An Aural Method to Learn An Oral Language
 by
Phil Bartle,

Have you been assigned to a community where you do not speak the language?

 This is a method, composed of some tips and techniques, which
 works when you want to learn an unwritten language, or when you want
 an unorthodox but effective way to learn a written language, by
 learning how to speak and think in it before learning how to read
 it. The method is designed for learning a language in a new host
 culture, perhaps where you have recently moved, where you have daily
 access to native-born speakers who can be your informants and
 teachers.

1. Decide to Learn:

 The first thing to do is to decide that you want to use this
 method, and then follow through with the techniques for three
 months. The method is not difficult; in fact it is surprisingly
 easy, but it does require consistent persistence and a decision to
 stick to it to the end. Read over the following notes, and then
 decide if you wish to use it. The decision is yours. Make your
 choice.

2. Set Aside Three Months:

 The optimum period is ninety continuous days. You need only spend
 five to fifteen minutes a day, preferably broken up into two or
 three sessions a day for only two to four minutes each. Using this
 method will not take much time from your other duties or relaxation
 time.

3. The Goal is Fluency:

 This method will help you to become fluent in the language.
 "Fluency" means that you will be able to think and to operate in the
 language. It does not mean that you will have a very big vocabulary,
 at first, but it will give you the tools to build your vocabulary
 from within the language, as you did (and still do) in your first
 language.

4. Use Learning Paths Already Established in Your Brain:

 Although you are no longer an infant (the age you were when you
 learned how to talk), you can take advantage of the ways of learning
 that worked when you learned your first language, using some
 psychological tricks and imagination now to your advantage. The
 underlying psychological trick to this method is to "learn like a
 baby learns to talk."

5. Recall Your First Language:

 How can you take advantage now of the way you learned how to talk
 when you were a baby? The way you learned how to talk was different
 (in many respects) from the way you learned a second language,
 especially if you learned a second language in school. Yet our brain
 and nervous system are designed well to learning our first language
 a certain way. It seems odd that we would learn a second language
 without taking advantage of the learning paths that were set up
 inside us when we first learned how to talk.
 Examine each element of how you learned your second language in
 school. How well does each take advantage of how you learned how to
 talk? Did you learn how to write before you learned how to say
 words? Did you learn a large vocabulary at first? Did you worry
 about how well you pronounced each word before you used it to get
 something you wanted? Did you memorize the meanings of words that
 you would not immediately need or use? Did you learn the formal
 rules of grammar before using those rules? No.
 How painful and boring was the way you learned a second language
 in school? Would you like to learn a second language without: books,
 reading, writing, grammar rules, memorizing long lists, and
 tests? This method may be an answer to your desires.

6. Imitation of the First:

 You cannot go back in time, and you will never be one or two years
 old again, so you cannot precisely duplicate the way you learned how
 to talk. While you cannot duplicate, however, you can imitate.
 This method allows you to take advantage of psychological evidence
 that indicates every experience you have in your life is stored
 unconsciously somewhere in your brain. Sometimes it can be recalled
 only by hypnosis. What you want to recall are the internal learning
 methods you used when you first learned to talk.

7. A Psychological Method:

 This method uses the learning pathways that were set up in your
 brain as you learned how to talk and calls them back into use to
 help you learn another language. This learning capacity has a
 physiological basis in our genetic make-up that has developed over
 millions of years of selection leading to a primate animal having
 the capacity to develop a language.

8. You Have Something to Unlearn:

 It might surprise you to discover that when you learned how to
 talk you were learning what not to say as much as what to say. When
 people around you responded positively to some sounds you made and
 not to others, the acceptable sounds were reinforced in your mind.
 You were learning what not to say. Out of all the random or
 experimental noises you made as a baby, you learned that some sounds
 were not acceptable, or perhaps not useful. Now that you are about
 to learn another language, you will be learning to say things, or to
 make noises that you had learned not to say or not to make before.

 To begin with, it will help you if you recognize that you will
 have to unlearn some of the taboos (against certain sounds) that you
 have learned before. This is something like the ridges and grooves
 on a record. They are the reverse image of each other, and the
 movement of the record player needle moves up and down in response
 to the up and down variations of the ridges and grooves. Since you
 learned what sounds not to say when you learned to talk, for you to
 learn another language now, you will have to learn to make sounds
 that you had learned earlier that you should not make.

9. Pronunciation; Start As A Baby:

 To begin learning how to unlearn the sounds not to say, start by
 making all kinds of random noises with your mouth. Let all those
 sounds include those that you might think as rude, vulgar, queer, or
 unpleasant. (Include burps, pops, fizzes, squeaks and grunts).

10. Use Your Shower:

 When you begin this exercise, you may feel embarrassed. This is
 not surprising because you will be engaging in behaviour that you
 learned (unconsciously and intuitively as a child) was unacceptable
 behaviour. The solution to this problem is, at the beginning, to
 practice alone (eg in the shower or on a solitary trek), until you
 can allow yourself to make such sounds within the hearing of other
 persons.

11. The Sociolinguistic Function of Laughter:

 When you make some of these sounds, you may wish to giggle or
 laugh. That is an important indicator. Sociologists have found that
 laughter is a social tension reducing behaviour. Your laughter or
 giggling is a means to reduce the embarrassment. It is also a
 sociological indicator that reveals your embarrassment.

12. Become Indifferent to Making Weird Noises:

 So, keep practising alone until you no longer feel a need to
 laugh. Then practice with a close and trusted friend, continuing
 until again you have no need to giggle. Finally, you can try doing
 it with an acquaintance or colleague that is not quite so close and
 trusted friend. You may wish to explain why you are making those
 noises, as your friend might be surprised that what is coming out of
 your mouth are not sounds that make sense. Your objective is to be
 able to make strange sounds without feeling embarrassed.

 It may come as a surprise to learn that if you are physically
 able to speak in any one human language, then you are physically
 capable of making all the sounds in any language. Any barrier to
 pronunciation that you may think you have is psychological rather
 than physiological. Thus you should pay attention to the psychology
 of learning a language, as in this method.

13. Do Not Aim for A Large Vocabulary:

 Remember that fluency does not imply a level of comprehension and
 skill equivalent to what you have now with your first language.
 Fluency means an ability to operate, communicate, or socially
 interact in a language. Your goal should be by the end of three
 months a vocabulary of only three hundred words, but words that you
 can use in every day context to get whet you want and make yourself
 understood. You want operational fluency, not a large but awkward
 vocabulary.

14. Maximum Five, Minimum One Word Daily:

 Set yourself a goal of learning at least one word a day for ninety
 days. You must not miss a single day. Since you must have minimum of
 five minutes every day for your new language, this does not sound
 very difficult. The important hurdle is to beware of forgetting your
 goal and letting a day pass without learning a new word. The upper
 limit of words to learn any day is five. You may be tempted at first
 to learn longer lists of vocabulary, but take it easy. As the three
 months continue, you might not feel so eager; those are the times
 when you have to be sure to learn at least one word each day.

15. Choose Vocabulary You Can Immediately Use:

 When you first learned how to talk, the words you learned were
 existential; you learned them to use them, not to memorize
 them. Each day choose a word to learn according to what you are
 doing at the time. For example, you may be thirsty; your goal then
 is to learn the words, "I want water." That is three words. You can
 bring it up to the daily maximum of five words by also finding out
 how to say "Give me water."

 The following day, you may be at the table and feel a need for
 salt. Good! You already know five words: "give, me, want, I, water."
 Use the ones you already know, and learn how to say, "I want salt,"
 and "Give me salt." Remember that, on the second day, you have
 learned only one word, but you have learned it in the context of
 using it with the words that you already know.

 Practice words and phrases you have already learned on previous
 days. Do not forget them. Keep the goal of fluency always in mind
 when you select each new word; learn how to use it and operate with
 it.

16. The Basic Daily Vocabulary:

 What is sometimes miss-called a "kitchen vocabulary," is a list of
 two to three hundred words that are used for eighty to ninety per
 cent of our daily conversation, and excluding all professional and
 specialist words that are not used by everybody in the society. If
 you keep choosing your words this way each day (existentially), then
 by the end of three months your vocabulary will be very close to the
 "kitchen vocabulary" for that language.

17. Maximum 15, Minimum 5 Minutes Daily:

 In any hour of intense learning on a subject, ninety per cent of
 your concentration energy is crammed into the first five minutes. If
 you want to make the most efficient use of your time and of your
 learning capacity, spend only that first five minutes in learning
 your language for that day. You can do this a second and
 occasionally a third time later the same day, if you feel like it.
 You do not have to have more than one session every day, although
 you must do it at least once for at least five minutes every day.

18. Don't Use A Book to Read or to Record:

 Keep in mind how you learned how to talk. You did not start with a
 book. You did not know how to read or to write, so you did not use 
 those skills to learn how to talk. You don't need them if you want
 to be fluent in a second language. For the first three months,
 reading and recording will be a hindrance to learning fluency. Do
 not write down the new words you learn. You have to concentrate in
 storing them in your head, not on paper. It is something like
 learning how to divide and multiply before becoming dependent upon a
 calculator as a crutch. Writing down the words you learn, in this
 method, reduces the strength with which you know them and can use
 them.

 The best strategy is to wait until after your first three
 months before doing any reading or writing in the new language. At
 that time, you may find a few delightful and amusing facts, as in
 English when you learned how to write and discovered that what you
 thought was, "A napple," turned out to be, "An apple." Those things
 will not detract from your reaching fluency within the first three
 months.

19. Don't Learn Grammar Rules; Feel Them:

 When you learned how to talk (at age 1-2), you learned that it was
 correct to say, "I go," and to say, "he goes." By trial and error
 (being corrected by your elders), you learned that it was not
 correct to say, "he go." You were not formally learning grammar
 rules, but you were being corrected until you practised them. Many
 years later you learned the formal grammar rules about how to
 decline the verb "to go." Before you learned the grammar, it felt
 wrong to say, "he go." In this method, the goal is to remember that
 feeling, and use it positively in learning another language.

 As you learn each word, each day, you must immediately use the
 word in as many contexts as you can. By doing so, you will start to
 learn the grammar unconsciously. As described below, you do this by
 setting up role playing sessions in which you can imagine yourself
 being "corrected by your elders." Your goal, therefore, is to learn
 what sounds right. What "sounds right" will be good grammar.

20. Remember That Tones Have Meanings Too:

 In European languages, the phrase, "Where are YOU going?" has a
 different meaning than, "WHERE are you going?" (I use upper case
 letters here to indicate high tone emphasis). In European languages
 we use tones to vary the implications of our words. In Akan, in
 contrast, the vocabulary can change by a change in tones. "WO ko,"
 means "you go," while "wo KO," means "he goes." Tone in Akan changes
 vocabulary. Whatever the language you choose to learn by this
 method, be sensitive to the use of tones, and be prepared to find
 them used differently than in the language you first learned.

21. Use Your Limited Vocabulary in Many Ways:

 Although you are not going to consciously learn the rules of
 grammar, try to see how a word varies in different contexts, as, eg,
 in English, "go" changes to "goes" when it is used with "he." Your
 aim is to use grammar; learn what feels right; not learn its rules.

22. Find Three to Five Informant / Teachers:

 In your day-to-day rounds, you will meet with some people almost
 every day, or every few days. They may be at home, at school, at
 work, or where you play. As you get to know them and make friends,
 ask if one would be willing to be your teacher in the local
 language. You will find that most people would be pleased to be
 asked, especially when they discover that it does not take very much
 of their time.

23. Train Your Informant / Teachers:

 Remember that those who would be willing to help you will most
 likely be your social equals or subordinates (a steward or cook
 would be an excellent choice, if the language is the first one they
 learned). They will find it difficult to treat you as a baby, so do
 not let them think that they are doing so. You do not have to tell
 them what you are thinking; you must give them very simple
 instructions of how you want to be helped.

 Tell your informant/teacher that you want her or him to teach you
 only one word a day. You must insist on this at first with some who
 will want to teach you a long list the first day.

24. Let Them Have the Last Word:

 The key to the method is to train your informant/teachers to have
 the last word. They must repeat each new word you learn. Giving them
 the last word requires discipline.

 When you learn a word, you may be disposed to repeat the word
 after your informant. Discipline yourself to avoid that, and train
 your informants to always say the word (or sentence when it gets to
 that) after you say it. It may take some time for each informant to
 start practising the ground rules that you need.

25. You Having the Last Word is Too Comfortable:

 There is something disturbing about having your informant say the
 word after you. It might not be obvious at first, but you will have
 a strong desire to say the word after your informant. If you say the 
 word last, your mind will feel comfortable, and there will be a
 sense of closure and completion. This feeling of satisfaction is a
 hindrance to you deeply learning the word; avoid it. This method
 actually takes advantage of the discomfort you may feel when not
 having the last word.

26. Ensure Your Informant is Socially Comfortable:

 Make sure your informant does not suspect it, but imagine when the
 word or sentence is repeated after you that you are a baby being
 corrected by your elder (parent, sister, neighbour, whoever was
 around when you were learning how to talk). You are being corrected,
 but you do not want an informant to feel embarrassed by correcting
 you, as she or he would not want to contribute to you "losing face"
 by correcting you.

 All your informant/teacher needs to know is that you want the
 word or sentence repeated after you say it. What goes on in your
 mind is not their problem or concern. This is a psychological method
 of learning a language, so what goes on in your head is an integral
 part of that method.

27. Use Laughter to Encourage Yourself:

 Another item that you may first find as a problem, but can turn
 around to help you, is laughter. Many times people will laugh when
 you begin to talk in their language. You have been brought up to
 fear that laughter is a sign of scorn, and that you do not want to
 be the object of their jokes. You are not forced or obliged to have
 those thoughts.

 When you were a baby, people who loved you laughed because they
 were happy with whatever you attempted to do. In many cultures, the
 laughter you hear when you try to talk is based on joy, not scorn.

28. You Can Interpret Laughter As You Wish:

 Since you are not obliged to believe that people laugh at you when
 you speak, tell your self (as a positive affirmation improves self
 esteem) that the laugh you heard was someone who loves you and is
 happy you are making an attempt to learn this language. At
 first you may not believe it when you tell yourself the laughter is
 encouragement. No matter; keep saying it; it will become true to you
 as you repeat it.

29. When You Forget to Learn A Word A Day:

 What do you do if one day you look back and discover that
 yesterday went by and you had not learned even one new word? 
 This method causes a minor emotional depression. It is difficult
 when you are now an adult to be corrected every day, even though
 those who help you do not know you feel you are being corrected.

 As in AA, remember: "One Day at a time." You can not return to
 yesterday. Agree with yourself that you are living in today, and can
 learn one word, just for today.

30. Your Emotional State is A Part of this Method:

 In the normal course of a day, your emotions go up and down. While
 you are learning by this method, your average may be slightly below
 a comfortable line. Remember that you have set up a situation of
 being continuously corrected; your unconscious may become depressed
 by that process. Forgetting to learn a word once a day is a way your
 unconscious mind tries to cope with that minor depression which is
 an integral part of the method. When you discover that you forgot to
 learn a word yesterday, then you know the method is working. Take a
 tip from those who are recovering in Alcoholics Anonymous: you
 cannot go back and change yesterday, just start with today, learn a
 new word today.

31. What Do You Do After the Three Months?

 The three months that you set yourself to try this method will go
 past faster than you expected. At the end of it, you will have
 fluency, and you will have learned a method by which you can build
 on that fluency, and an ability to ask how to increase your
 vocabulary by speaking in the language itself. You may even find
 that some of your dreams will be in the new language. What do you do
 after the three months? You may want to continue in the same manner,
 to slowly build up your working vocabulary. Or you may now be ready
 to try reading and writing the words you already know.

 It's up to you. Tuum est.

 Updated: 2003 April 30