What ‘don’t study’ really means
Welcome back, In this video, I’ll explain the difference between learning a language, and acquiring one, and it just might make the difference between you actually speaking English and simply wishing you could.
If you understand most of what I’m saying, you’re in the right place — subtitles are there to help.
Welcome to rule number 6, which is: don’t study English. But what does that mean, don’t study English?
Hi, I hope you’re doing well. Today, we’re going to look at together the major difference between learning, or acquiring English, and studying, or memorizing English. Understanding this difference will save you from wasting years on ineffective exercises which can actually damage your learning of the real language.
First of all, I want to help you understand two things: acquiring the language will enable you to speak English naturally, without needing to think when you speak, because English will have become something that is a part of you. Studying a language, however, will block you when it’s time to speak because you will be translating things in your head from your mother language then into English. Also, you will be thinking about all the grammar rules and vocabulary you memorized from lists.
This disaster is actually caused by doing exactly what they tell you to do in traditional foreign language classes. So it’s not your fault. It is the standard approach in most schools, and, as a lecturer of English at a German university, it used to be the way I taught, until my own experience with learning French, and now Italian, completely revolutionized my own teaching style.