FAQ 1 I TOOK A LANGUAGE IN HIGH SCHOOL. HOW COME I CAN’T REMEMBER ANYTHING I LEARNED? IS IT MY TEACHER’S FAULT?

People who took language in high school often feel this way. It’s the teacher’s fault they didn’t learn, or it's the teacher's fault for not being a native speaker. I am here to tell you that it is not the teacher’s fault. It is not Your fault, either. You just didn’t have enough contact with the language. 

There are lots of different ideas about how long it takes to really learn a language but the one I tend to go with is this: if you are lucky enough to be in the foreign country when you are doing it, it will take you about a month to have the first big click with the language, this means you have a concrete feeling or flash or moment of clarity when you realize that you understand a lot and can speak. You are not going ot be perfect of course, but that is the first conscious jump. 

To get that click without living in a foreign country you will need about 500 hours of contact with the language, which does not necessarily mean being with a teacher (if it did, I would be rich).This can mean any kind of contact with the languae like listening to the radio or writing, reading, watching films. Any of those things contribute to the contact hours you need to have with the language. 

If you think about a typical class at a language school, you might meet once a week for two hours for the entire academic year, so maybe forty weeks. That seems like a lot, but  it will never get you to the next level in language. If you want to do that, you must give yourself a lot more than what you can get from the class alone. 

To do that, look for as many ways as you can to use the language in everyday life. This way you are not adding hours to the day, but you ARE adding contact with the language. Some easy examples are : putting your phone in the target language (every time you look at your phone you are getting contact with the language, yes 5 seconds at a time is still better than zero seconds!), and watching at least a movie a week in the target language. You can intensify the experience by putting the subtitles in the target language as well. Download an app to your phone like memrise or duolingo. That way you can practice when you have dead time, like on the bus or in line at the grocery store. 

In conclusion, if you took language in high school and then did nothing more with it but have the burning desire to get fluent some day, that time is not lost! You will see that once you put yourself back in contact with the language, a lot of things will come back to you, and quickly. 

Even if you are rusty at first, remember that the initial contact was made, so the the info is still there and waiting to wake up. Think muscle memory when you run long distance. Even if you take an extended amount of time off, you Never go back to zero.