Language Learning Unlocked

author’s review by Andrew Weiler, Australia

Andrew Weiler is a teacher, teacher trainer, author and language learning specialist. He founded and writes for the Strategies in Language Learning, a site devoted to exploring how language learners can fulfil on the potential we all have to learn languages successfully, as evidenced by our successes with our first. His latest book, Language Learning Unlocked (2013), is also directed at language learners but has found a substantial following amongst language teachers as well. It is available in online bookshops as well as available from many bookshops.

Email: andrew@strategiesinlanguagelearning.com

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I undertook to write the book after a student of mine, a doctor from China quite taken with the way I teach and the results that had been achieved in the class, asked me, a few years back, if I had written a book explaining my ideas on language learning. I said no, but that question put in my mind a seed that finally germinated in June of this year. That seed also spawned the website I mentioned above, as well as setting in motion a train of events that I could never have foreseen.

I have for many years been passionate about doing what I could so language learners could rediscover the incomparable language learning powers we all developed in our first few years on this planet. The realisation that these powers were still accessible to us dawned on me after I attended some Silent Way classes, when I first embarked on this profession in the late 70’s.

Since then, in my own learning of languages as well as in ELT as well as foreign language teaching along with my own personal research, I deepened my understanding of the factors at work and what could be done to once again access our powers. What I realised along the way was that the means we have been using call too heavily on the intellect and do not use the rest of our capacities.

I spent many years working at understanding these factors in a personal way as I realised early on that any answers that would be useful in a wider sense must have their basis in experience. It is not enough that something makes sense, the experiential aspect is critical. This is fact has been one of the failings of an overly intellectual approach to learning something which in fact touches us at every level.

I realised that there are many language learners who try to learn a language without really understanding what is needed. They trust the courses or the teachers they have even though many times the results are not what they expected. So they may try other courses, usually with not much changing in terms of results. So many just give up, believing that they are not talented or that they are just woeful language learners. They just have not realised that many times the problem lies with the way they are approaching the learning of languages, not with them. This simple realisation remains I believe hidden for most people, teachers included, hence the results achieved are as poor as they are. All you have to do is look at the available statistics, as few as they are, to see for yourselves, just how few people achieve, as a percentage, even an intermediate level of proficiency in another language.

So Language Learning Unlocked was written to help language learners to understand that these amazing learning powers we all demonstrated are still ours to be had. It is a book to inspire language learners to regain ownership of their language learning so they can be as successful as they wish to be. I thought that one way this would happen is if they understood just what a feat it is to learn our first language and how these powers we all developed got covered up. Once they bought into that they could then see that by changing what they do they could be on the path to rediscovering the amazing learning powers which really is our birthright.

What the book covers:

1. A common sense look at what infants do to learn languages.
2. What happens to us when we go to school and are taught in ways that don’t relate to powers that we use to learn our mother tongue.
3. An examination of the factors that arise as we grow up and become adults. These factors, many of which are personal and some of which are to do with the nature of adulthood, can and do intrude on the effective learning of further languages.
4. What we, as learners, can do to deal with the issues raised in points 2 and 3.
5. What would language learning (and teaching, but this is for the teacher to work out from the advice given in this book) look like if we wished to stimulate, engage, foster the learning powers we all have and used to such great effect in our first few years. There are many different exercises given for the learning of different aspects of language.

The book also includes a number of downloadable bonus items (with a dollar value that far exceeds the cost of the book) that readers can access to help them achieve the success in learning a new language. They include an audio version of the book, various e-books and audios to help learners better understand and effectively deal with the various non-linguistic factors that can hold adults back from achieving their success.

Please check the Building Positive Group Dynamics course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How to be a Teacher Trainer course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Pilgrims courses at Pilgrims website.