Anyone Can Be a Polyglot

 

In this pandemic, people spend more time with their gadgets; kids spend more time playing games after their class, the adults also replace the activities with the virtual one during the quarantine. The pandemic has changed the way people live their life; it also has changed the way we use internet. Although we need to adapt ourselves with the changes, but we cannot ignore that the people’s needs do not change, including the needs of getting a good education. One of the phenomena in education field during this pandemic is the emergence of many platforms offered on the internet. One of them is the language platforms.

Those platforms offer us an easy way to master a foreign language in a short time. They guarantee that we can speak the language in 3 months, or some of them said in 7 days. It is impossible. Let’s try to reflect to our public schools in Indonesia. The students have been introduced to English lesson since elementary school, but the output is quite surprising. After graduate from high school, there are a big number of the students who still cannot speak English well. So, they usually take a course to improve their English. Still, many of them cannot speak English well. It means, there is something wrong on the way they learn the language. Then we wonder how someone can speak many foreign languages fluently. Is it possible to be a polyglot or a person who speaks more than three languages?  Does it require a specific talent? How long does it take to master a new language?

 

This article will explain on how anyone can be a polyglot. First, we have to understand the difference of a polyglot, a linguist and a grammarian. A linguist or a grammarian focus on the history of the language and also the grammar. They usually are not required to speak the language. A polyglot acquires the ability without learning the grammar in detail. They acquire the grammar through listening before they start to speak, read and write. Do you remember how a child start to talk? Does he study grammar? A child starts to absorb or acquire the language from listening to the environment where he grows in. Along with the growth of the brain, the child will start to recognize the grammar pattern. For example, a child who is being exposed with the phrase I am all the time, will not make a mistake saying I is. Therefore, to be a polyglot does not require a specific talent. As long as you can maintain the enthusiasm, you will make it. How long? The answer is it depends because language acquisition is a complex process. Some language expert said that to master a new language, we need 600 – 1000 hours, excluding the grammar focus. It means if you are committed to spend an hour every day to learn the language, you will speak fluently in between a year and a half or two years and a half, without considering the grammar accuracy.

 

So, anyone actually can be a polyglot. It does not need specific talent. Focus on one new language. Then after you become fluent, add another one. I am a language teacher and I have been teaching reading for children and also teaching English for specific purposes since 2006. At the moment I am learning Spanish. I am taking a lot of benefit by putting myself as a language learner. I know the difficulties which are faced by the language learners and I use that to find a better teaching approaches and methods for my students.

 

Here are some tips to succeed mastering a foreign language using a language platform:

 

1. Be committed

Commitment is the most important in doing something, including learning a foreign language. You have to set a goal to motivate yourself, because when we get some obstacles, such as difficulties in pronouncing the new words, we will lose the initial interest.   

 

2. Practice

The easiest way to learn foreign language is by listening. Start to listen to some phrases and start to produce, start to copy and pronounce them correctly. After that, write all the vocabulary you have learned in a notebook. In a day, be committed to always add 5 new vocabularies. The Spanish is more difficult than English, because it has feminine and masculine nouns. It is called as lexical gender.  So, you have to remember that as well. You have to say el gato for a male cat and la gata for a female cat. You also use la with television as it is a feminine noun. After you know how to produce sounds in Spanish, then start to read. When reading, you will be exposed with many sentence structures that maybe confuse you. Some language platforms provide the grammar explanation. Anyway, if your language platform is not complete, you can register to a virtual class or just surf on the internet. Practice to speak in front of the mirror. Record it, so you can evaluate it.

 

3. Enjoy Your Pace

Do not rush yourself. Enjoy your own pace, because everybody has different ability and capability in learning language. That is why, rather than questioning on how long you can master the new language, try to focus on how you can use the 1000 hours to master the language.

 

4. Add one by one

As I have mentioned that anyone can be a polyglot, you have to add the language one by one. Focus on one and then add the other one.

 

I hope this article may help you in having a new perspective of language learning. The point is learning a new language needs a commitment, patience and hard work, whether it is using a platform or in a virtual class.