, one year you have to handle 10,000, on average, a month you have to memorize a few hundreds, in other words,  dozens of words everyday, this is your daily tasks. (This number is only an example, everyone set their goal  according to their needs) Therefore, when the task was not completed, you are not allow to go to bed that day.

4.Discipline - Everyday must complete certain amount of learning, besides, you must set a schedule.  If you must study an hour daily, (examples also) if you think certain moment is  most suitable, then hereafter you will fix your study at that moment. If it is in the morning, then set the alarm clock. whenever that time come, all things you are doing have to set aside, you first priority is to finish your task. Must be prescribed accurately form when to when, not allow to overtime even a minute! Because human have inertia, often being distracted, if time limit have been fixed, the pressure can make you more concentrate, you can free form the effect of prolonging.

5.Focus - Human is complicated, one person can have a lot of interest, if someone doesn't have a priority, the result will be who will accomplishing nothing.  If you select a certain thing as a target, any other hobby should be putting aside,  you are thinking about that goal in 24 hours. Therefore, an impact will fall on your social life, entertainment, family and work , when you want to make a choice, you won't think it over at that moment, because after you have choose to study, you had already though it over clearly. Moreover, before having accomplish an target, batter not having any other target.

6.Resources - Before making a choice,  consider whether your resources is adequate. In case you want to learn a language, can you collect all the relevant material? Such as: Conversation;  Essay; Correspondence;  Grammar;  Rhetoric; Synonyms; Antonyms; Idioms; Proverb; Colloquial; Slang; the local Books, Newspapers, Magazines, Movies and so on published in that country etc. Therefore, some languages are never be able to study with higher level,  because the resources are lacking. The problem is not that you are not willing to study.

7.Method - The range is too wide, it has to be handled with in another topic, or refer to other articles in this site.