Room for improvement

Just a quick word up front. Something that you ought to know. A disclaimer, if you like. It's this: I'm not someone who is especially interested in learning languages. No, really. I mean it.

But I have a work history of teaching. I've been a teacher, in one way or another, for many years. I'm currently helping people learn English. And along the way I've become interested in figuring out better ways. Better approaches to the learning of them, that is.

Learning another language is never going to be easy. It's always going to take a big chunk of time, no matter how one goes about it. There do exist short-cuts, I believe, but they can only take you so far. Which is one of the reasons that so many people fall by the wayside, myself included. I read somewhere, once, that only about 5% of starting-out language learners manage to achieve what they set out to do. I haven't been able to confirm that fact, but I could well believe it that it is true.

Anyway, as a result this business has become somewhat of a pet puzzle for me. I've looked into it for years. Until by now I've become convinced that there are better methods than those used in conventional classrooms. And I've decided to test them out on myself. I'll take a crack at being the guinea pig.

The reason that I feel that there is room for improvement in the field of language acquisition is that plenty of people have managed to pick up a language in around a year, often after previously having bombed out at school. They've somehow managed to latch onto how to do it on their own. They've discovered their own way of going about it.

If I now can demonstrate the same, if I can achieve what they have done, or even do better, then it's likely that I'll have something to share.

And so that is my plan. Here's where I'll document my efforts from two months ago. I'll tell the story. I'll describe what I do, and why I do it. I'll explain why it seems to work. Who knows, I may persuade you that it's worth while trying things another way.

And so, without further ado . . .