This is how you won't learn English

[Torsten]

Hi again, Violino. I think it all comes down to motivation. If you WANT to learn a second language you will pay a lot of attention to the new and different sounds and you will have fun repeating them. You will also record your own voice so you can hear what you sound like and compare your speech to that of native speakers. If, on the other hand, you don't want to learn a second language because you think you don't need to no teacher in the world will be able to help you.

TOEIC short conversations: A couple are discussing how to buy movie tickets more quickly.

[Violino]

[Alicja1]

Hello WhiteRussian! I'm writing to you about the issue that concerns me very much.First sth. about the past of my family.My father was born in Stanislaviv and for some period of time was brought up by the Russian aristocrat family.He loved the Russian people and very often was singing the Russian songs.He and my mother met on their study on the Lviv Marketing Academy. Now I have very important for me question . You , for sure heard about the crash of Polish plane in Smolensk.This event devided Polish society and has become the matter nr.1 within a year.Could you please tell me honestly what people in Russia talked about ,on the day of accident? I watched the tv and Internet immediately.What surprised me : All the video I saw on the first day on the statements of witnesses have been replaced by the false ones. My respects. Alicja1

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The ability of hearing the differences in sounds of a foreign language

Hello Torsten
I would be hard pressed to tell why some of the people I know who came to live in my country were able to learn my language in a relatively short period almost to perfection and others didn't. There must be reasons for that, I guess, and I would like to give some examples:

1) A colleague of mine at the university:
She had come from Finland at the age of fourteen and had to learn German from scratch but was tremendously lucky: for one thing she was really keen to learn it, and had obviously the ability not only to learn the official language which we speak in school (Hochdeutsch zu Deutsch), but also the dialect of Basilea. And if you don't know that she isn't from here orignally then it would take you quite some time to find out.

2) A pharmacist coming to my village from Hungary at the age of thirty:
He had to redo his university exams here in order to get a license to open up a pharmacy. After a very short time he didn't speak only "Hochdeutsch" anymore but changed to our dialect. Quite the opposite was his whife, a pharmacist too. She never really adopted our language to such a perfection like her husband, despite they have lived for the same time here which is about twenty-five years now.

3) A guy that I met once: he could switch between his own dialect - coming from a small village in the very North-East of my country, they have really curious ways to speak I should say - to the dialect of Zürich where he was studying, and without any problems spoke on the phone the dialect of Berne, where his girlfriend came from, and spoke several foreign languages on top of that.

What I would like to state is this:
- not everyone has the same starting point and the same abilities to adopt a foreign language.
- and obviously, it't not necessary bound to the age at which you are plounged into a foreign country and its language. It is likely that things go easier at an early age - as a small child, but even older people can do that if they have the necessary background, will and abilities.

I, for example, didn't loose the dialect of my parents even despite the fact that we never leaved in an area where they had come from. But my younger brother switched completely to the dialect of Zürich as soon as he entered kindergarden. I'm not sure whether it's based on the wish to blend in or not - I would have wanted to blend in as well, but somehow couldn't. Not that I had serious problems with that, but you know how it is, schoolchildren sometimes mock each other - and to dismiss the dialect of a school chap is an easy game to play.

So everyone has to find out for himself what it is best suited for him or her to make progress - but I think that no one is spared from toiling, that's for sure!

Cheers Urs