A Department Store

A Game-Playing Date

A Desk Covered in Scraps

Metaphors for Language Learning Inspiration

Read and translate the following text. It may help you to create your personal strategy of foreign language acquisition.

Consult with you language teacher. Work out the programme for self-development.

Perform SWOT analysis of your language skills.

Point out main ideas of each paragraph and fill in the table.

Language	Reasons of learning

3. Critical thinking task. Using the results of analysis in ex.2 explain the necessity of learning every particular language.

Project work

How do you go about identifying your strengths and weaknesses, and analyzing the opportunities and threats the learner of a foreign language faces? SWOT Analysis is a useful technique that helps you do this.

Strengths: What do I do well?	Weaknesses: What could I improve?
Opportunities: What good opportunities are opened to me?	Threats: What could harm me?

Language learning is like a desk covered in bits of fabric, old ceramics, shiny plastic buttons, rough pieces of recycled paper. You sit down before the desk and sigh. But then, inspiration strikes, and you start sorting through the bits and pieces and putting together a mosaic. And before you know it, all the disparate scraps come together, and you have….a conversation.

The point: let go of your obsession with logic and order, and get scrappy. Figure out how to piece together what you know and make it work.

Language learning is like dating a coy, flirtatious dude (or gal) who strings you along a bit, making you feel so smart, so sexy, so cool, and then suddenly stands you up.

You find yourself completely lost in some restaurant, unable to put together a sentence, realizing how little you know. You go through a bitter phase in which you swear off men/women.

Then, you meet some cute, sweet thing on the street one day, and your faith is instantly restored.

The point: there will always be moments, no matter how confident you feel or how much progress you’ve made, in which you feel like the rug has been pulled out from you.

It’ll always be harder and more intimidating to speak with certain people, and there will inevitably be times when all the language you’ve been practicing goes flying from your head at the crucial moment.

Language learning is like shopping in a massive department store with countless floors and boutiques.

You try on suits, miniskirts, overalls, knee socks, baggy sweaters, heels, boots.

Some make you feel uncomfortable and constricted. Some feel so good it’s almost like an addition to, or slight alteration of, your identity.

The point: Not every language will fit perfectly. I feel much more natural, much more like myself, speaking in Spanish than in French. I’m still happy that I speak French and I love speaking it, but I can recognize that sometimes it just doesn’t fit with my personality.

Understanding that some languages fit you better than others can help you get beyond some of your frustration with language learning.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23