My son is 3 years old and this afternoon I experienced a good example of what it’s like to acquire language.

My son speaks better French than English for the moment and he was doing a magic trick with his grandparents.

His grandma said (about the ball) whilst taking away the ball and putting it behind her back : It’s gone forever.

Now I’m sure my son knows the word gone but not forever.

He straightaway knew what it meant and said “C’est partir pour toujours!” – It’s gone forever – in French.

He associated the words with an action.

Now, verbs are actions “put on your shoes, take off your shoes, etc.” and I’m convinced that it’s (partly) in this way that children learn language.

We got talking and one of the things she mentioned was that when she went to the supermarket in the  local town, she would get asked:

“Do you want cashback?”

The first time she just said no.

But didn’t understand.

The second time, she said no.

But didn’t understand.

After a few times, she asked “what is cashback” ?

Cashback is a system in England where you can get money back from the till at the supermarket, instead of having to go out of your way and go to the cash machine. 

So, if your shopping costs £30, you can ask for £20 cashback and they will debit your card for £50.

It just goes to show, though, there is no translation for cashback in French because the system doesn’t exist.

No two languages are the same.

I’ve been listening to Spanish for sometime and I feel like it’s time to speak.

A few of my students in a company I’m working for speak Spanish or come from Spanish-speaking families. So I walked in this morning and tried to talk. After a few introductory phrases, I froze. Froze up completely.

I was a bit disappointed but then the same student came up for a lesson. After a little while, I was able to string a few phrases together. All in all, the result was not bad.

I’m still a long way from being completely satisfied, my objective is to have a C1 level but for the moment there is still a lot of work to do.

However, some of the feedback from the students was that the Spanish sounded natural with not too many mistakes which is what I was looking for.

It was pretty automatic too, which is what you need – I was able to think directly in Spanish but only for a few phrases.

Time will tell but overall I’m pleased with the result I’ve got up until now.

Paul

- listening to Spanish music

- using a website like http://faltamucho.com/

- there’s a small but useful grammar book in my toilet, for quick reference

- I podcast Spanish in my car radio, which is equipped with a usb port for a usb memory stick

- I log onto http://www.rtve.es/ for a few minutes every day

- I’ve got a Harrap’s audio method I listen to from time to time

- I’m looking for someone to talk to in a pub from time to time

- I use youtube – I like cooking programmes so I go for that most of the time using the key word “cocinar!”

Is it working ? 

I think it is, there’s no doubt. I know it will take time but I’ll get there eventually. In a few years I want to be a C1 level if possible but failing that my main aim is to converse easily.   

During the acquisition process, there can be some blocks.

For example, one of the blocks I experienced in France was people who said “quoi” for no apparent reason at the end of their sentence. It doesn’t mean much, but it blocked my understanding of the rest of the sentence and therefore my acquisition. After I’d realized that people were saying “quoi” just as a rhetorical statement, I understood better and therefore acquired better.

I’m learning Spanish at the moment. I’ve realized that in Spanish the “lo” (it) comes at the end of the verb and not at the beginning like it would it French.

In French, you would say “Je vais le faire” 

In Spanish, I guess that would be “Voy a hacerlo”! with “lo” coming at the end and not at the beginning.

So the syntax is different and if you don’t realize it your understanding is greatly hampered.

Getting rid of these “blocks” in language learning acquisition is key to improving your understanding and the ability to think in a language.

Paul

http://www.lyonlingua.com

paul@lyonlingua.com

What’s one thing England is good at ? Music, right ? I mean, think of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Susan Boyle and Adele.

Why ? Perhaps because the langauge is kind of a “singing” language with great intonation, and great for making metaphors, etc.

If you put your radio on most places in the world these days, and certainly in France you can hear some English music. The problem is, if you’re foreign and you’re not great at English, it’s not easy to understand. That’s where youtube comes in. A lot of the songs have lyrics written for them.

You have to be careful because some of the time when the lyrics there, there are mistakes. But all the same, it’s great if your aim is to develop vocabulary whilst having fun – the music relaxes you, right ?

Check out these songs that are on the radio in France at the moment:

Pumped Up Kicks – Foster the People

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3ldsF65cLM

Someone Like You – Adele

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD9dr2ZRm9A

Without You – David Guetta

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ckhsvlrb28

I’ll be your man – James Blunt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no1wNvq7Ds8

Moves like Jagger – Maroon 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vz5HBbRH4M

If you need the latest radio playlist, just go to your favourite radio station for the latest song:

http://www.virginradio.fr/#/Playlist

So, here’s my tip of the day:

• before you get in the car, every now and then, easily review the lyrics on youtube and then, most importantly, you’ll be reminded of them regularly

If there is one video to be used in T.E.F.L. classes for drumming home CAN, it’s this one.

A few years ago, not everyone in France knew the word CAN.

Now, it seems, nearly everyone does.

O.K., so it’s for beginner classes, but can is important, right ?

It can be used for:

- making polite requests: can you pass me the salt ?

- expressing the ability to do something: I can swim, I can drive, I can speak French

You can also use:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

Here’s a lesson procedure that I sometimes use with beginner/elementary groups. It could be used with pre-intermediates too as revision.

The idea is to re-produce the kind of argument you would get in an English playground with school children.

A: I told the teacher!
B: No, you didn’t
A: Yes, I did!
B: No, you didn’t
etc.

You get the picture.

Juggling with auxiliaries is a key skill English people use without thinking but French people need training on it. You can make up your own sentences to go with present, past, future, modal verbs or other auxiliaries.

It also helps you juggle with pronouns at the same time.
Here are 10 example sentences you could use:

1. I like milk in my coffee
2. My brother is rich
3. My printer is broken
4. Yesterday, I went to Paris
5. I speak Chinese
6. My parents are in America
7. I’m a rugby fan
8. David Cameron is the Prime Minister of England
9. I play golf
10. My dad goes to the pub every Friday

Try to drag it out a bit by contradicting several times.

Have fun!

Paul

This is a real hard thing for some people to do, I’m finding. 

They all want to know why! Why is it like that ? Why can’t it be like that ? It’s not like that in French, so why is it like that in English ? 

I’ll take the most basic example: how old are you ? Why don’t you say “how old have you ?”. I could spend hours in class just explaining this one particular point.

Today, I was running “complaining” role plays in class. You had to negotiate to try and return various items to the shop and inevitably, the French word “vendeur” came up. 

Let’s not pretend, most of my students think in French and translate when they’re speaking English a lot of the time. So, of course, they wanted to use the word “seller”. Except that the word “seller” sounds exactly like “cellar” (cave) in English. And when have you ever heard an English or American person saying “the seller”. 

What they’d actually say is something like “the person I spoke to in your shop/store yesterday told me that if I returned my product today if I didn’t like it, I could get a full refund”. No need to mention the word “seller”.

Another example: “interlocuteur”!

If you look in the English dictionary, you’ll find it, no problem (on BBC radio 4, too, perhaps!)

But in day-to-day speech, people will just say “the other person” or “the person on the other end of the telephone line”. 

So, today my discussion went something like this:

A: The French “interlocuteur” is much better than “the person I was talking to…” because it’s shorter.

B: Yes, but if I say to my youngest son (he’s three and a half) “interlocuteur” or “interlocutor” he’ll go “what?!?” whereas if I say to him “the person I was talking to…” he might have a chance in hell of understanding.

So, perhaps we have stumbled across the real reason why you should learn language naturally.

Reactions below, please.

Paul

paul@lyonlingua.com

Here are a few fun videos for your esl classes.

They can serve as:

• an introduction
• a fun gap-filler
• relatively easy-to-understand videos, even for low-level students

I’d be interested to know in the comments section if you have anymore, I’d like to build up a library.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR0lWICH3rY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvpikUEIaLI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g6mBd2Rs8k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxUm-2x-2dM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY66ZJ0TFUI