ESL Blogs

Have you ever dreamed to be a polyglot? You may ask what polyglot means. Polyglot is a person who speaks so many languages, let's say four or five or even more. Mr. Steve Kaufmann is fluent in 10 languages. As such, I was eager to know how he could have learnt so many languages whereas I am still struggling to learn only English. Two minutes after I sent my E-mail requesting him to be my guest blogger, Mr.Kaufmann responded and kindly accepted my offer. You can read his blog here: http://thelinguist.blogs.com/ or watch his videos on youtube: http://youtu.be/GZNYyR7-jUM

He also describes himself on his blog as follows: "I am a grandfather who likes to stay active. I enjoy interacting with people of all nationalities, in their language where possible. My other interests are sports, history and food. I look forward to meeting you all.

Interests:
Language learning, history, sports, food and wine and stimulating conversations."*

                                   I got the picture from Mr.Kaufmann's blog.

Here is what Mr.Kaufmann wrote:

The most important thing for language learning success is the attitude of the learner. I do not believe it is possible to teach a language, only to learn a language. This requires the learner to be independent, to seek out the language, to decide what he or she wants to read and listen to, and to believe that he or she can become a fluent speaker or another language.

Next to the attitude of the learner, the next most important thing is the time the learner is prepared to spend with the language, reading, listening, speaking and writing and reviewing words and phrases. Time in a classroom is not more valuable than time away from the classroom. The only thing that matter is the intensity of the contact with the language.

Finally the learner has to develop the ability to notice what is happening in the language. Teachers can help. Reading a grammar book can help. But in the end, the learner has to start noticing what he or she is reading, the sounds, the structures, and has to start to notice the mistakes that she or he makes. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes, but mistakes should be used to identify what is missing, and to orient the learner towards what he or she has to work on.

Steve Kaufmann

* I got the information from here.