Over my three years of not learning French I have acquired all
sorts of useful wisdom, which I am going to decant into my blog for the benefit
of the masses. I analysed my failures
and came to the conclusion that there is one main reason why I did not learn
much: Because learning languages is
boring! Any of the methods I tried would
have resulted in my learning French if only I had stuck with it. And why did I abandon all these methods? Because they required endless repetition to
etch new grooves into my ossified brain, and I got bored after the sixth or
tenth repetition.
People believe that children can learn more quickly because
their brains are younger and more malleable, but I believe the real reason is
that they are small and powerless and can be forced into doing as they are
told. If things get boring in school a
child can’t just get up and make a cup of tea and switch off the teacher. Children are stuck in school day after day in
the most incredibly boring lessons, without getting paid. After struggling for a few years even the
most rebellious tend to throw in the towel and start to listen to the teacher occasionally
and even do their homework. As a result
they eventually absorb enough information to scrape by. Those who don’t come a cropper in all sorts
of ways, but you get my drift.
That’s how I learned English, sort of. Not real English, you understand. Just the usual basic horrible being able to
get by sort that gets you a D and is irritating beyond belief to all native
speakers. But it provided a basis on
which I could build when I went to America
The way to learn a language properly is by immersion and
exposure after one has absorbed the basics.
I learned English by reading and listening on a grand scale, and that’s
how I planned to learn French. But for
English I had the basics from my school days, while for French I had
nothing. And since I am now strong and
powerful, no one can force me – for my own good – to spend endless hours in
boring pursuits (except at work, but I get paid for that).
So what’s a body to do?
This is where the waistcoats come in. The principle is similar to that of counting
sheep to go to sleep. The idea is to
quiet that part of the brain that gets bored easily and wants to do something
new and exciting. By counting sheep the
excitable brain gets distracted, and while it is busy counting, another part of
the brain takes over and dozes off. By
the time the excitable brain part notices what is going on the body is asleep,
and so the excitable bit seeks refuge in vivid dreams.
Anyway, imagine listening to the same CD by Michel Thomas a
dozen times. The man is a good teacher,
but can be very patronising and authoritarian, and I hate that. So not only am I bored because I have
listened to him a dozen times already, but I am angry at his tone as well. So I switch off and play solitaire instead.
However, now envisage the same scene with the addition of
knitting a waistcoat. Whenever I get
irritated or bored I focus my attention on the knitting until I calm down. The regular click click of the needles also
has a soothing effect, of course. Once I
calm down I listen to the CD again. The
knitting keeps the excitable part of my brain engaged, so it can’t complain too
much about having to listen to the same CD over and over again. It has to be a simple pattern, because something
complicated like a sock would be too distracting. The idea is to do something simple, just
enough to engage the excitable bit of the brain so it doesn’t run off to do
something more interesting, without being so distracting that I stop learning
the new language.
Of course this does not have to be knitting. You could try whittling or painting your
toenails or riding your exercycle. The
important part is that whatever you do will not engage you so much that you
cease to pay attention to learning French.
I have knitted about a dozen waistcoats in the last year,
and slowly my labours are paying off. Of
course the good people of La Bourboule will be the final judges of my progress,
but I have managed to absorb a modicum of grammar recently, and my vocabulary
has become extensive, if patchy. I now know
what ‘colocataire’ means – roommate – how cool is that? And when someone claims to be ‘mi-homme mi-pizza’
I know that he is half man half pizza – I have been watching the movie
Spaceballs in French for quite a few times now.
I am making progress, at long last. What I am going to do with all those wretched waistcoats is anybody's guess.
