Warning, extended metaphor ahead! Learning a language = swimming

Apart from my attempts at investigative journalism for the EL Gazette (see below) and some writing work for Usingenglish.com (details soon), another thing that has kept me off my blog recently is trying to lose the beginnings of middle age spread before it gets too late. Unfortunately, the exercise options are limited…

Cycling in Japan is fun, especially dodging people while you ride on the pavements as most people do, and you never have to feel embarrassed about jow naff your bike is as even the trendiest of Shibuya teenagers has a shopper mama chari bike, just like their mamas. The problem is with them being quite strict about making you pay to park your bike near the station and not being able to take it on the train unless it is a Transformer bike you can stick in a bag, there aren’t really that many places to cycle to from here.

Beach? Strictly only open in August (even if September is hotter!) Batting centre? Funny, but only once. Drumming and dancing games in the “game centre” amusement arcades? Ditto. The same at home? Too noisy for the neighbours. Tennis? Too posh. Jogging? Too polluted, and get too much attention. Radio taisou group exercises in the park? Don’t want to be embarrassed by not being able to keep up with the grannies…

So yet again, I find myself spending a considerable amount of time in the place I hate most in the world, the gym! Add the restrictive Japanese shoe policies, the warnings covering every square centimetre of the walls, the Japanese television blasting on every exercise bike, and once the novelty wears off I groan everytime the lack of pain in my muscles tells me it’s time to go again.

The one piece of good news is that the only place they haven’t been able to renovate with machines that make noise recently is the pool. It’s absolutely tiny, but I often have it all to myself. And on one of those happy days I invented a whole new method of swimming- Real Freestyle. The rules are- you have to take a slightly different stroke each and every time, from one end of the pool to the other. Sure beats the tedium of breaststroke, that’s for sure. And the health and fitness results? Well…

…I put on two kilos. That’s right, two kilos of pure fat in just a couple of weeks! Impressed? And so here comes the language learning metaphor- if you want to really learn a lot in a short time, there is no getting away from the tedious but necessary stuff. Going through vocab lists several times a day- tick, useful but mind numbing. Grammar- tick, ditto. Etc.

Of course, language learning with boring methods, like swimming, becomes a lot easier if you have motivation driving you. I soon got back into the crawl when I saw the bathroom scales! When you don’t, however, maybe doing a bit of Real Freestyle is better than nothing. Which brings me to my tips for learning a language, mostly based on the metaphor of sports training:

1. Work hard
2. Try one method as long as you feel motivated, then switch to something else
3. Ditto with your motivations- work towards one goal as long as you can, but when one aim stops motivating you (learning 1000 words), leave it till later or scrap it completely and invent a new one (reading a newspaper cover to cover).
4. Do several different things in one day depending on your mental state and energy levels, e.g. new language when you are feeling fresh in the morning, going through vocab lists when your brain is tired
5. …but sometimes the best thing to do is just to take a break (but it takes time to learn when it is really one of those times for you and when it is just laziness!)
6. Sometimes the training methods that have been successful so far are not those you need to get yourself to the next level, e.g. beginners need entirely different lessons to advanced students
7. … although having an off day doesn’t mean it’s time to chuck it all in and try something new. Knowing when it really is a sign that a big change is needed is again not easy!
8. Even the most well respected coach/ teacher and the very latest methods do not suit everyone
9. Sometimes general nutrition, health and mental condition are more important than how you train
10. Sometimes learning a new golf swing/ a new tense can seem to set you back in the short term even if it is what you need to get you to the next level
11. There is a thin line between not thinking too much and so letting your game/ conversation flow and not concentrating at all and producing a sloppy performance
12. Sometimes the little tricks you have learnt that help you cope when you move out of your league (tugging people’s shirts without the ref seeing/ guessing what people are saying just from their body language) are the things that are stopping you from needing to improve your game
13. Doing something similar to the event you are training for (chatting with your teacher if you want to learn to chat, running long distances if you want to run a marathon) is often the right way, but sometimes something seemingly unrelated (giving a presentation, sprints) can help more towards your goal

Any more anyone (for example someone who know more about sport than me)?

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 11:25 pm and is filed under Language learning tips, Learner motivation, Learner training, TESOL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.