Systematic or unsystematic language learning

Hands down systematic language learning is more effective than unsystematic or chaotic learning.  Picking a language up because it is ‘in the air’, in theory can happen. However, my personal observation teaching students over the years is this, my students that study languages with a system succed.  In fact, perhaps the characteristic that correlates with their success in learning their target foreign language, is not their ‘gift’ for languages, but rather how systematic and motivated they are in learning a language. That does not mean you have to enroll in a language school, on the contrary I think the self motivated systematic people do the better than people who go to school. The people who go to schools, often enroll because they are under the cognitive illusion that the school will give them all the motivation and structure they need for success, all they have to do is pay and they will come our speaking their target lagnuage.  I think the people who develop a plan, and work mostly on their own will do the best. They can learn say, 20 words a day, every day and a little grammar for example. Or for more advanced students they will read every day 10 pages of a book in a foreign language. These people will do much better than those who take an unsystematic approach to language learning or looking for external motivation.  I am developing my mp3 program and software with this in mind. For people who want to work on their own in a systematic way to learn a language. This is the way I learned Polish.

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