Significant difference

I've touched on this before, but I want to expand on it here: What's the main difference between what I do, and what goes on at school?

As I've pointed out, you spend class usually an hour at a time focusing on some grammar point and a couple of dozen items of new vocabulary. That's what teachers get you to do.

So they select which grammar and the words (uncommon ones, usually so that they are 'new' for most of the students). They select what they believe their class needs at that time. (Or worse, they blindly follow some textbook or curriculum - in line with some philosophy of teaching - that they themselves have had no part in choosing.)

That's wrong already on several fronts.  It isn't student-centred or student-directed. There's no guarantee that the material is that which the student is ready to improve with, or is ready to learn. It's totally arbitrary.

Is it possible to master some such grammar point forever, and the day's vocab too? I'd say that that's a wild cry from reality. And yet, each year the same grammar drills are dragged out, and you are lucky if even a handful of the words stay with you.

I go about things differently. I feed myself with authentic text as early as possible. I allow thousands of words per hour (6000) to glide by my eyes. In so doing, the common words repeat. There's inbuilt revision and consolidation. My brain is free to forget items and structures that occur infrequently, but recognizes as important - and therefore begins to assimilate - the most common and useful structures and building blocks as they naturally occur.

I work very rapidly. I admit that much of the language doesn't stick. But it is starting to become sticky, in the same sense that you churn milk into butter, and curdle the cream. (Is that what people do? You know what I mean.) I don't waste time trying force in that which don't fit.

I'm happy to improve my understanding and knowledge a percentage point or two each time per item or rule. I make progress on every front. 1% of 6000 comes out as 60 new words (plus an equivalent 'exposure dividend' for grammar). That is much more than a couple of dozen (even assuming that I had absolute classroom retention).

Now then, this approach requires patience and trust. You don't necessarily notice an improvement along the way. It's all happening below the surface, as it were.

Yes, it is much more gratifying to go along with the illusion that you gain some expertise in a limited area (how to order a meal in a restaurant, for example) and be able to demonstrate a measurable result. Just this is artificial. It's an illusion. To be able to trot out a few sentences at will without an across-the-board development is very little use at all. It is hollow.

It takes time

It takes time to get used to anything. You could think of it as a journey from 'here' to 'there'. The greater distance between the two points, the more time it takes to get used to the difference. A small difference would take less time. A large distance would take more.

As far as languages go, they lie different distances from each other. Again, some are close to what we are used to, but others are distant. It could be a difference of only a letter or two (as in the spelling of color/colour, center/centre) or some marks above or below certain letters (diacritics). At the other extreme the alphabets (or other writing systems) could have almost nothing in common.

Certain languages have common ancestors e.g. Dutch and German. Or a language may have fed into another (e.g. French into English).

There may be other 'extras' to get used to. There may be different verb tenses, noun cases or masculine, feminine and even neuter nouns. Perhaps the articles are missing, or there may not be plural forms. The adjectives may follow rather than precede the words they describe. The verb may come at the end of the sentence. Prepositions may be 'post'. There might not occur breaks between words. The writing may go from right to left, or from top to bottom.

Letters may be lost, added, or broken into fragments. There may be different alphabets, syllabaries, or the vowels may be missing entirely. Letter written in a cursive manner may be difficult to decipher. Then there's Chinese and Japanese. There may be tones, stresses and unusual phrasing and/or pronunciation that doesn't come naturally to you. Body language may play a huge role.

There may be elision. Sentence fragments. One word sentences.  It may all look like telegraphese! To extract meaning, you may need to build up an insider's knowledge of the language and culture too.The conversational objectives may be completely different. Perhaps communication is not about exchanging information, but about forming bonds between people, or about hiding what one really feels! The whole point of a language may be to avoid giving offense!!

Getting used to a language may be easy . . . or not.