Introduction: Hello, my name is Professor Joshua Caliendo. I’ve been teaching English as a Second Language in Italy for 6 years. The information contained herein are the result of my personal experience as an English professor, my experience as a student of Italian, but above all a result of plain old common sense. I’ve elected to call this information ‘Steps’ not because there is a special order to follow but because it’s important to remember that learning a language in all its various facets is a long and arduous journey, that like any other must begin with one step.
It is my hope that this guide can help anyone searching for a path with their linguistic studies.
Step 1. Decide to study.
Even if I’ve just said that these steps don’t have a particular order, logic tells us that deciding to study a language should be the first step. What do I mean by decide? Obviously one must decide before beginning anything, right? Instead, I say ‘decide’ to mean -get all the information possible and make a rational decision based on all pertinent factors. Reading this guide is already a good start. It is necessary to evaluate the advantages with respect to the eventual costs, not only in terms of money but also of time and effort. I’m afraid that I cannot list the advantages as they will be different for everyone. I would, however, like to take the opportunity to insert a page from my website: http://www.cambridgeofpescara.com/englishsurvey where there are some useful questions to ask yourself if you are thinking of studying a language in a private language school.
Step 2. Dedicate yourself to studying:
I don’t mean study continuously as if cramming for an exam. What I mean is that once you’ve decided to study a language it is necessary to apply yourself to it. Too many times have I seen students that have attempted to study English with the wrong attitude, telling themselves, ‘let’s see how it goes.’ Not being sure of the decision that they made, more often than not they were dissatisfied with the results. In part, this may depend on the expectations that they had for themselves and for their teachers.
How many times have I heard ‘I wasn’t able to do it, not even with the help of a mother tongue teacher.’ I’d like to highlight that while mother tongue teachers can be of tremendous help they do NOT have a magic wand that grants understanding. Learning a language is like scaling a great wall of incomprehension. Climbing it by yourself is difficult. The mother tongue teacher cannot do it for you. Instead, good teachers can show you where to find a handhold to make the climb easier. But as always they lion’s share of the work is on the student’s shoulders.
Step 3. Establish clear objectives.
As with dedicating yourself to studying, it is equally important to establish as precise an objective as possible. After all, going from point A to point B is rather difficult if the location of point B is unknown. It is often said here in Italy ‘I should learn English, now I’ll take a course’ as if that one course could possibly solve all the problems of understanding the English language. I repeat, be realistic. Understanding a language is never complete. With English I think this is especially true because of how dynamic a language it is. Even with a degree in English Literature, years of personal experience teaching and a veritable thirst for material to read, I’m still learning things about my own language from my colleague professors and from the curios questions from my students.
Establishing what your objective should be is not simple. “I’d like to have a good understanding of the language” is akin to saying “I’d like to go to Tuscany.” It’s a good start but a few details are missing before you can actually go. For this reason I encourage my ESL students to aim towards obtaining one of the many certifications available for English, Cambridge ESOL, Trinity, Toefl and others still. That way it is like saying ‘I want to go to Siena (in Tuscany).’ It is also for this reason that at Cambridge School of English-the school I run in Pescara, Italy- we offer free consultations for everyone interested in our courses. We determine the starting point, how long the voyage will take, the final destination, and what we’re going to see along the way. That way it is like saying, “Let’s go to Siena for 2 weeks and see x, y, and z, we’ll stay in hotel A and go eat at restaurant B.’
4. Find a method of study that works for you
There are two important factors to talk about in this step. The first, and more important, is in which way the individual student is best able to learn. There are those who can learn just by listening, commonly referred to as auditory learners, those who learn by reading/watching-visual learners and those who learn by doing-kinetic learners, just to name a few. The idea here is not to list them all but rather, and this cannot be emphasized enough, to recognize these tendencies in ourselves to take advantage of them when we decide to study a language. For example, some time ago I had an ESL student, Luigi, who was studying engineering and absolutely had to obtain a recognized ESOL certification in order to participate in a particular program offered in Switzerland. Initially, he had great difficulty understanding and expressing himself in English. Then, during our lessons I started presenting English sentence construction as something similar to a mathematical formula and everything changed for him. Obviously he didn’t become fluent overnight, but he no longer needed help between every word.
The second part regards the methods proposed by anyone (school, software, etc.) who wants to help a student learn. Many private language schools and independent teachers propose methods and study programs with flashy names all promising that they are the latest most ‘avant-garde’ in the world of teaching. I don’t pretend to establish which method is more effective than another, but highly suggest that potential students should be very wary of these practices. As a student it is necessary to understand the core of the method and understand exactly how the method is applied in the lessons and evaluate whether or not such a method is compatible with his/her own method of study. Too often these ‘innovative and different’ new methods are utilized more as a marketing tool and have little if anything different or innovative. If you find someone unwilling or unable to explain a method in sufficient detail, it may be a sign of little substance to back up the fancy talk.
5. Be Patient, VERY patient
Linguistic skills cannot be built in a day. For parents this should be even more obvious. Imagine toddlers learning to speak: Even though these toddlers can understand most of what we say, their own ability to express themselves remains quite simplistic. Their oral production is limited by their as yet not fully developed thought process. For students of a second language the situation is no different, even having a more highly developed capacity to reason. It is exactly this capacity to reason the allows for an logic based understanding but at the same time impedes the possibility of expressing oneself completely. Our L1, native language or whatever we choose to call it sculpts our way of thinking as the main function of is to language to limit, in the sense of refining, thought (If I say ‘table’ then ‘chair’ is automatically excluded). In order to learn a second language it is necessary to return to a simpler means of expression like a child’s and seek to communicate in the simplest way possible before then developing and reforming one’s thought process in the target language through time and practice.
The time necessary for this process to take place cannot be shortened significantly. Remember all the terrible horror films where a girl is followed by someone/thing and tries to get back into either her car or house? Remember how much time she wastes fumbling with the keys for her hurry? Then of course she either gets in, or in some cases not. It’s easy to imagine that with a little more composure she would have been able to get away much faster. With language it’s quite the same situation, except the monster is our own anticipation to see results, or an important meeting, etc. To learn a language we have to go at our own pace in order to reach our goals sooner.
6. Be Persistent
Although Persistence and patience can at first glance seem quite similar, I mean try to put your studies into use as much as possible, even simply thinking to yourself the words for the common objects that are all around you while doing another task. As I’ve mentioned already, learning a language takes time, and every moment we spend practicing is useful to shorten the time necessary.
Another aspect of being persistent is to realize how long it will take to reach your personal objective with the second language and to stick with it. Below is a table of the average times necessary to obtain each level of the CEFR (commonly referred to as the Common European Framework) for ESl students based on the Cambridge University ESOL Examinations:
Common European Framework/Guided Learning Hours
A2/approximately 180-200
B1/approximately 350-400
B2/approximately 500-600
C1/approximately 700-800
C2/approximately 1,000-1,200
Data Courtesy of the University of Cambridge
Following these guidelines the study program I’ve developed for my Italian students at Cambridge School of English is designed to span 12 or 13 years, presuming an initial knowledge near to 0 to arrive at true mastery of the language.
7. Find someone trustworthy to help you.
As stated previously, language is not static and for this reason it cannot be studied exclusively from textbooks. Whether we like it or not, as learners of a second language we will turn to someone or something to help us understand better: listening to music in the target language, having a discussion with a passing tourist, through international relationships at work but also through private language schools and independent language teachers. To have success with the target language this step is necessary. Ideally, the person or better the source to which you entrust your target language education should be the most qualified source available. In the case of private schools or teachers my experience confirms just how important it is to choose someone who is not only an expert but also someone with whom a real relationship based on trust and mutual understanding can be formed. Having this sort of relationship with the teacher will render the language study more pleasant and less of a task.
It is my sincere hope that this article can be of some use to anyone looking to learn a new language. If there are any doubts I can be reached at http://cambridgeofpescara.com/blog or you can share the answers to your question with our fans by asking them at http://www.facebook.com/Cambridgepescara.