If your high school was anything like mine, you probably didn't learn much in foreign language class. Oh sure, at the time you could probably say a few words in French, Spanish, or German, but all of those words are probably long gone. Language learning, you see, is a pretty difficult thing to accomplish when you're not in an environment with native speakers. If you don't have to rely on your new language, you simply won't. You'll forget it as soon as you pass the tests and retain nothing beyond a year or two.
My experience as a teacher of English as a second language has really helped me to understand this better than most people do. I have been helping foreign students learn spoken English for years, so I have a pretty good idea of how it works. Basically, if you want to learn spoken English – or learn to speak any language for that matter – you really need to be in a nation that speaks it. This approach is called immersion, and it is all the rage among language learning classes.
While it is true that some of the better language learning classes try to create an artificial environment of immersion without being located in an actual place where the language is spoken, they are still a poor substitute for actually getting to experience immersion. Learning spoken English is best done in Britain, America, Canada, or one of the many other English-speaking countries. No matter how hard you work to learn spoken English, if you are studying it somewhere else, you are at a disadvantage.
This is why I am always so enraged when I see programs advertised that claim to help people learn spoken English at home on the computer. You simply cannot learn English speech without at least one conversational partner. Computers are good at many things, and even make valuable teaching resources. One thing they are not good at, however, is holding up a conversations. In order to do that, you need an actual human being to speak with you. Although you might be able to learn written English on your own, you won't be able to pick up the nuances of language without some help. You will still speak in your native language, think in your native language, and interact with people in your native language. In order to really gain fluency in another language, you have to be able to think in it on a day-to-day basis.
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