Overcoming inhibitions in speaking a new language

Deborah   Saturday, March 26, 2005, 21:43 GMT
I'm one of those people who cannot try to speak in a foreign language without carefully formulating what I'm going to say in advance. I have nothing but admiration for people who will just start talking, even if their grammar is practically nonexistent, because they are at least able to communicate something. When I was in Russia, people would tell me they were impressed by the grammatical correctness of what I'd said; unfortunately, I said very little because I didn't have the knack of just letting words come out of my mouth.

Is there anyone else out there who has had this problem and has found a way to overcome it?
Ed   Saturday, March 26, 2005, 21:53 GMT
Well, that's the thing with a non-native language. You have to assemble the sentence in your head before saying it and that kind of takes time and doesn't come out fast enough. If you go to live in Russia, you'd overcome this, I think.
Deborah   Saturday, March 26, 2005, 22:25 GMT
I suppose you're right, and at first everybody has to do some amount of preassembling. It's just that some people seem to be able to do a minimum of it. I had a guest from Russia for 6 months. When I met him in Russia he didn't know any English, but he started learning words from the dictionary before he came here. At first he would just string words together any old way, with barely any hesitation. He made lots of mistakes, of course, but his meaning usually came across. One time he came back to the apartment, pulled a pineapple out of a bag, and said, "I take delicious!" That became one of the "Vladimirisms" my roommate adopted. Anyway, he managed to talk to people here much better than I did in Russia. Maybe starting to learn a foreign language in a classroom setting in your own country puts you at a disadvantage.
Brennus   Sunday, March 27, 2005, 06:00 GMT
Deborah,

Proficiency in speaking a foreign language is largely a question of practice much like learning to drive a car or to play a musical instrument. The more immersed you are in it and the more native speakers you have to practice with, the better you will become. You will be less hesitant about saying things.

I have found that if you don't have any native speakers to practice with or maybe only one, the next best thing to do is read everything you can in the language. Years ago, I tried learning Romanian. Eventually I ran into only three native speakers who were able to offer me some help with it but I was able to make a lot of progress simply by reading Romanian language newspapers published in New York.
rich7   Sunday, March 27, 2005, 06:34 GMT
I spent some time studing the English language just by myself before going to the states,(Lincoln,Nebraska) and every time I would meet a friend's friend who happened to have 1 year or more living there was amazed for the grammar,fluency,and knowledge of the American culture I had, also at how well I managed any situation there, I remember that, by that time, words just came out my mouth so easy that never had any doubt of what I could do in that country (very different now even though I have more vocabulary and better grammar), did a lot of stuff by myself incidentally, just to see what I was capable of. Maybe because of my interest in learning the language it was all very easy.
Travis   Sunday, March 27, 2005, 06:36 GMT
This kind of thing is part of why I myself'm finding it much easier to learn German, than trying to learn Japanese was, back in the day when I studied it in middle and high school. While I studied Japanese for quite a long while (little over six school years of it), I really did not use it outside of the classroom, and it really did not stick at all. On the other hand, I've only been really studying German for a few months now, and am only in my first semester of taking at school (mind you that much of my studying of it has been outside of school), and yet probably more German has really stuck than Japanese did, in my case.

One major factor (most likely the biggest one) is probably that I've been using German far more outside of studies themselves than I ever did with Japanese, due to often using it with people I know online, and like. This is allowed me to actually use it in a fashion which does not limit it to school and render it a mere school subject, and of course provides plenty of practice in actual usage, besides the contrived practice that is done in school. One may say that German's being significantly closer to English than Japanese is also is an advantage, but it also poses its own problems of making it much easier to incorrectly transfer expressions and usage from English into it, as well.
Deborah   Sunday, March 27, 2005, 11:41 GMT
The language I felt least inhibited trying out in the country of its orgin was Italian. That may be due to the fact that the Italians were, on the whole, very encouraging. I'd say "Buon giorno" or even just "sì" to someone and the response would be "Ah, you speak Italian so well!" that was on my first trip, while I was in college and studying Italian. My second trip was 10 years later, during an unanticipated break of several days in a dance tour in Switzerland. I went with a couple of friends first to Milan, where we set out to find a hotel at 2 a.m. (our train was delayed by about 6 hours). Since I was the one who had studied Italian, I started to speak to the hotel clerk, only to realize that my scant knowledge of Italian had all but disappeared. I was so tired that I even resorted to asking him whether he spoke English, but he didn't. So in that situation, where I was forced to try to speak Italian so that we could have a place to sleep, I couldn't even bother worrying about how I sounded.

I think having to speak the language would probably help. On my last trip to Russia, I was studying Russian at the Patrice Lmumba Institute. The classes were conducted entirely in Russian, so my comprehension improved considerably. However, we still didn't get very much speaking practice. I was staying with a Russian family, and the son, who was studying English at the university, always wanted to speak English with me. But the last week I was there, he had to go leave town for a while, so I was left with his parents, who didn't speak English. That was fun, and his mother was eager to talk with me. The only problem (as far as my becoming more proficient in Russian went) was that she would help me out by finishing my sentences for me if I paused too long.

When I'm with someone from a country whose language isn't English but who speaks my language much better than I speak theirs, I can't help but feel that my speaking their language will be an imposition. I don't know why I feel that way, since I certainly don't feel that way about someone else speaking even the most primitive English.
Vytenis   Sunday, March 27, 2005, 15:25 GMT
>>>Maybe starting to learn a foreign language in a classroom setting in your own country puts you at a disadvantage.

You bet it does! It infects you with a disease which I call "a bottom-up syndrome" and which is very difficult to get rid of.
Some French Guy   Sunday, March 27, 2005, 16:23 GMT
Read texts aloud to a good or native speaker who can correct your pronunciation. Do this on a regular basis. More and more correct sentences you read aloud will unconsciously come to you when you speak the language. Do this until you no longer need to formulate your sentences in advance.
Steve K   Sunday, March 27, 2005, 17:13 GMT
Vytenis

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "bottom-up syndrome"

BTW I agree on the advantage of starting on your own. I personally find a lot of repetitive listening and reading, without thinking about grammatical explanations, works just fine. In a few months of doing this in Korean I was able to make some conversation in the language.
Vytenis   Sunday, March 27, 2005, 20:32 GMT
Steve,

By "bottom-up syndrome" I mean the unconscious effort to understand English speech "ottom-up" i.e. to concentrate on understanding every word rather than catching the general meaning of what has been said (i.e. "top-down). This comes from the old-fashioned bottom-up-based ways of teaching English (such as Grammar-Translation Approach or some similar ones). Unfortunately, our schools, which still base their English teaching on this bottom-up methodology, ingrains this habit so deeply into the minds of learners that they cannot get rid of it. I know it because I went through these frustrations myself. I cannot understand English movies, because every time I watch them I subconsciosly try to follow and undesrand every single word (my schooling has subconsciously programmed me that I will not understand the general meaning of a sentence unless consciolsy follow and realize the meaning of every word in it), and of course it is impossible, because the speech of the movies is very fast, it is natural spoken English, not like on BBC news. So then I get frustrated and cannot enjoy the movie...
Vytenis   Sunday, March 27, 2005, 20:34 GMT
I don't know, maybe that's what Deborah is experiencing, only in her case it's not listening, but speaking...
Deborah   Sunday, March 27, 2005, 20:58 GMT
Yes, I think that is what I experience. The suggestions about reading are good. I think radio, TV and movies are good also. When I first started studying Russian I had cable TV, and so was able to hear a lot spoken Russian. I'm sure that's the main reason my accent (so I've been told) is quite good. Unfortunately, that was only during my first semester of Russian, so I didn't have a large enough vocabulary to be able to pick up phrases and sentences that I could use.

I intend to start learning Spanish soon, and I'm going to take a conversation class, which I hope will keep me from getting too analytical. The other night I stopped into a taqueria and decided to order in Spanish. I didn't realize that ordering a vegetarian burrito would involve having to make so many choices the server asked me about. I only had to repeat words she said, but I felt so stupid, not knowing any words to add to them: "Refritos. Picante. Sin crema. Nada (what I wanted to drink). A llevar." Me Tarzan. You Jane.
Vytenis   Monday, March 28, 2005, 11:17 GMT
Deborah, I liked "too analytical", I think it is a good way to describe it. I would add: try to be more holistic and less atomistic :)) YOUR LANGUAGE IS A PLANT THAT GROWS, NOT THE BUILDING TO BE BUILT ONE-BRICK-AT-A-TIME! Generally, it's a snowball effect: the more of a language you know, the more new things you will be able to pick up from the context and vice versa. So just go ahead and don't worry!
greg   Monday, March 28, 2005, 13:54 GMT
Deborah : jette-toi à l'eau et le reste suivra !