Language learning, doing sports and playing the Piano

Good noon, dear reader.

I say: Learning a language is like doing sports.

Certainly you are a bit confused now, but I will explain this statement later on.

First of all I want to say thank you to everybody who is reading this blog. When I started it, I did not expect so many readers and followers, thank you!



Many of you might do some sports. And all of you know how it works. Let me give you an example: Basketball. At the beginning you learn how many steps you are allowed to do, you learn how many points you receive for throwing the ball into the basket from certain distances, you know which lines not to cross, from other people who tell you. But then you start playing. The first time you will only play for the joy of playing Basketball. You may also watch other people, other clubs playing it, at the tv, in the arena, whereever.

After several weeks or months, when you are quite comfortable playing it, you might want to have some advide on how to improve certain aspects of your technique. If you consult a trainer or a experienced player (for example in a club), they will teach you to hold the hands a little bit differently when throwing the ball, but mostly they will not tell you a lot of technical stuff when you are a beginner. You will later on do training exercises on throwing the ball into the basket, on defending yourself against a majority of opponents (3:2 or 2:1 Situations), but first, when you allready know how to play.

The trainer will never say to a beginner: Do it in this way, do it in that way. He will wait until you know a little bit on how to play and than he will start helping you improving your technique. If he does not, he is not a good trainer.

The same goes with playing the piano. Right at the beginning you are going to play simple songs, which will become more difficult with time and first when you are quite confident in playing it, you will start to do some musical theory on scales and on patterns etc..

So how does this connect to language learning?

Languages are a skill you can achieve. Like playing the piano or like doing sports. The reason why you learn a language is to communicate in that certain language or to read books or watch movies, etc., so you want to have fun with it (otherwise you would not do it). The same goes with doing
sports and playing the piano. So the way you achieve this ability should be quite similar, right?

But in school we are told something completely different. We do sports and music like in the examples, but when it comes to language learning, the system changes. We are now told the rules at the beginning. We are told how to use a grammar of a language we never heard, never spoke and never read. We are talking about the language in our mother tongue. We are learning words out of lists, without any context, which we are not able to pronounce because we have never heard them.
A Basketball fan will watch other people playing basketball. A musician listens to music. But a language learner is not told to listen to the language? To actually use the language?

Almost any child is able to speak by the age of 4, but a student, who has got ways more experience and knowledge and understanding of his own language, has problems speaking a language after 10 years of studying in school? Children have no trained teachers who tell them the language, students have.

Reason for this is the fact that in a school environment you do not use the language, you do not communicate, but you talk ABOUT the language. The one who can talk best about the language is the one who gets the best mark.

Is this not completely nonsensical?

Yes it is. When you start learning a language, the content you should concentrate on is communication, listening and reading. The grammar is something you may concentrate on when you are quite confident and are for example reached a b2 level.
Sure, there are some people who really love grammar and they want to do it from the beginning on, that is completely fine, but those are a very small group within the community.

So if there are any teachers among my readers: think about this! I had problems with learning english in school because of this way I had been taught in. Think about whether you stop teaching grammar to children and start letting them communicate and listen to the actual language.

There are actually teachers out there who taught their pupils in different ways. For example Karin Holenstein from switzerland. And the results are fantastic!

"Educations purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."                         - Malcom S. Forbes

Tell me your opinion on this subject. It is just based on my experiences and maybe you had some completely different ones. Let me know!
Thank you for reading.