“How to Master Successfully any Language of the World”

                                                            A view from an English Teacher

     Mastering more than one language is one of the dreams many people have had from long ago. In order to fulfill this dream, some people prefer a self study course, whereas there are others who are in favor of getting into a course where there is the chance to interact with others. Dmitry Slomov is a language learning consultant who became multilingual by carrying out his own method. He points out that anyone on earth can master perfectly a few languages, and as a matter of fact he started learning languages by himself. Actually, he is the author of the book How to Master successfully any Language of the World in which he shares a practical reference for language learning. This book has important insights in the way people can learn quickly and effectively a foreign language, but some of these insights have their downside if they were accomplished in an educational setting.

     According to Slomov (2012), it is more than important to learn a language gradually, and it would be more than difficult for a beginner to try to learn with materials and techniques for the advanced level. As far as I am concerned, learning a foreign or second language by levels of proficiency would be beneficial in a classroom. Actually, students from public schools do not learn a foreign language in this way and consequently the academic results are not very favorable. As students are not classified according to their performance, there are students with different levels in a class and most teachers use the same materials and techniques with all of them. Hence, students do not advance well in their learning process and remain in the same level until they finish school.

     Additionally, the author highlights the importance of drilling when learning a foreign language. Slomov states that drilling brings the learner to perfection, due to the fact that people have drilled words in their native language through their whole lives. Thus, every word, sentence, and paragraph whether oral or written should be memorized and repeated, so as to acquire both the vocabulary and the structure of the new language. From a theoretical framework, the Audiolingual Method lies within learning in this way, through the imitation of the language patterns either oral or written. Nevertheless, there is no place for the creative part in this approach where learners resort to their cognitive abilities such as thinking and analysis. Furthermore, this method turns learning into something mechanical and boring where opportunities to interact and interchange ideas are not provided in the classroom.

 

     Regarding to learning new vocabulary, the author indicates that it is not appropriate that people learn “words lists” because they spend much time and energy, as well as having difficulties to remember those words afterwards. He also claims that in life, words are always used in some context and they never come apart from it. In my view, learning new words taking a context into account is more meaningful for students. Thereby, they can associate the new words with images or settings related to a real life situation that will remain in their minds every time they see that vocabulary in a text.

     On the other hand, the author suggests that the dictionary use is a must and there is no place for guesses in language learning. As I see it, this advice could be helpful because the student knows immediately the meaning of a word with the help of the dictionary. Nonetheless, inferring or guessing from context is a good reading strategy when the learner can not use a dictionary, for instance in a test. So, in this case it is practical to use the context in order to deduce the meaning of a new word.

     In conclusion, Dmitry Slomov comes up with significant guidelines for people who want to learn more than one language in an effective way. Teachers can draw upon the advice that best fit their teaching practice and can help their students in the learning process, too. However, most of the advice presented in this book could be appropriate for a self study course than for an educational setting since every student has a different learning style, and what is more, every classroom represents a unique context that requires more than a method.

 REFERENCES

Slomov, D.(2012). How to Master Successfully any language of the World. www.free-ebooks.net/tos.html.