learn a new language – Language Teaching Centre | LTC

Mistakes to avoid when learning a language

LTC Team — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 06:30:56 +0000

Don’t let these mistakes get in the way when you learn a new language, learn to avoid or overcome them and you are guaranteed to succeed! Here are the biggest mistakes to avoid when learning a language.

Fear of making a mistake

You might enjoy writing and reading in a different language, but when it comes to speaking it, you freeze up. No matter your level of confidence in general, the fear of making a fool of yourself when trying to speak a different language is very real. This almost irrational fear happens to the best of us, even Barack Obama freezes up when having to speak a foreign language.

The key to avoiding this mistake is just to push through your fears. It’s especially the anticipation of speaking a foreign language that gets to you, and just by pushing through that fear each time you will eventually feel confident enough not to dread speaking a different language. The more you speak the faster you learn. Force yourself to speak as much as possible in the language you are learning, and watch yourself flourish.

Not being open to other cultures

Don’t approach learning a new language with a closed mind, as this will show in your progress. To learn a language you need to live the language.

This means embracing its people, culture, and ways. If you are immersed and interested in the culture of the language you are learning you will be motivated to learn more – and faster. Immerse yourself as much as possible – you might even end up enjoying it!

Not listening

If you find that you regularly fall into the trap of not listening to what a foreign speaker is saying the chances are high that it is connected to your fear of making a mistake.

Many people get so caught up in needing to annunciate properly and use the correct grammar that they forget to actually listen to what the person is saying. This is actually much worse as you are more likely to say something irrelevant or be thrown off if they say something you weren’t expecting.

Making it insurmountable

Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. If you make learning a language seem insurmountable, your brain will shut down and you will be unable to learn anything. You need to see learning a language as a marathon – not a sprint. Break your learning down into manageable chunks and achievable goals. Everyone learning a language starts out somewhere.

Don’t assume that other people are more intelligent than you because they speak 2 or 3 languages. All of them have gone through the frustrating process of learning and making mistakes. But they did not give up. So neither should you. Learning a new language is definitely achievable with the right tools and a healthy attitude.

The Language Teaching Centre (LTC)

One of those tools is the Language Teaching Centre (LTC). A language school in Cape Town, LTC gives you all you need to be able to learn a new language properly and easily. The Language Teaching Centre not only gives you the opportunity to learn new languages but also lets you engage with other students from different cultures and backgrounds. We even offer excursions about twice a week which are there to help students discover the beautiful city we live in. The breathtaking view of Table Mountain and the harbour will inspire you to tackle the task of learning a new language with vigour. Take a language course in Cape Town at the Language Teaching centre today and see yourself flourish.

What is the origin of human language?

LTC Team — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 08:45:06 +0000

We may never know for sure the origin of human language, but it’s still worth a try to look at what we know so far about our primary form of communication.

We ain’t nothin but mammals

All animals communicate with each other, and humans are no exception. We are the only animals to have developed our very own language that is more than just signals. Even our speech is different to the noises other animals use to communicate. Our sounds come from a cortical speech centre that does not respond instinctively, but rather organises sound and meaning rationally. We are the only animals to have this section in our brain. When and how this happened is not clear, but it is thought that its evolution must have been a long process. This probably occurred years ago, our ancestors having a slower, smaller, and much simpler vocabulary than ours.

It is perhaps easier to look at when individual languages originated. Today, there are about 5000 languages spoken worldwide, all grouped into a limited number of categories. But no matter how different they may seem, all languages are linked by shared words or sounds – and sometimes even grammatical constructions. The theory is that the members of each linguistic group all descended from one main language.

Indo-European

The Indo-European group of languages are the most widely spoken languages today, and are spoken by about half of the world’s population. The entire group – from Hindi and Persian to Norwegian – is said to have developed from a tribe of nomads who roamed the plains of eastern Europe and western Asia from around 3000 BC. From around the time of 2000 BC, the descendants of this tribe started speaking Indo-European languages, languages which eventually reached the Atlantic coast and the northern shores of the Mediterranean, even penetrating far into Asia.

Semitic

The Semitic family of languages is another linguistic group significant to the early history of west Asia and is still important today. This family of languages is believed to have derived from the language of one tribal group who were nomads in southern Arabia. By 3000 BC, Semitic languages were spoken from southern Arabia to the north of Syria.

Most of the major language families usually occupy one distinct and self-contained area. Exceptions to this are the Indo-European and the Finno-Ugric groups. Today, the Indo-European group of languages has spread across the globe as a result of colonialism. But the intermingling of the Indo-European and Finno-Ugric language groups that are across Europe has come about for a different reason at an earlier stage. Finland, along with Estonia on the opposite shore of the Baltic, forms an isolated pocket of the Finno-Ugric group (the Finno part). Hungary is another (the Ugric element). The cause of this separation is the great plateau of Europe which the Finno-Ugric and Indo-European tribes have fought over through the centuries. The ancestral language of the Finns, Estonians and Hungarians was once spoken in a small region between the Baltic and the Ural mountains, until they were scattered by Indo-European pressure.

The divide between Romance and Germanic languages

Throughout history, the different language groups have infiltrated each other due to trade, conquest, and technology among others. A good example of this is the division of Romance languages and Germanic languages in Europe. The Romance family includes Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian; while the Germanic family includes English, Dutch, Flemish, German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic.

This division reflects the influence the Roman Empire had back in the day. Italy, France and Spain were the only stable areas in the Roman world to retain the influence of Latin after the fall of the empire. The Germanic areas east and north of the Rhine were never fully brought under complete Roman control. England was safe within the empire for 300 years, but the Romanised Celts were not strong enough to resist the invading German tribes, known as the Angles and the Saxons, and their languages prevailed in the form of Anglo-Saxon.

English Then

Modern English occupies a position between the western European family of languages and the Eastern European family of languages, with its vocabulary being half Germanic and half Romance in origin. This is due to the Norman conquest. After the Normans seized north-west France, they adopted the local language. When the Normans arrived in England, French formed a large part of their cultural baggage. 700 years of Norman rule, and Latin words were brought back into the English language through medieval French.

English Now

Mandarin may be spoken by more people than English – which is in the fortunate position of being the lingua franca at the moment – as for the first time in history a global language is needed for practical purposes.

But it doesn’t end there. The evolution of the English language alone is already changing, with many different varieties of it in use, developing local words, phrases and constructions from other languages in the specific areas it gets spoken – giving their own version of the language a special colour.

The Language Teaching Centre

Thanks to places such as The Language Teaching centre (LTC), you no longer have to stick with just one or two languages – or even one or two language groups! The Language Teaching Centre is an international language school in Cape Town which offers English and other internationally recognised foreign languages. This training and certification takes place in a positive learning environment with highly qualified teachers who are native speakers of the languages that they teach. Their experience allows them to teach students of many different nationalities, backgrounds and languages in a nurturing and positive environment. If you’d like to learn a new language, there is no better place to do it than at LTC.

Why learn a new language?

LTC Team — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 13:46:51 +0000

On Wednesday evening, I sat with a German textbook open on my lap desperately trying to memorise all the rules of der, die and das. Sometimes it’s difficult to find patterns or meaning in a new language. But to persevere and struggle on when you learn a new language is oh so worth it at the end of the day when you get to converse fluently in that language.

Learning a new language will change the way you view the world and will even shape the way you think. Example: in English, we use the word love to refer to what we feel for our dogs, things we like, and even to express what we feel for our significant other. In Spanish however, the word amar (to love) is not used in the same way, it is reserved ONLY for those you deeply care for.

Learning a new language also exposes you to new cultures you may never have been exposed to otherwise. By learning a new language, you learn about the culture that comes along with it. You learn that there is so much more to life and that it is good to be different. It teaches you to truly understand and embrace diversity. By being able to speak another language you connect yourself to millions of others on a level that you would otherwise be unable to reach. Learning another language results in an understanding and tolerance between people. One of the best ways to understand a culture better or a specific person of another language you’d like to get to know better is by learning to speak their language.

It may not always be easy learning a new language by yourself, which is why the Language Teaching Centre (LTC) is a great way to really get a feel for a language. Here, students not only have the chance to learn another language but to engage with others from different backgrounds and discover more about other cultures. Highly qualified teachers at the Language Teaching Centre are experienced in teaching students from many different backgrounds and languages, and their encouragement motivates students to work harder to learn more. As famous psycholinguist, Frank Smith once said, “One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.”

To be at least partly fluent in another language is great for your social life. The more languages you know, the more people you’ll be able to interact with. Even better, learning a new language is good for your brain, keeping it alert and high-functioning thanks to all the technical nuances, irregularities, and grammar rules. But best of all – knowing a number of different languages makes you stand out in a pool of job applicants. With all these benefits and more, you have no excuse not to learn at least one other language, especially with the boost the Language Teaching Centre will give you. A quote by Hungarian interpreter, Kató Lomb, sums it all up beautifully: “We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.”