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Is It Possible To Learn More Than One Language At A Time?
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by: ClareInnes
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Word Count: 443
No! If you have been deeply engrossed in learning a language, but are now approaching the home run, it can be extremely tempting to start to look towards learning a second language.
Language lovers have a natural curiosity about different languages, but you need to decide whether you wish to speak one language (to start with) fluently, or you just want to pick up a little bit of a number of languages. You must be aware, however, that the second choice can lead to you being fairly bad at any of the languages that you chose!
You need to make a decision at the beginning. Are you wanting and willing to put in the time and effort that it takes to become fluent in a particular language? If so, set some targets. Allocate a certain number of hours per week for studying this language ONLY.
Whether you wish to become totally fluent in your chosen language, or would be happy with relatively simple conversational abilities, stick to this one language until you have achieved your goal. Only then is it the right time to move on to a second new language.
It needs a lot of time and hard work to learn a new language. Even if you are smarter than average, have the best teaching program in the world, and are aiming to learn a fairly easy language (something not too far away from your mother tongue) it can still take hundreds of hours of study. If you think that you can just include a little bit of study on a different language here and there so that eventually you will know them all, think again, because you won't.
If, after this, you would still like to try your hand at a number of different languages, you still need to have some structure to your learning.
Once you have started with your first language, Spanish for example, make a promise to yourself that you will stick to that until you are at the level you want. You can go out and buy a grammar book for German, or French, but this is simply to satisfy your natural curiosity. You can even do a couple of lessons for fun, but be clear in your own mind; you are simply doing it for entertainment and to see what German sounds like.
Don't get carried away and do an entire volume of German while you are only half way through the Spanish still!
So, in conclusion, it's fairly clear that it is not such a good idea to try and learn more than one language at once.
About the Author
About the Writer: Clare Innes has a number of health, fitness and lifestyle websites including one devoted to how to learn a new language. Look out for more of her lifestyle websites in the 'First For....com' series that is currently under development.
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