Only about five percent of all students who start the study of second language in a traditional program are able to develop the ability to speak the language fluently. This is because traditional language education curriculum only consists of memorizing vocabulary, analyzing sentences for grammar, and translating never ending paragraphs.They neglect to focus on how to properly speak, instead only teaching writing and reading comprehension. The result is that ninety-five percent of foreign language students end up either speaking with a foreign accent or not at all. Jackspeaking Video Lessons are the answer to this devastating statistic, as they reveal the techniques necessary to properly pronounce English the way native English speakers do.
In a perfect world, if there was one master language that held the true meaning behind everything in life, other languages would be able to base its translation off that one language. Unfortunately there is no such language, and the first thing you must recognize is that your native language has no direct correlation with any other language, including English. This is the biggest flaw in second language development by translation.
The word “Language” is defined as a method of human communication. It is used to express our inner thoughts and emotions. The root of language does not lie within a person’s mouth, but has a biological basis that starts in our brains where our thoughts are born. An example of this is that even people who are deaf and mute can still process thoughts and have developed ways to communicate by other means. Sign language and other forms of communication have been developed because it is necessary for human survival that we have the ability to express and exchange ideas, and so when we arrive in a new country it is not only important that we can read and write that native language, but that we have the ability to verbally communicate with other humans there in order to survive in our new environment. The ability to speak fluently will not come naturally to us, and is a skill we must learn. The learning process starts when we realize we can not simply form English words in our mouth, but need to first develop concepts in our head using English.
Let’s take a look at how people traditionally view language. To start they have their own native language, which is a tool used to develop and share ideas in their home environment. They view the second language as a second tool that must be learned to survive and share ideas in a new environment. Most people see the second language as a code that can be deciphered using a very specific key, their own native language. This process takes place as the person learns to translate words from their own language into the words of the second language. Unfortunately, unlike our view that our native language can be used as a tool to not only share ideas but to also develop them first in our own minds, we only see the second language as a tool to share ideas. As our brains naturally think in our native language, we develop ideas in our native language and then to communicate them in our new environments we translate them to best fit the words we have learned from the second language. This is the wrong view of language to have, and a better way to view learning a second language is that if we need to survive in our new English speaking environment, then we need to develop all of the skills we used to survive in our home environment. This means that we need the ability to not only verbally share our ideas in English, but to also be able to develop ideas in our minds using English. In short, we must change our view of a second language as just a code or tool we use to share ideas with translation, but also as a tool that we can use to develop thoughts and ideas; we must think in English!
For a simple exercise on how to get started thinking in English see Thinking in English; How it Works.