{"id":61640,"date":"2022-02-18T12:07:55","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T17:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=61640"},"modified":"2022-02-18T12:07:55","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T17:07:55","slug":"learning-english-well-requires-intensive-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/learning-english-well-requires-intensive-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning English well requires intensive practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

How do you learn a foreign language?\u00a0For most people, this involves the tedious learning of grammar rules, the memorization of vocabulary, sometimes stammered words with embarrassment or, for the youngest, watching TV series and using apps. playful.<\/p>\n

A lot of time and energy are devoted to it, but sometimes without convincing results.\u00a0Remember that, according to the CNESCO consensus conference on\u00a0language learning<\/a>\u00a0conducted in 2019, 75% of students at the end of middle school would not be able to express themselves orally in generally correct English.<\/p>\n

Doesn’t this discrepancy between the efforts made and the level reached invite us to question the approach commonly chosen in the study of a language?\u00a0Are we not giving too much importance to its intellectual dimension compared to its physical dimension?\u00a0And shouldn’t we rather think of the acquisition of a foreign language as sports training?<\/p>\n

We too often forget that “speaking” a language is an eminently bodily act: speaking is emitting conventionally meaningful sounds in a given linguistic community, with the help of organs located mainly in our oral cavity (tongue, teeth) and our larynx (vocal cords).<\/p>\n

A work of adaptation<\/strong><\/h4>\n

To better understand the work required to learn a language, we can venture into a metaphor, and ask ourselves if the tennis champion Rafael Nadal, for example, would make a good badminton player.\u00a0On another register, would we listen to Renaud Capu\u00e7on with the same pleasure if he swapped his violin for a cello?\u00a0One can doubt it, because the control of a sport or an instrument is not easily transposable to another, the apparent similarities being able to be misleading.<\/p>\n

In the same way, if our organs of speech and hearing are instruments common to all of mankind, they must necessarily adapt when switching to a language different from ours.<\/p>\n