A Language Helper

A Language Helper

I have talked often about using a “language helper” to learn the language and I want to take a bit of time to explain it today. But first I will talk about what a language helper (LH) is not.

A LH is not a teacher. They are not a tutor. They will not be experts in grammar – at least not any more than the average American is an expert in English grammar – who can tell me what a participle phrase is?

So what is a language helper?

A language helper is a native speaker of the language you are wanting to learn. They should be fairly outgoing, have a good accent in the eyes of their peers and be open to your doing a way of learning language that they will most likely be entirely unfamiliar with. They are not lesson planners and will not be planning the time you spend with them – they just get to talk and sip tea.

How do I find a language helper?
Finding a language helper can be a challenge. If you live in the target language context – either overseas or in an ethnic neighborhood – it could be as easy as exchanging English conversation time for your time with the LH. It could be a friendly neighbor interested in helping you learn his or her language so they can actually speak with you! Or it could mean finding a university student to pay the local minimum wage (or a bit better) for a few hours of their time each week. If you are still in your home country, look for the ethnic communities in your area. It may take a bit of work, but you can find a language helper.

How do I work with a language helper?
So you have located a language helper, but what do you do now? Well, first off, you will be doing all of the planning for your time with your helper. It could be as simple as just choosing a topic to talk about. Or you could plan activities that give you loads of comprehensible input. You can see more of these activities in all of my Tips and Ideas posts.

(Read: Two Hours with a Language Helper for even more ideas)

One thing you most certainly want to do is find out about all the real life situations that you will be encountering. I remember going through how to answer the door, how to answer the phone, what to say to get off the bus, how to order water for our home, what to say when I want to leave a home, etc.

You can find a great summary of how to use language helpers in the LACE book though and it would be well worth you time to look through it, download it or purchase it.

A last thing I would always recommend doing with your language helper is to record content. Record dialogues that you have generated with them. Record journals that you have written. Record anything you do with them. This will create a system of integrated review that you can take with you everywhere.

How often should I meet with my Language Helper?
Well, everyone has different schedules so you need to figure out what works best for you. The most I ever met was four days a week for an hour and a half at a time. But even meeting once a week would be beneficial.

Other Resources
I think one important thing to think about is your beliefs about language learning. If you believe you have to have a teacher to learn language, this may not be the system for you. Having a good understanding of how and why to use a language helper is essential. Here are a few great resources to help you gain that understanding:

I used a language helper exclusively to learn Turkish with fairly encouraging success. I think, with a bit of preparation you too can have a great experience with a language helper. And I think one huge benefit is the added motivation you gain in knowing and developing a friendship with a native speaker of the language. This is perhaps the number one reason to find a language helper in my mind. Good luck.

(some of the links above are affiliate links)

My wife and her language helper and now great friend Dilek
learning to cook a Turkish dish

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Steal My Blog

I have a problem.

My blog is an exclusive club where members only are allowed in. The secret password is the English language. If you don't have it, you don't get in. This is a problem because I believe that information about independent language learning should be available to those who need it most.

There are people all over the world who are desperate to learn English.

Desperate because mastering the English language will open up new doors of opportunity for them, for their families. But they don't know enough English yet to access my blog and learn how to be independent language learners. So they are stuck. Stuck in the systemic ineptitude of outdated and broken national education systems. Thy are held hostage by expensive language school that have stepped into fill the void. They stand looking down two roads: one an ineffective system; the other an expensive system. But there is a third way. They can harness the power of the Internet and an increasingly shrinking world. They can do this if they know how. Independence from the system is possible, but a revolution in language education needs to take place.

Will you join me?

Will you join the revolution?

Step 1: Steal my blog. Create your own blog. Take the ideas from this blog, translate them into your language and share them with your people. Begin to preach the good news of the third way - the independent way. Begin to empower and teach and give tools to those who desire to learn language. Step 2: Steal The Ten Week Journey. This is an email series that I create to walk beginning language learners into the life of an independent, self-directed language learner. I'll walk you into how to set this up with a free email subscription company. It's pretty easy. Step 3: Steal my books. They aren't the greatest books ever written but they were created to break down the old paradigms of teacher directed learning and introduce and explain self-directed learning. I'll give you the books if you can gather a group of friends around you who will work to translate them and then spread them like a wild fire through Facebook and Twitter and Myspace and email and whatever the people of your nation are using to communicate. Use them to direct people back to your blog. Use them to introduce the people of your nation to these ideas. Use them to break the chains of a broken system and set language learner's free to learn on their own. Interested? Send me an email and let's talk. aarongmyers @ gmail.com

Credit and Payment

I'm not asking for either credit or payment. While I think it would be great if you would let people know that what you are sharing with them was originally written by me, I'm not going to tell you that you have to. I also don't want any payment from you. Now, if you want to add an affiliate link on your site to my books (English versions) that I do sell, you can sure do that and then you would get 50% of the profit as well. So in that sense, I'll be paying you. I am mostly concerned with a world that continues to use a broken and outdated system that is effectively locking millions of people out of the advantages of learning another language.

Why Am I Doing This

I want to do something big with my life. I want to make a ruckus and be a part of tearing down broken systems. I don't wear a cape though and I have no super powers. So I need to assemble an army of other like minded people to wage the battle with me. I'm not the first to give away my content. Leo Babauta has been doing it for a while and he has one of the most widely read blogs in the world. I think we can start a grass roots movement of free information that a new system for language building can be built upon. But the important word here is WE. We can do it together. Let's get started.

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