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What is the knowledge of a foreign language

Recently, I noticed among students of English another trend. Often people, desperate to make the desired progress after many years of irrational language learning, come to the conclusion: “Well, nothing works ... My situation is unique. Apparently, only immersion in the language environment will help me to make a qualitative leap. ”

Buy a 2-4-week course in London. And, naturally (again!), They are disappointed, having killed almost a month of their time and financial savings. They return with an even deeper conviction that "my case is unique, something is wrong with me, some special approach is needed."

In fact, there is not a single unique feature; the situation is quite typical.
All this is from a total widespread misunderstanding, from which, in fact, knowledge of a foreign language consists. And it’s not easy to figure it out - the whole broadcast is jammed with advertising demagogy. 9 out of 10 complain: I do not perceive speech well ... what to do ... The advertisers are ready to answer: "Improve listening perception? - No problem! Come! Help! "

Well come. It ends with yet another disappointment and even deeper conviction of one’s hopelessness and “uniqueness” of one’s case. In general, who are interested, let's try to figure out what knowledge of a foreign language consists of.

First of all, do not believe friends who say that they perceive media well by ear. They all lie. Even carriers of each other often interrogate, even understanding the context of the conversation. If you are not a native speaker who grew up in England, you will ALWAYS have difficulty
understanding the British's speech. Now I will explain why.

Remember situations when you well understood the speech of a native speaker while he is speaking to you, but completely ceased to understand him when he began to speak with another native speaker. Why is that?

Real living carriers use not quite the words that we expect to hear. The word forya (emphasis on the first syllable) you will not find in any dictionary, but it, meanwhile, is common, means for you. Few teachers risk typing the word whaddaya (= what do you), and it is no less common than forya. The same thing happens in high-speed Russian speech: instead of "why do you need it?" in real life, we often say the word "why?", and it is not in any dictionary. Once with me a black guy explained to a black girl: “... and instead of“ shto ”they say“ chyo ”(instead of“ shto ”they say“ what ”). The word "che" does not even look like "what."

Any language has 2 options. One is the one taught to foreigners and on which carriers usually speak with you if they understand that you are not a carrier. The second is the one that the speakers speak to each other. Similar words are used in it, but some of the vowels are thrown out, separate syllables, or even some words are replaced by others, as in Russian “shto” is replaced by the word “what”. But you still have to learn the first one anyway.

Now let's imagine that you perfectly understand English speech by ear. In the coming years this will not happen for sure, but let's just say for a moment that you can distinguish English sounds right here at the media level! Ok, now we have another problem. Most English learners, unfortunately, have no idea how much information they are dealing with.

English is the world leader in terms of words and phrases. Why is it a separate long story, we will not go into it now. So, in addition to words and their stylistic compatibility with each other, English is:

  • Idioms i.e. expressions that you won’t understand, even if you know all the words that they are made of. For example, "his horse did not roll." You either know the meaning of this expression or not - usually it’s impossible to guess. On any radio or television channel, several thousand idioms and stable expressions are used routinely. In everyday speech - less, but not by much. If you consider those that the carrier knows, but almost or completely does not use, their number will definitely go beyond 5000. And yes, they are quite different in England and the USA. And by region.
  • Slang. It is VERY different in England and the USA, Australia and Canada. Varies by region of these countries.
  • A huge body of abbreviations that native speakers of concise English love to use even in colloquial speech. For example, the abbreviations DHSS or GP are very widely used in the spoken language of the UK, but will not be understood by the American. Knowledge of such abbreviations is necessary only if you live there.

Oh yes. Keep in mind that all of the above is constantly outdated to some extent. This is the question of the benefits of reading the classics in the original.

  • Phrasal verbs are a special nightmare of the English language, and only the most common ones are good for a thousand! There are separate phrasal verb dictionaries!
  • , . – ( – ).

Of particular difficulty are the terms associated with the difference in the work of political, legal, financial institutions - in order to understand these terms, sometimes you need to at least approximately understand how these institutions work. Sit and sort out who your lawyer you know is attorney, barrister or solicitor.

It would be nice to own highly specialized terminology at least in the volume of high school. Say, the term “least common denominator” is widely used in English-language journalism (though not in a mathematical sense anymore) and on television. Remember how much baggage of terms we took out of high school and use in everyday speech. Everything is the same with them.

In the domestic vocabulary of England and the United States, terms from such sports that we simply do not have penetrated in a huge number. Thus, in order to understand the speech of the speakers well, one must at least approximately know the rules of the game of golf, cricket, American football. For example, the term second base in colloquial language also means "female breasts", and why - you must first understand the rules of baseball.

And now the fun part! Any language is accompanied by a huge layer of pop culture.

American series "Clan Soprano." In an intimate context, the protagonist says to his gel-friend: “And her name is G ...”. And that's it - no more context! I don’t understand what it is about. I call on Skype a friend of the American, describe the situation. She: "What is your gel-friend's name?" Me: Gloria. She: “So everything is clear! There is a famous chorus song “And her name is G, L, O, R, I, A”. Everything is obvious for her, for me it’s a meaningless phrase, although, as it turned out, I also heard a song. It's just that for an American over 40, this song is a well-known part of pop culture, and I hang out somewhere in the back of my mind. The speech of a living carrier is overloaded with such links to songs, famous phrases from films, and socio-political events. In the same series “The Soprano Clan”, the main character is thrown the phrase: The lone gunman theory. The phrase is reproach, but understandthat this is precisely a rebuke only if you can at least give a general picture of the circumstances well-known to adult Americans that accompany the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

A special nightmare is television. All modern native English speakers have grown on it, so in their speech they constantly directly or indirectly refer to hundreds of television programs or their hosts. The names of the leading begin to cause an associative series. If a Russian throws something like “write Malysheva,” the interlocutor instantly adjusts to the associative series “health / medicine”. The phrase This must be how Carl Sagan felt, walking through the halls of PBS for the Russian is meaningless gibberish, for a representative of English-speaking culture, everything is simple and clear.

Now attention! All this cultural information is becoming outdated at HUGE speed. There is a joke on this subject. Dialogue of the buyer with the seller:

- Give a bottle of beer.
- Do you have a passport?
- No.
- Poplar fluff?
- Heat, July.
- 60 rubles.

The buyer was tested for age. And I won’t be surprised if very young people did not understand this joke. Literally 10-15 years - and this cultural information is becoming obsolete, but it is still very different in England and the USA. Americans can easily not understand the British’s speech if he refers to phenomena related to British culture.

In everyday Russian speech, in order to achieve a comic effect, we sometimes quote the Bible or some Old Russian rhetoric: “Al not love you, red maiden”, “Ise,” “Az,” etc. Just as often, if not more often, in the English language they quote the Bible, Shakespeare or other well-known texts - all this is in Old English.

Even more often, also in order to achieve a comic effect, we parody the Ukrainian speech: “You rise up like a yarn garnivchina”. The British and Americans, believe me, also have someone to parody, and the comic effect of these moments often passes by people who even know English well - they think that a relatively rare word is simply used.

English is usually taught in Russian schools and universities, in England and the USA it is usually French, so very often you can hear French words and phrases in colloquial terms - they are as well known as our “boyfriend” or “ah love you". Try reading reviews of critics about London restaurants or fashion shows - you won’t think enough.

A foreign language is automatically a different culture with different geographical names, store names, local and national brands of manufacturers, suppliers of various services, from car services and clinics to gyms and language courses. If in Russia you say “she went to INVITRO”, this is enough to set a context for the conversation that everyone understands. Everyone except the foreigner. And yet all these names in live speech are constantly being abbreviated. How do we have a library to them. Lenin is called Lenin. “Going to Leninka” instantly means “reading / preparing for the exam,” and that’s not the matter for 15 minutes. For a foreigner who knows Russian well, this is an empty phrase.

What do we end up with? English itself is already a gigantic amount of information. And the cultural information accompanying the language, without which it is impossible to fully understand the speaker’s speech, is yet another data volume of the same volume.

So, ladies and gentlemen. The speech of a living carrier is an explosive mixture of all of this. Language school advertisers are trying to reassure you:
“In everyday life, native speakers use 2000-3000 words, it's easy and simple, blah blah.” Not easy and not easy. 3000 is just the root of words. Does root knowledge work with phrasal verbs? These roots form technical terms, idioms, slang. If everything is so simple, there would not be a constantly repeating situation "I know all the words, I don’t understand what the phrase is about."

It’s ridiculous, by golly, to observe beginners who have not yet learned to understand simple phrases in a foreign language, even in WRITTEN, and are already eager to communicate with native speakers or try to watch ordinary films made for native speakers. If you take English, then up to the Intermediate level, such films should not even be raised.

If the purpose of viewing is to learn the language, films are needed specifically for instructional films.

And do not look down on instructional films - they are played by normal media with normal diction, but! They do not chew on sounds, but pronounce exactly the words that they taught you, no forya or whaddaya. In educational films, only the most relevant today, the most used words and colloquial phrases are heard. Unnecessary abbreviations are excluded from them - only those that really need to be known are left. Slang is only the most common, and then in limited quantities. Highly specialized terms that abound in ordinary feature films are excluded. No references to pop culture. These films were made specifically to teach foreigners modern English spoken language. Training films are good, watch training films.

About the grammar. To teach it yourself is hard, and to teach is a real art. In any city, on the fingers you can count the specialists who are able to qualitatively teach grammar (I speak as the head of a school that is constantly in active search for good teachers). Even the holders of the Upper-Intermediate certificate in their head, as a rule, have some very crooked version of the grammar, allowing them, at best, to correctly build the phrase. Without understanding, WHY so, they will be confused all their lives in an elementary way, even in times.

About the pronunciation. Once in London, I watched just an enchanting Russian peasant. He was fluent in English, God forbid every Englishman so. In my experience, this was the only Russian person who spoke English well, but did not make the slightest attempt to portray any British or American accent. He emphasized the use of Ryazan and spoke absolutely Russian sounds. Pronunciation is such a thing ... For an amateur. Want - try to bet. If you don’t want to, they will understand you from the context.

Now let's face it. Most readers of this article have NO POSSIBILITY to learn a language in all of these areas - this is many years of effort, provided that you do nothing else.

In fact, a tragedy is unfolding before our eyes: hundreds of thousands of people constantly and honestly make efforts to learn a foreign language, but because of the huge number of myths planted by language schools, these efforts are wasted.

What do we see in practice? People have not even decided what exactly they want to achieve by learning the language, and try to grab unsystematized pieces of information from everywhere.

The ability to forget is the most advanced human skill. While learning one, forget the other. So he read the article in English, was not too lazy to get into the dictionary, learned a few turns and terms. Six months later, I forgot them all as reliably, as if I had never read an article. I watched the film, picked up a few words and phrases, after half a year I don’t remember them at all. For years, everything goes in a circle - they learn one thing, forget the other. But the puzzle doesn’t work out.

In order to get quick tangible progress in the conditions of lack of time, in no case can not be sprayed on a wide variety of sources of information. There should be a limited number of sources, but you need to return to them again and again. And these sources must be very carefully selected. I would recommend quality texts for the profession in which you are going to develop - the terms and phrases that you will meet there will always be relevant for you. And instructional films to learn conversational expressions. Here, of course, you need to decide - the British or American version is closer to you.

Everyone heard that the second, third foreign language is much easier to learn than the first. Why is this so? If a person has DEEPly learned one foreign language, he will not make the many mistakes that ALL beginners make - he can no longer be confused by the advertising demagogy that is torn from each iron. He understands how much information he is dealing with, what is primary in this information, what needs to be concentrated on, and what is secondary, how can one not clutter one's memory without compromising the fundamental understanding of the language.

In other words, there is a hierarchy in all this colossus of information, some words, expressions, grammatical subtleties are more important, some are less important. And theoretically, a competent language course should be built on the basis of this criterion - from the more important to the less important. In practice, in most cases, people blame an almost unsystematic set of facts. Those. they are formally taught the language, yes. But somehow, behind the trees, the forest is not visible.

In any field of knowledge, a person moves to a qualitatively new level only when the previous level is a simpler, BASIC, but at the same time more important information about the subject crystallized from information units into CONCEPTS. When the brain’s resources are no longer spent on remembering how much will be 6 × 7 and you begin to see a wider and more complex picture.

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