Today there are many successful methods for learning English. I would like to add my two cents on the other side: to say that it interferes with learning the language.
One of these obstacles is that we teach him in the wrong place. We are not talking about parts of the body, but about areas of the brain. There are Wernicke's and Broca's areas in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which are associated with the perception and production of speech... In adults, they are responsible for the reception of acoustic signals, for the very possibility of speech activity.
And children aged five to seven learn another language with surprising ease! This is despite the fact that their brain is truly immature. The formation of the cortex ends around the age of twelve to fifteen - and then a person acquires the ability to complete logical constructions, “enters the mind,” as they say... At this time, Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas mature and begin to be responsible for a person’s speech activity. But what happens before the maturation of the cortex, which we intensively load when learning a foreign language?
Conventional methods of teaching a foreign language in themselves are not very productive - many have studied using them, but have not acquired knowledge. These methods give results when, for some reason, they manage to activate the deep zones of the brain, its ancient sections, which children successfully use.
We can take a quite conscious approach to learning a foreign language: read and translate, expand our vocabulary, learn grammar. But language is acquired (if acquired) on a subconscious or unconscious level. And this seems to me like some kind of trick.
The second obstacle: the methods of learning a second language themselves. They are copied from native language learning lessons. Children are taught to read and write using the ABC book - at school or at home, everything starts with the alphabet, with the simplest words, then phrases, then grammar, then it comes (if it comes) to stylistics... In all school teaching, the interests of the teacher are strong (not as an individual, but as a part of education system): how many hours, in accordance with the approved methodology, were spent on this topic, what result was obtained in the form of various tests... behind all this there is a careful accounting of the time and money spent. By and large, the language itself, nurturing love for it, assessing how it “entered” the student and how long it remained - that is, the main interests of the student himself - remain overboard. All learning occurs too rationally and superficially. This lesson-based education system comes from the Middle Ages and took root in the industrial era, when standardized training and assessment of knowledge were valuable. We can somehow agree with all this - there are no perfect methods. The bureaucracy rules with objective preconditions. But! One huge difference: a child who improves his native language at school already knows how to speak it! What can you say about a student who starts a new language from scratch... Here the traditional teaching system gives very modest results - remember your experience and the experience of your friends.
As an addition to this point: how does a child understand that this is a kitten? What is this chicken? An adult can be given a translation from one language to another, connecting word to word. For a native speaker, the phenomenon and concept are connected differently.
Reason three. The group of famous American neurophysiologist Paula Tallal found that about 20% of people in the population cannot cope with a normal speech rate. (this also includes such troubles as dyslexia, dysgraphia and other troubles). These people do not have time to perceive and understand what they hear. The cerebellum is responsible for the process - this “motherboard” of our brain is unable to cope with processing incoming information in real time. The matter is not hopeless: you can train at a slow pace and eventually reach normal speed. In most cases this is successful. But you need to know that there is also an ambush that requires special approaches.
Reason four: elementary confusion in concepts. She was probably the most poisonous for me. What do we do with a second language? We TEACH him. I did well in math and physics at school and approached learning English in the same way. You need to learn words and grammar, and what problems can there be if you have learned everything well and remembered it well? The fact that speech activity has a fundamentally different nature and is much more diverse in its physiology than speculative (without offensive overtones) constructions was felt by me only many years later.
The fifth reason is partly overlapping with the fourth. This is the ego. If I know the words and grammar, why repeat the phrase I read many times? (“Am I stupid?”). My pride was hurt. However, mastering a language is not knowledge, but a skill that can only be formed as a result of repeated repetitions, and against the backdrop of removing criticism against oneself. The psychological trick - decreased reflection - also often burdens adults. Reducing self-criticism was difficult for me.
To summarize, I would like to know about your experience of learning English (I’m trying to work out a language acquisition technique that would somehow remove the listed and other possible limitations). And the question arises: how important is it for a programmer to master English beyond the professional minimum, the knowledge of which (the minimum) is simply inevitable? How important is advanced language proficiency in terms of travel, change of location, temporary stay in an English-speaking or, more broadly, other cultural environment where English may be sufficient for communication?
Source: habr.com