Discoveries in learning a new language (Part Two)

The views about language learning that I introduced yesterday could actually be pushed one step further: perhaps the ultimate goal isn't “knowing Spanish” but developing enough automaticity that Spanish begins to happen to me, or to us when we decide to learn a new language. In fact, we can really observe three different stages: 

• 1. Recognition: "I understand that expression when I hear or read it." 
• 2. Retrieval: "I know that expression and can produce it if I think about it." 
• 3. Automaticity: "The expression comes out before I have consciously constructed it." 

It’s obvious that this third stage is what makes conversation feel fluid. And it explains why someone can have a surprisingly large vocabulary and still struggle to speak as I have witnessed when I was learning German with some Japanese with huge vocabulary and perfect grammatical understanding but were woefully unable to put the simplest sentence together. 

This is what I love about my concept of “short blocks of words”, because it captures something important. I should in fact have called it “linguistic building blocks” or, more playfully, “linguistic Lego.” Each block is something the brain can retrieve as a unit rather than scrambling to assemble word-by-word under the pressure of conversation. 

Now, when I refer to my grammar being “abysmal” it’s not necessarily something I will simply postpone. Unbeknownst to me, grammar might actually start becoming easier once I have memorized enough blocks. After hearing quiero que..., tengo que..., me gustaría..., ¿por qué no...?, etc. hundreds of times, patterns of conjugation and syntax begin to become familiar almost without deliberate study. 

That could make a nice final observation: perhaps grammar learned in context eventually becomes less something we remember and more something feels right to us when we blurt it out. Tomorrow, we’ll continue with the technique involved in “supercharging” our learning of foreign languages, so please, don’t miss that one!