I'm an ESL teacher. I have a student who is a developer and needs to learn English (first language is Spanish). He is already familiar with the technical terminology. What do I need to teach him?
I tend to answer people who ask me how to learn a language, say English, by asking them about their interests, whether for leisure or industry, otium and negotium if you will, and what they read about and watch and listen to. Once they do, I'll say "Do that, but in English". The rationale behind is:
- To introduce only one new parameter (the language) instead of two parameters (the language and the topic) which would increase the difficulty non-linearly and be counterproductive, slow, and discouraging.
- To not only amortize, but actually benefit from the time spent as the learner is actually reading more on a topic of interest, instead of "spending" time learning a "language" at the expense of said interest/business necessity.
- Acquire a somewhat intelligible accent. A language isn't just written, it's spoken. Melody, rhythm, emphasis, pronunciation... to be understood, listening is key. There are countries whose speakers have objectively horrendous accents, and I bet they mostly listen to their fellow citizens in that language, not to natives.
Stephen Krashen wrote a lot about second language acquisition (SLA). His writings resonate with my experience; I'm alright in five languages, English being my fifth, and can understand a few more to varying degrees; I haven't really "learned" or "studied" them, but I've been exposed to them a lot. For English, for instance, it wasn't much "production", but a huge number of books, articles, and other media that I "consumed".
English is the lingua franca for many domains, even more so in software development. The content around that, whether books, talks, forums, or blog posts doesn't contain just technical terminology. They talk or cite books or other references, which then someone can pick up and read with an increased interest because of relevance, and they increase their command of a language. Case in point. You can point them to this forum.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 14.7 ms ] threadI tend to answer people who ask me how to learn a language, say English, by asking them about their interests, whether for leisure or industry, otium and negotium if you will, and what they read about and watch and listen to. Once they do, I'll say "Do that, but in English". The rationale behind is:
- To introduce only one new parameter (the language) instead of two parameters (the language and the topic) which would increase the difficulty non-linearly and be counterproductive, slow, and discouraging.
- To not only amortize, but actually benefit from the time spent as the learner is actually reading more on a topic of interest, instead of "spending" time learning a "language" at the expense of said interest/business necessity.
- Acquire a somewhat intelligible accent. A language isn't just written, it's spoken. Melody, rhythm, emphasis, pronunciation... to be understood, listening is key. There are countries whose speakers have objectively horrendous accents, and I bet they mostly listen to their fellow citizens in that language, not to natives.
Stephen Krashen wrote a lot about second language acquisition (SLA). His writings resonate with my experience; I'm alright in five languages, English being my fifth, and can understand a few more to varying degrees; I haven't really "learned" or "studied" them, but I've been exposed to them a lot. For English, for instance, it wasn't much "production", but a huge number of books, articles, and other media that I "consumed".
English is the lingua franca for many domains, even more so in software development. The content around that, whether books, talks, forums, or blog posts doesn't contain just technical terminology. They talk or cite books or other references, which then someone can pick up and read with an increased interest because of relevance, and they increase their command of a language. Case in point. You can point them to this forum.