The mental zone where learning is easy, fun and fast

Blog 1.3 lifts the veil on fast learning ‘areas’ and presents insights to help you progress at speed in your desired language.

When you learn a foreign language, not all effort leads to the same level of progress, far from it. Some activities, although well intended, generate little to no results. In fact, many exercises produce poor development and stifle growth as they fall, unknowingly, in the wrong learning environment.

The learning zones 

There are four distinct learning areas, each of which exhibits its own properties in terms of nurturing or inhibiting students’ growth.   

Two of them, by far the largest, most visible and seductive areas, generate minimal growth for students whilst absorbing vast amounts of time and energy. In fact, when dwelt upon for too long, they even render progress harder.  However, their power of attraction strongly pulls the learners’ and trainers’ attention in their direction.  Hence, most lessons fall in these two areas. As a consequence, acquiring a foreign language may appear needlessly arduous, thankless and even impossible.

By contrast, focusing on the two fast speed growth areas leads to a far easier and quicker development. When harvested efficiently, these fields promote language growth with comparatively little effort and generate a motivating addictive buzz.

So, why don’t trainers access them on a constant basis? To perceive these optimum learning fields requires a different perspective on language learning. Unfortunately, unless perception is skillfully and knowingly drawn onto the fast learning lanes, these remain to a very large extent inaccessible, hidden, covered and as real as an illusive mirage.

Hence, they first require a precise map. Secondly, they call for a different skill set to leverage them from the one currently available within the existing understanding of how languages can be started and mastered.  

A naturally misleading zone

One of the four zones where a large portion of attention and effort is directed towards is the acquisition of new words.

When learners seek to move to the next level, much of the endeavour focuses on expanding new vocabulary. Whilst this may appear to be the obvious task to carry out because it seems purposeful and is relatively easy to implement and monitor, ironically it also proves misguided and a clear recipe for slow progress in the pain lane.

The two fast lanes lie close to the one just briefly alluded to. Language trainers with outstanding results as well as learners having mastered several languages know innately how to tap into them.

Their location, as well as the process to access them, will be disclosed soon in several chapters of The Language Talent dedicated to helping any learner access their dream foreign language with enhanced ease.

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