How to Improve Your English

Persistence is the Key

Everyone’s looking for some secret way to learn a language that will magically teach them everything overnight. Fact is, learning another language is hard work that takes a lot of discipline. Earl Stevick’s book, Success with Foreign Languages: Seven who achieved it and what worked for them outlines seven different language learners who achieved a high level of fluency in a second language and their methods of learning. It’s a good book to read if you want to see many different ways to learn. it will not provide for you is one clear method to follow if you want to learn a foreign language. All 7 of the learners learned in very different ways. Here’s news for you: THERE IS NO ONE TRIED AND TRUE METHOD TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE. You must come up with your own way. Your way might be a combination of many different practices. You might memorize flashcards, read vocabulary books, read a grammar, memorize grammar charts, watch films, watch the news, take a language class, free talk with native speakers on the bus… the list of possibilities is endless. The one thing all successful language learners do have in common is persistence.

Next, you may ask yourself, what should I be persistent about? Well, it really doesn’t matter. Find any authentic material in the other language that you find interesting and view or read that thing often. If it’s reading comic books, be sure to read comic books regularly. If it’s watching films, do that as much as you can. If it’s sitting down and memorizing vocabulary, there’s no harm in that. That said, vocabulary isolated from context will teach you less, like which verb or preposition to use with that noun you just learned. Even if you are not consciously learning, something is happening subconsciously. Language is about exposure, and the more you do something, the more exposed you are to learning the language. Of course, no medium will teach you everything there is about a language, but it may teach you enough to find another interest.

Necessity is also a great teacher. I never learned so much as when I had to take taxis regularly in a foreign culture. I started by learning the basics-telling the taxi where I wanted to go-but by the time I left that culture I was conversing with taxi drivers about many different things-politics, news, etc.

I’m sure you’re getting the idea. Instead of harping on* about this, I’ll give you some quotes about the value of persistence.

*to harp on is to talk far too much about a subject

‘Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.’ Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)

‘Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.’ Unknown

‘Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.’ Marabel Morgan

‘If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, "Here comes number seventy-one!’ Richard M. DeVos.