Tuesday's Tip for Language Learning #8: Improving Awareness/Attention

 

From Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star

ATTENTION/AWARNESS

Awareness/attention is critical to memory -- of anything. If you did not see something, you cannot remember it. If you saw something but did not notice details, you cannot remember it. If you did notice some details in passing but did not pay particular attention to them, you cannot remember them. Awareness and attention are key to remembering words, grammars, and other linguistic phenomena needed to be a successful language learner. The better you become at being aware of the right things and paying enough attention to them to stuff them into your memory, the faster you will acquire a new language. Let's take a look at some examples.

Words

Rather than trying to remember a word as a whole, try paying attention to components of the word. How many syllables are there? What does the word sound like? What are the pieces of the word (the root, prefix, suffix)? Is there anything else unique about the word that you can associate with something you already know?

Figuring out these things requires you to pay attention to the details of the words -- and you will remember them more easily and for a longer period of time.

Grammar

Look for patterns among the grammar features of whatever it is you are reading or listening to (reading is probably easier for this). Look for similarities to other languages you know—are there simple letter substitutions that regularly occur? Are there syllables or even whole words that are almost the same? (We call these cognates.) Does the word order differ from English? Consistently? Meaningfully? That is important to know. Do the words have endings that have special meanings? Do these endings occur in patterns? Do the beginning of words have special patterns change meaning?

 If you see these patterns, you will be able to attach the grammar features either to each other or to something already in memory. Then, it will be easier to speak or write or understand with correct grammar, necessary for successful language learning.

Letters or characters

Pay attention to the shape of the letter. To help you ‘see” the shape better, try tracing it, and then copying it. If your language uses an alphabet, are any of the letters similar to English? Or to Greek (you may know some Greek letters from math classes or fraternity/sorority activities).

Using both touch and sight will double the amount of attention and greatly increase the chances of the information getting into your memory -- for the long term.

 

Sounds

Ask your teacher to correct you when you do not say the sound correctly. Compare words that sound alike (e.g., pin, bin) to help sharpen your ear’s ability to notice sound differences. You may need your teacher’s help because it is difficult to notice and even to hear sounds in another language.

Paying attention to sounds early on in language study is critical. Otherwise, you could habituate yourself to continued phonetic error that becomes more difficult to eliminate as time goes on.

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