What’s the most natural way of learning a language?

Nature should let us know something about it, and by studying the biggest language experts in the world we should get an answer.

Only babies learn languages, so don’t you think we should imitate them?

Attitude

Babies are always in desperate need of learning, and they always show a positive attitude when learning a language.

Many people come to the class with the wrong attitude, they think of learning a language negatively and therefore, they don’t learn as well as babies.

Have Fun

Children love learning how to speak, that’s why they are always smiling and laughing. If you feel depressed or sad, or maybe angry like many of my students are sometimes, you will not learn at all!

Imitate

Tell a secret or a just a simple word to a child and tell him or her not to tell anyone… what happens? They will always tell everybody as they want to imitate you telling the same secret.

Children repeat absolutely everything and as many times as possible, and that’s something adults should learn to do.

I find very funny when adults in class are reluctant to answer or do not want to repeat, and they copy whatever we’re studying in a notebook. It doesn’t work like that!

Mistakes? What mistake?

When teenagers or adults think they might get an answer wrong, they opt to close their mouths and wait for somebody else to speak or they would just say they do not know any possible answer. They are afraid of making mistakes.

What do babies do? They ignore mistakes at all stages, even when they’re corrected, because they’re focusing on communication, and not on perfection. Do the same, you’re supposed to make mistakes when learning, it’s part of the process.

Ignore what you don’t know

Adults are not learning machines, they’re analyzing machines who want to search in the dictionary each and every single word. If there is one only word they don’t know, they get scared to death and they shut their mouths again.

Children would ignore what they don’t understand, and they will create a message with the words, phrases and concepts they do understand. They normally get the meaning of the rest by intuition after some repetitive messages.

So if you are an adult, or a teenager and you want to learn a second language, do not try to do it as if you were an adult studying. The only way is by using the natural way and imitate the experts.