Language learning is a swimming pool not a path

What I want to tell you in this post is perhaps the most important thing I have learned about language learning since I started studying Japanese.

When I began learning Japanese five years ago I was a true beginner, not only to Japanese, but to language learning. Back then, I think I viewed learning a language rather like a path. It was something you had to make your way down until you got to the other end where you would achieve fluency. I viewed studying a language as a series of points on a line, which needed to be checked off before I could move on to the next point. “Seen that piece of grammer? Yes. Great! What’s the next piece on the ladder of difficulty?” Before I knew it, I was studying from intermediate books! Sure, I hadn’t really had any lengthy or in-depth conversations with anyone yet, but I knew the word for “government” and, and I’d seen all the beginner level grammar at least once, so... On to the next stage!”

Basically, my thinking was linear. I had to make my way down the path going past check points ticking things off. I thought I was on the fast track to Fluencydom!

The trouble with this approach however, was that I found I was beginning to get bogged down. Annoyingly, the intermediate texts were still full of the beginner grammar and vocab that I’d seen, but hadn’t really spent the time mastering, and I had to kind of re-learn it every time I came across it. This was a real pain in the arse, and made studying the actual intermediate level stuff really hard. "Why do they keep putting this beginner stuff in? I don't want to have to look at that again!" kind of thing. Disillusionment soon set in, and my “percieved” progress ground to a halt.

I’m not sure actually how I’ve reached the place where I am now, but with the help of the internet for ideas, (great sites like AJATT, LingQ, Lang 8 etc.), and blind, stubborn refusal to give up, I’ve been able to make some progress and alter my approach to studying languages.

I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that learning a language is not a path—and I’m going to stretch the analogy usage here a little—it’s a swimming pool. Yes, a swimming pool! Only, when you begin to study the language, the pool is empty. You have to fill it up, and what you have to do is start filling it up with lots and lots of sentences. Easy ones to begin with— because as everybody knows you can’t put difficult sentences into an empty swimming pool— and keep putting those easy sentences into the pool, until the the pool seems ready for slightly more difficult ones. And then, again, you need to add lots and lots of the slightly more difficult sentences to the pool before your you’ll start to see the water level rise.

I guess my point is that learning a language is nothing like solving a maths problem, or fixing a car, or walking down a path for that matter, it’s not really like any of those subjects that you learn at school that require you to get from A to B. It’s not linear, it’s voluminal (Can I say that?) You need the volume, not the checkpoints. Yes, it’s a long and gradual process to achieve the volume required to move onto the next stage, but it’s a process that is actually quite easy, and relatively painless once you know how to go about it and dedicate the time to doing it. Tiny, tiny baby steps, repeating over and over again what you know, slowly adding to this pool of knowledge that you are building up.

This conclusion is something that I’ve only really arrived at relatively recently, but as far as my Chinese study is going it is great. I can feel real progress when I talk to my Chinese teacher, and studying is painless and enjoyable because I know what I have to do, and I’m not pushing myself too hard. If only someone had told me this 10 years ago!