4
" The hardest foreign language you will ever learn is your first one. And the second hardest foreign language you will ever learn is your second one. In other words, language learning gets easier with each subsequent iteration. This phenomenon owes to the fact that languages, especially those belonging to the same family, share a great deal in terms of grammar, syntax, phonetics, and vocabulary. . . Not only are many of the concepts repetitive across languages, but learners become more adept at recognizing patterns, formulating sentences, and memorizing information. "
― Benjamin Batarseh , The Art of Learning a Foreign Language: 25 Things I Wish They Told Me
7
" I have a friend from my graduate school days at The Ohio State University whom we nicknamed Aladdin. Aladdin and I took a number of Arabic classes together. Every now and then, we would play pick-up basketball at the university gym. Aladdin couldn’t shoot, but he was one of the quickest, most intense defenders I have ever seen. One day, he went high up for a layup at 100 mph, bumped a defender, and fell square on his head. Aladdin lay there motionless for a few minutes before gingerly getting up. He had apparently suffered a concussion. We drove him to the ER, before he decided in the reception that he felt okay enough to go home. I’ll never forget, while we were leaving the gym and during the car ride, Aladdin kept asking people to speak Arabic to him. I probably heard the phrase “Speak Arabic to me, Binyamin! [my Arabic name]” at least two dozen times. Aladdin, in his dizzied and confused state, waiting to be seen for a potentially serious injury, was afraid that he had forgotten Arabic. The next day Aladdin texted everyone saying he felt fine. In hindsight, this story is a comical illustration of every language learner’s worst fear: losing the skills they worked so hard to acquire. As it turns out, Aladdin didn’t forget Arabic and currently lives in Dubai. "
― Benjamin Batarseh , The Art of Learning a Foreign Language: 25 Things I Wish They Told Me
8
" If you look around the room you are in right now, you will observe a great diversity of items, shapes, sizes, textures, colors, and functions, with all their associated nuances and subtleties. Every career, hobby, occupation, sport, industry, philosophy, plant, animal, object, event, and sensory experience–visual and otherwise–corresponds to a specific language. Language, in a word, is all-encompassing, and there are numerous registers, dialects, idioms, metaphors, and synonyms that express the same idea in multiple ways. “Mastering” one’s native language is a lifelong pursuit. Mastering a foreign language is an even taller order. "
― Benjamin Batarseh , The Art of Learning a Foreign Language: 25 Things I Wish They Told Me
9
" In addition, to be “in on the joke,” the listener must possess a window into the culture in which it was birthed. Comedians are constantly telling stories that only people who have experienced similar things in life can relate to. Some themes are universal across time and places, whereas others involve local food, sports, traditions, celebrities, holidays, and shared cultural experiences from work, educational, and familial environments. Given that cultural products like these comprise the lion’s share of speech, knowledge of them is as relevant to the language learner as grammar and vocabulary. "
― Benjamin Batarseh , The Art of Learning a Foreign Language: 25 Things I Wish They Told Me
10
" Burnout is also why passive language learning activities can sometimes be very beneficial. For example, relaxing to a song, movie, book, or conversation in a target language without looking up any words or preoccupying the mind with linguistic minutiae. In these moments, learners can focus on mastering what they already know. As for the unknown, they can draw inferences based solely on context without racking their brains. Passive language activities are doubly productive when learners have acquired a solid language base, without which their ability to rehearse, refine, and infer is constrained. "
― Benjamin Batarseh , The Art of Learning a Foreign Language: 25 Things I Wish They Told Me
