Learning Language One Sentence at a Time

It seems a given that in learning a language it's important to practice, to speak aloud, etc. But there's an element that gets missed too often - the importance of approaching language as a vehicle for uttering complete thoughts. You'll find fill-in-the-blank drills, translations and such in most language textbooks. But at the back, what do you have? A glossary and verb conjugations (and sometimes noun declensions). At the beginning or end of the chapter, there's a vocabulary. And in the middle, there's usually ten pages of morphology for every page of syntax. These things are useful for learning about a language and decoding what's going on in a language with which you have some familiarity. But do they teach you the language per se?

I've written about Anki earlier. In the past few weeks, it's helped me do a better job of studying my Mandarin and Italian. But there's one change I've made from my usual flashcard preparation that has also helped: Almost half my cards are full sentences. And having those complete sentences is making me think about how the language goes together and get a much better handle on what's going on than if I tried, per tradition, to start with vocabulary, adjust with morphology and arrange with syntax. Just like English, my sentences come as one piece, even if they are few in number.

When you learned your own language, you did not follow the vocabulary, morphology, syntax sequence per se. You just returned the sounds that were made at you. Of course it took you a long time to decode, and of course you're free to consult the handbooks if a point is really confusing you. But to improve automacity in your language, it might be helpful to stop making word lists and start making sentence lists. For example, here is an old form word list:

questo - this (m), libro - book (m), essere - to be, è - is, azzurro - blue, giallo - yellow, questa - this (f), sedia - chair (f)

You can then learn the pattern "x è y" = "x is y" while remembering that adjectives and demonstrative adjectives agree in number and gender with the nouns to which they refer. And then you can forever drill these constituent elements.

Or you can learn four sentences:
Questo libro è azzuro = This book is blue
Questo libro è giallo = This book is yellow
Questa sedia è azzurra = This chair is blue
Questa sedia è gialla = This chair is yellow

Now, if I tell you that the word for box is scatola, you should be able to quickly come up with:
Questa scatola è azzurra = This box is blue
Questa scatola è gialla = This box is yellow

And if I add that black is nero, you can add:
Questo libro è nero = This book is black
Questa sedia è nera = This chair is black
Questa scatola è nera = This box is black

This would be true whether you learned in pieces or by playing with fully formed sentences. The difference is that if you're playing with fully formed sentences then when you want to say something is black, you'll be used to saying Questo ... è nero and Questa ... è nera with no thought. You'll make the whole sentence agree with the noun, instead of the individual words one by one.

Now, I'm not saying you have to learn every vocabulary item as part of a fully-formed sentence or that you have to drill yourself on every sentence type with all the words you can plug into it. But if you devote a good portion of your drilling, say 25%-30%, to fully formed stock sentences, it will help you make your new language something that flows more naturally, rather than that comes out haltingly and in disconnected bits and pieces. If you're doing okay on word tests but can't talk, give this a try.