Why your 'language intuition' is key to speaking German fluently
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Let me ask you a question: Which of these two do you think is the most important for learning German?
Is it: to learn facts about the language?
Or is it: to start using the language actively?
Yes, it's the second one. The key to learning a language so you can speak it fluently is to train your active "language intuition".
If you spend all your time cramming the language grammar rules and feeding the analytical part of the brain, you will never be able to speak fluently. Unfortunately, many teachers spend too much time on grammar in the classroom. Instead you need to spend the majority of your time reading and listening to the foreign language and train the language processor in your brain.
One of the surprising and revolutionary discoveries by language learning researchers in the last decades, is that the two forms of language skills - analytical (understanding grammar rules) and language intuition (be able to practically use the language) are almost unrelated.
Language acquisition scientist, Professor Stephen Krashen at the University of Southern California, developed the 'input hypothesis', that you must develop your practical language skills by reading and listening a lot to the foreign language.
“Consciously learned rules have very limited functions: We use them to edit what we say and write, but this is hard to do, and sometimes they can help make input comprehensible, but this is rare.”
“We do not acquire language by producing it; only by understanding it. ”
Learning facts about German - like grammar rules and verb charts - helps a little bit for your actual use of the language, but not as much as many thinks.
The reason is simple: in real-time conversations you don't have time to 'look up' what you hear or what you want to say in your mental 'grammar book'. That takes way too long time. All those rules you have studied about the endings of nouns and what prepositions go with what verbs and how the verb form for 1st person, 2nd person and 3rd person look – forget about it!
Unless you have transferred it to your language intuition you can't use in real life! You see, the language intuition (our term here at InfusMe) or language acquisition (Prof. Krashen's term) is the special language processor in your brain that helps you understand and speak a language. It's super-fast and can decode a language in realtime.
This is where so many class-room teachers go wrong. They spend too much time on grammar-rules and teaching students how to analyse a language, instead of immersing them in the language so they can actually understand what they hear and read in that language.
We recommend that you spend just up to 20% of your time on grammar, and at least 80% training your language intuition by reading and listening to the actual foreign language.
How to train your 'language intuition' to speak German
Unless you train your language intuition to know a new language, you can never use it in real life.
So here is the million-dollar question then: how do you train this part of the brain?
If rote-memorizing grammar rules does not help, what does the trick?
Here is the answer:
The way to train your language intuition to know a foreign language, is to read and listen a lot of that language at your level (or with translation).
That's how you learned English as a child (or whatever your mother tongue is), and that is how you must learn German.
Reading large amounts of text and listening to lots of spoken language, your brain is then forced to think in that language.
You simply have to build a solid vocabulary of German words that you recognize lightning fast.
You need to use an app that is built on this scientific discovery, and has a built in "vocab machine" that infuses words into your language intuition and trains your brain until you recognize and know the words instantly.
You might be thinking: How do I get time to practice and train my language brain?
That brings us to the next discovery language scientists made - about how effective "micro sessions" are.
How to train your 'language intuition' to speak a new language
Unless you train your language intuition to know German, you can never use it in real life.
So here is the million-dollar question then: how do you train this part of the brain?
If rote-memorizing grammar rules does not help, what does the trick?
Here is the answer:
The way to train your language intuition to know a foreign language, is to read and listen a lot of that language at your level (or with translation).
That's how you learned English as a child (or whatever your mother tongue is), and that is how you must learn the new language.
Reading large amounts of text and listening to lots of spoken language, your brain is then forced to think in that language.
You simply have to build a solid vocabulary of the new language words that you recognize lightning fast.
Our online course and app is built on this scientific discovery, and has a built in "vocab machine" that infuses words into your language intuition and trains your brain until you recognize and know the words instantly.
Language acquisition scientist, Professor Stephen Krashen at the University of Southern California, developed the 'input hypothesis', that you must develop your practical language skills by reading and listening a lot to the foreign language.
“Consciously learned rules have very limited functions: We use them to edit what we say and write, but this is hard to do, and sometimes they can help make input comprehensible, but this is rare.”
“We do not acquire language by producing it; only by understanding it. ”
SHALL WE INFUSE YOU WITH A NEW LANGUAGE?