Three Principles in Fast-tracking Foreign Languages

Facility Principle

What you don't have to do is always easier than what you do have to do.

In other words, the less you have to think about in learning a language, the more rapidly you will learn it. And the fewer mistakes you will make. As I will demonstrate below, French has certain features and characteristics that make it dramatically easier than English. Take advantage of them.
Here is the second principle that can smooth your way.

Familiarity Principle

Familiar habits and patterns of thought are often hard to break.

Paradoxically, some of the aspects where another language is easier than English at first glance appear unfamiliar - and therefore falsely difficult. Although it may take you some time to accept them, once you begin to think in the language, you will rapidly come to appreciate them and enjoy their benefits.

Here is an anecdote to illustrate the point.

One time I was talking with a Dutch-speaking friend. He agreed that English is fundamentally simpler than his own language; nevertheless, he complained that he just couldn't get used to English's simpler sentence structure. In certain instances, Dutch grammar requires the order of the words in the sentence to reverse; this never happens in English. Objectively, then, English sentence structure should be easier than Dutch. But to him, not reversing the word order just didn't seem natural.

Here is a third principle you will find extremely useful.

Context Principle

By themselves, words and sentences have little meaning; often they can be understood only in relation to other words and sentences.

This is very reassuring. It means that even if you say something incorrectly, in general people will still understand you because of the context in which you say it. Likewise, even if people say something to you using unfamiliar grammar or vocabulary, in general you will still be able to understand them because of the context in which they say it.

In short, you don't have to approach perfection in a language in order to use it effectively.

By: Philip Yaffe (http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1295292)

World Languages Translation Inc.