Choose your method

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

The labor market constantly makes new demands on job seekers. If earlier knowledge of a foreign language was a rather rare condition for hiring, now knowledge of English alone is often no longer a trump card, rather, it is simply a necessity, and knowledge of two or three foreign languages becomes a clear advantage, and at a good level and in addition to the main profession.

I did not come up with this information, but I learned from viewing fifty resumes of people applying for vacancies of middle and top managers. Yes, and it’s just nice sometimes to exchange a few words during a vacation trip with a dark-skinned handsome man or a blond aristocrat.

So the study of a foreign language in all respects is a very useful and interesting lesson. And the results! What a pleasant feeling of pride and lightness comes over you when you start reading, or better speaking, in a new language. Let it be quiet for now, with emphasis and mistakes, but the main thing is to start, and in any case you will be polishing your knowledge and skills all your life.

But to achieve overwhelming success, you have to sweat a little. There are countless opportunities for this now: you can do it yourself, you can hire a tutor who will come to you at a convenient time and study with you individually, you can go abroad to a language school and"

Having made the decision to "learn" or "deepen knowledge", you begin to implement it. Sitting comfortably in an armchair in front of a monitor or on a sofa near a phone, you browse the websites of language schools and courses or call them. Naturally, the choice of the option that suits you is based on several criteria: price, number of people in a group, class time, proximity to home or work and … teaching methodology. As my wonderful friend, by the way, a specialist in this very teaching of foreign languages, says: "We are all different and each one has something different."

Indeed, someone loves to "learn" the language, getting extensive homework, and studying cards with new words in the subway, and someone was so scared of school lessons in deep childhood that standard classes are an insurmountable barrier for him, he would, as a kid, learn the language in a playful way.

Therefore, do not hesitate to ask this question when applying for courses, let them explain to you how the classes will be held in terms of methodology. New author's techniques are usually used in "nominal" courses organized by the developers themselves, for example, Kitaygorodskaya or Shekhter. You can learn about the zest of Denis Runov's methodology, based on logical structures, by talking with the teachers of Denis` School, and there is also the "Sliding" methodology, based on reading and limiting the duration of one stage of classes to 48 hours a month. You can't list everything. But, nevertheless, most of the courses, including such well-known, solid (and very inexpensive) as, for example, the courses of the Department of Foreign Languages at the Russian Academy of Sciences, take as a basis the classical methods: audio-visual and audio-linguistic, which were born in time of the 2nd World War, and their quality and effectiveness in the literal sense of the word are time-tested. Behind the formidable names, there is a content known to all of us from childhood.

So, for a lesson on audio-linguistic methods, it is characteristic:

- the presence of an introductory text (with a picture) dedicated to a strictly defined topic;

- an explanation of grammar;

- doing grammar exercises;

- new vocabulary and study of the content of the lesson. The basis of the lesson is new grammar; the role of the text is to present it to students.

Continuation and addition of the audio-linguistic methodology - the audio-visual method based on the linguistic accompaniment of the visual series. The presentation of the picture is accompanied by listening, and then repeated repetition of texts and dialogues. Exercises for practicing grammatical and lexical constructions are performed.

As you can see, doing this, you learn everything: how to talk, and read, and write, the skills of translation into a foreign language and from a foreign language into Russian are developed, the bricks of grammatical constructions are neatly laid in your head.

And an experienced teacher will select texts that will be interesting to everyone to read, suggest entertaining topics for conversation, encourage and support. So, the devil is not so terrible as you imagined him after, perhaps, not quite a successful first attempt, made back in school, where two lessons a week were allocated for the study of this very delicate matter, and the group was clearly not less than 25 people.

The teacher plays a very large, even decisive role. He or she can be highly qualified specialists and good teachers, but it is you who can be bored or difficult with them. Or vice versa, the teacher is so "bursting with energy" that two-three-hour vigils after work, to which you have to drag almost across the whole city, seem like a holiday, after which you feel cheerful and rested.

In any case, no matter what school, methodology and teacher you choose, nothing prevents you from changing and experimenting until you find "your own" and by no method the language (like any other knowledge) gets into your head by itself, unfamiliar letters will not fold into understandable words, and a wonderful story will not pour out of your mouth like a song, without the application of your efforts and labor.