I learned English unintentionally.
It happened by accident.
But let me clarify one thing right from the start: I do not recommend learning a language this way. If I had actively studied English, I would have acquired it in less time. And depending on your mother tongue, trying to learn a language without studying it can take decades before you become truly proficient. So, regardless of what I’ll cover in the following posts, I strongly encourage you to study and put in real effort.
And why not learn English through active, deliberate study?
The process of learning a language is actually a really interesting and enjoyable journey.
I completely agree that it’s important to look for more efficient ways of doing things and avoid unnecessary work. But the message I want to share in the following posts has nothing to do with learning a language without hard work or settling for broken English. The “secret” to learning a language isn’t about not trying.
The message I’m actually sharing is that if you replicate the process I went through unconsciously and put in real effort at the same time, you will achieve impressive results.
Language acquisition becomes slower or less effective when you rely on only one of these two components: exposure without study or study without enough exposure.
Much has been said nowadays about the importance of immersion as an alternative to the traditional language-learning method, and that’s a good thing. But deliberate study also has its place and plays an important role in your learning process. Just because traditional language teaching relied heavily on one particular approach doesn’t mean that approach is inherently bad or should be discarded altogether.
An example of this is the most criticized point of traditional language teaching: teaching grammar rules.
Contrary to the popular modern view, grammar rules can be a helpful tool in language acquisition. I read in a book some time ago that studies show people learn a language faster when they explicitly learn its rules. In other words, explicit grammar instruction—consciously learning the rules—is generally more effective than pure immersion.
I searched for the kind of studies mentioned in that book so I could read them myself, and I found the meta-analysis by Norris and Ortega (2000).
In fact the study shows that explicit instruction is significantly more effective than exposure alone, particularly for grammatical features.
At the same time, we can see for ourselves that explicit instruction is not enough.
Rote memorization and decontextualized drills—characteristics of traditional pedagogical approaches—can produce learners who are able to pass multiple-choice tests but are unable to actually use the language to navigate spontaneous, real life conversations. There’s a disconnect between the knowledge their certificates say they have and their ability to use the language for the reason why most of us learn a language in the first place: communication.
So, relying on learning through rules alone (or mostly) is not a good ide.
That said, learning through exposure alone takes more time and may not be so effective in many circumstances.
Then, what approach should we follow?
Both.
Each approach has its own place and role.
It’s relying on only one of them that makes learning less effective than it could be.
So, yes, it’s true that there are many people who have attended English schools and earned certificates that cannot speak or actually use the language. But it’s also true that there are many people who followed a learning process similar to mine who, although they can speak in a fluent way, use broken English or make some common errors (errors they picked up from native speakers or that were influenced by their mother tongue).
The problems I associated in this post with passive learning were unintentionally avoided in my journey because of at least three habits of mine (I’ll address those habits in the third post).
But the person who combines the proccess I went through with active study is the one who gets the best of both worlds.
- You won’t have to spend a decade or more to become truly proficient.
- You will speak the language in a fluent way.
- You will be able to use the language in real-life situations.
- You’ll speak it with considerably fewer mistakes.
An example just came to mind that illustrates the importance of formally studying your target language.
Let’s imagine two people: One is illiterate and never went to school and the other is literate and received a formal education at a school. Both are native speakers who organically acquired their language as young children, without consciously trying to learn it. Yet the person who formally studied their native language at school is the one who speaks it more accurately. He is more likely to conjugate verbs correctly, use singular and plural forms properly, and have a much broader vocabulary.
Yes, of course, there are exceptions.
Someone who never went to school can still speak their native language very well. I know illiterate people who, in general, speak our native language almost as accurately as the average literate person. And then there are many people who studied their native language at school that still make plenty of errors and mistakes in both their speech and writing.
But these are exceptions.
Usually, the one who actively studied their native language at school is the one who by far speaks it gramatically more correctly and certainly the one who has a much broader vocabulary. What I mean is: relying on exposure alone may not be enough if you want to speak your target language well.
If you want to speak like an educated person and gain the advantages that come with it, active study will help.
Native speakers of every language commit errors and mistakes in their speech and writing.
Even famous and professional writers make errors while drafting their works. If they could write everything with perfect grammar and spelling from the start (or even after that), they wouldn’t need editors or proofreaders to review their manuscripts before publication.
And if people, even those who write for a living, make grammatical mistakes when writing, they do so even more when speaking.
That is normal and okay.
We are human.
And language evolves.
That said, this does not diminish the importance of studying your target language.
One might say, “Since even Americans make mistakes in their own language, I don’t need to study.” However, we need to bear in mind that the mistakes made by the average native speaker are different from those made by foreign language learners. Native speakers typically make errors that do not interfere with communication among them. But the errors made by non-native speakers can make it difficult—or sometimes even impossible—for native speakers to really understand what they are trying to convey.
And by not studying proper grammar, a non-native speaker may end up compounding their own learner errors with the mistakes they pick up from native speakers.
Again, exposure and active study go hand in hand, especially if you want to learn English faster and speak it good well.
And come to think of it, the average native speaker learned the language through exposure but also received some formal instruction in grammar—just as you did with your own mother tongue.
So, if you want to truly and fully emulate the average American’s experience with English, don’t rely on exposure alone. Study the language as well. Only then will your learning experience more closely mirror the combination of immersion and formal instruction that most native speakers receive.
Another reason why I don’t tell people to learn a language through exposure alone is the fact that background knowledge is crucial to acquiring new knowledge, and not all students have acquired much background knowledge.
The psychologist and professor Daniel T. Willingham says that
- A student’s background knowledge affects their capacity to acquire further knowledge.
- Students who have more knowledge tend to have an easier time memorizing and retaining new information.
- Students who have more knowledge can think better, for knowledge and thinking are intertwined. (Knowledge is an instrument of thinking. The more tools your brain has to work with, the more sophisticated and refined your thinking can be.)
(Book: Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom)
The background knowledge someone has greatly impacts how easily and effectively they learn something new, and not all students start from the same place. Their parents’ level of education, access to educational resources, growing up around educated and intellectually stimulating people, and experiences that develop qualitatively different ways of thinking—all of these are factors that influence how easily and effectively someone can acquire more knowledge.
People come from different realities, may have developed their abilities unevenly, and have not had equal access to knowledge, for whatever reason.
In light of all this, I can’t simply tell everyone to learn English by watching movies just because that approach happened to work for someone else.
But through deliberate study, students can learn more and learn faster, noticing aspects of the language that many of them would either miss or take much longer to perceive through exposure alone.
Now I’d like to address something that is commonly mentioned when it comes to learning through exposure: the idea of learning like babies.
Is learning like babies more effective than studying? Well, let’s briefly consider what typically happens in each case:
- An average adult has contact with their target language for only some hours a week,
- while a baby is exposed to their target language all day, every day.
So of course active study will seem less effective when the only contact with the language many students have is at the English school and this for a short period of time.
Meanwhile, a baby is constantly exposed to their parents’ language. While a baby is immersed in the language they are learning all day, an adult often cannot simply move to a country where their target language is spoken. Moreover, adults have responsibilities and daily activities that they cannot—or should not—carry out in a language they are still learning.
Being surrounded by the mother tongue most of the time makes it impossible for adult learners to really emulate the way babies acquire language.
But there is a solution!
That solution is active, deliberate study.
Really, despite everything that will be covered in the following posts, I want to emphasize first the importance of studying and putting in real effort. Many of us are not children anymore. We cannot rely on exposure alone (unless we are willing to spend a decade or more to reach an adult level of proficiency in the language). But we can take advantage of our adult mind and existing knowledge. We can study and even use our first language to support the process of learning the second one.
See? Adults have many advantages in language learning that toddlers and young children don’t have.
After five years of passive learning, a child will still have a relatively limited command of the language. Meanwhile, you will be far more advanced, with a much broader vocabulary and a greater ability to communicate effectively and accurately—all because you studied deliberately.
Based on what I’ve already said, you might have an idea of how I learned English.
Even because it’s not so uncommon to find someone who learned the language through a similar process. But I encourage you to stick around and read the next posts, because my journey involved more than just exposure. There are some particularities to my experience and some unique insights I’d like to share with you.
And again, the problems I associate with passive learning were avoided in my journey thanks to at least three habits of mine that I’ll discuss in the third post.
But even if you followed these three habits of mine, you would still learn faster by combining them with deliberate study.
By following the same process I went through, you can reach a solid level of proficiency and even break through the famous intermediate plateau, to the point where speaking English becomes almost the same as speaking your native language. And if you combine the same process with studying and putting in real effort, you can reach that level in considerably less time.