As my first week of study is progressing, I've been looking at different theories and techniques to help me study more effectively. If I'm going to commit so many hours to study then I want to it to be as engaging and motivational as possible. There are countless books on the subject, and equally as many Ted Talks and YouTube videos - so many in fact that they all get a bit confusing!
I wanted to share the highlights with you here, to illustrate the points that seem most relevant.
Studying in your target language and not English
This point came up a few times, particularly in Jeff Brown's video 'How to Acquire any language NOT learn it!', where he recommended that around 90% of your study should be in the target language. Jeff means that the only bits of the process that should be in English (or your native language), should be things that can't be said in a simple way in the target language. I experienced this first-hand when I studied French in Paris some years ago. I was terrified before I started because I knew that it would be taught only in French, and I was worried that I wouldn't understand a thing. In reality, the process was easy and natural. I had forgotten about all those non-linguistic cues we get - the way someone says something, the context in which they say it, the expressions they make. And even the supporting materials used, such as images and sounds etc. The theorist Stephen Krashen illustrates this idea really well in the video 'Stephen Krashen on Language Acquisition' (around the 2 minute mark).
But how do you do this when the language has such limited resources? (For Cebuano I have come across one traditional text book/CD course, two e-learning platforms and a couple of grammar guides from the 1970s!) Well luckily there are quite a few unusual types of resources that can be made useful to study. In his quick and easy-read 'How I Learned to Speak Bisaya, and You Can, Too', Steve Thorne suggests using resources such as children's rhymes (specially the charming Huni Huni) or reading a local paper (like Superbalita Cebu). There are also podcasts in the language, such as the conversational podcast 'Barok and Takya Bisaya'.
Learning only what you need
In 'The Third Ear' Chris Lonsdale suggests that you should be strategic about which parts of the language you learn so that you only need the bits that will be relevant to you. This sentiment is echoed by legions of YouTubers (here, and here for example), who have 'learnt' a language in seven days. The main way they do this, is by learning vocab for the words that are most commonly used in the target language, instead of learning words by theme (such as learning all the words for colours, or all the words for body parts etc.). Here is a list of the most common words in Cebuano. Further to this, Jeff Brown goes on to to suggest that learning grammar should not be a priority, at least not until you are close to fluency, as you will pick up grammar organically along the way. In addition, it is also worth questioning whether it is necessary to learn to read, write and speak a language, if you will only ever speak it, and vice versa.
Using a range of materials
The final point concerns the materials that you will use to learn a language. As I mentioned previously, there are very few textbooks and e-learning apps available for learning for learning Cebuano. So if I wanted to pick up a textbook or an app to work through, it had better be effective! Bill Handley in 'Fast and Easy Way to Learn a Language' recommends that you gather different different materials together and forage from them all to create your own custom way of learning. Again, coming back to learning French, this was the approach I used, and although I don't know how successful my learning was at the time, using different resources kept it fun and interesting - it made me love the language. Learning French was a hobby for a long time, and I enjoyed approaching it from different angles - software, textbooks, audiobooks etc. Using this multiplicity of approaches also made me see the same thing from different perspectives - questions that could be answered in one way or another. So, although there might only be a handful of traditional language learning materials - mixing and matching, and incorporating some of the other materials (the rhymes, the newspaper etc.) should keep it fresh and engaging.
I will add the above resources to blog. I hope you find them interesting and useful for your own studies! Do let me know if there are any other useful approaches you have found.
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