(The author of this text is a teacher of English with more than thirty years of experience and has been an interpreter for English, French, Serbian and Croatian all his life. His native language is Serbo-Croatian or what is left of it. He will try in this short account to give students (no age limit) an advice on how to start and further develop their language studies.)

Language learning is a demanding intellectual discipline. Another language, apart from your mother tongue, will certainly open one horizon more in your education, to mention one advantage out of a long list.

What matters here is your firm decision to BEGIN and do not ever hope you will be through with it,  for there will be always new facts to learn, to use, to memorise.

Talking a foreign language is easiest. You just need a few words and there you are, you talk! But one should not forget that for serious talking in a foreign language, knowledge of phonetics might be very useful. The art of sound imitation will also be necessary although you as foreigner are entitled to an accent, which in some cases may be charming! Learning international phonetic transcription is easy and can be done in a few hours’ time. Be careful with pronunciation and do not rush as you may fall easily into a variety of traps . READING ALOUD has been a remedy for all of us with hard ears. You will hear yourself, measure the tonality and precision of what you say to your interlocutor. People who will listen to you will certainly appreciate your clarity and your best possible pronunciation. If you want to speak a foreign language of your choice you should be aware of the fact that your words have to spoken with utmost precision. You can arrive at that precision and spontaneity only by READING ALOUD.

Talking capacity and listening ability are closely related disciplines each of which deserves to be developed carefully and at length at first in order to arrive at reasonably fast and comprehensive spoken language. Well-formulated written phrase or properly accentuated sentence you produce may equally be rewarding as a successfully solved equation in mathematics. Remember that by learning foreign languages you invest into your multifaceted culture, your image and your personal pleasure of being able to communicate with aliens. Therefore, carefully test your pronunciation mechanisms and habits and try to speak as distinctly as possible. Try to get rid of local accent and intonation, if possible, of course. And to end this modest paragraph let us say that CLARITY and SIMPLICITY are two principles that have always worked very well in language learning.

The use of all audio media is welcome for beginners. The problem is that tapes, CDs, videotapes are expensive. The most efficient and inexpensive source of spoken word for you is the radio, yes the wireless or a powerful receiver with short-wave band from 6 to 15-20 MHz. You will find your language there and stay tuned as much as you like. If you happen to have one of the most recent – digital receivers – you could not ask for more. If you persist you may write to the broadcasting corporation and ask for details, papers, bulletins whatever. You may skip there anything you do not like: politics, brainwashing etc. and remain hard on your decision to learn the language. While listening (remember precision listening is an intellectual capacity) it would be worthwhile starting writing down everything you hear.

The author has known students of foreign languages who neglected this facet of their learning and in average it took them more than one year to compensate for the loss. Especially so if you have to shift from Latin to Cyrillic alphabet, or to Arab, to Chinese or to Urdu etc. Writing will open to you another vista of communication apart from spoken word. You will be in position to express yourself in written form and this may be a challenge. You may write and ask to have your letter, paper, article corrected and sent back to you so that you may see your mistakes, weak points etc. Important thing here is to be critical and in cases of errors you should go back to the causes of these errors and rectify them. In cases of persisting errors you make, there is a very efficient method: if you cannot memorise, grasp, write or pronounce a word, a grammatical rule, a huge poster-size reminders in your room stuck as imposingly as possible will most certainly help. Keep these reminders, notes on your walls of your room so long as the problem prevails. Human brain is 80 per cent dedicated to communication but there also moments of saturation, you must be aware of that. Using " force " may yield results in cases of repeated errors.

Of all the three disciplines, reading is the most rewarding. You will read an author who has not yet been translated into your native language and who knows, perhaps he or she will never be translated in any other language because of various reasons. Remember that your vocabulary, the vocabulary you are going to use for writing or speaking stems from your reading. Now, to read you will need a dictionary and not the pocket size but the biggest and the largest you may get. If you have to invest, invest big. If possible not less than 100.000 words-dictionaries with phonetic transcription and images if possible. Keeping neat records on all words you do not understand is very useful for later revisions and controls and, perhaps, more poster-reminder on your room-walls. One of the most efficient ways of reading is the so-called obstinate reading: do not skip words or phrases you do not understand. Try to discover the meaning under all cost. Try to see all possible meanings of a sentence. Try to match everything you do not understand to certain logic of the situation, to your own experience and ... you will be the winner. There will be cases you will overdo certain meanings and situations, but do not be afraid. The important thing is NOT TO GIVE UP.

Well, so much this time. Some other time perhaps on grammar, syntax if that interests you.

Dejan Jelacic, prof.