Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / May 2008

I think if you want to learn a language in just how to read it then
actually, the old method of translating long passages of text in the
foreign language to the native can in fact be quite effective, even if
it is tedious and boring at first. I'm a year 11 high school student
from the UK, studying French at GCSE level, and frequently reading
French stories or articles and fetching a dictionary to translate a
word I didn't understand, which was practically all of the words, I
found was a great way to learn rapidly because the translations
automatically became drilled into my head and after a while I was able
to dispense of the dictionary for a longer and longer time while going
through a text. This however did very little to improve my speaking
ability in French, because the way the words are written are often so
different from the way they are spoken by a native French person.

And so for the speaking aspect of a language you are no doubt
completely right, speaking it constantly is the best way to learn,
just as learning to walk necessities the act of walking, and as doing
almost anything with proficiency requires doing it in the first place.

Thanks.