Language Learning is Language Using

The Omniglot notes this story on how children learn language best: In conversing with adults. It's an important point for language learners - especially the self-taught - to keep in mind. Language is not a thing, existing in some perfect form and to be mastered by the memorization of its forms. Language is an action, or rather, a series of habitual actions subject to modification according to time and place for the purpose of achieving real world purposes.

If there were no such thing as a glass of milk, language is theoretically flexible enough to form a phrase to ask for one anyway, but such a phrase wouldn't get much use, and would quickly fall into desuetude (but I repeat myself). The same is true of the language you are learning through self-study: if it doesn't get anything suggestive of real-world use, it will at best crystallize as a sort of inanimate block of knowledge in your brain; at worst it will shrink away. If the only time you make use of your language is when you are studying, should you need to use that language you may well be stuck because you'll be in the wrong context for retrieving it (the newest studies say our memory problems are much like our real world organizational problems - it's not that the memory is lost but that you can't figure out the best way to retrace your mental pathways to figure out where you put it - see here). This means that if you want your language to come to you easily and naturally, you need to be doing things not just to learn but also to build the pathways so that it will be accessible when you want it.

Returning to the linked article, it suggests that kids who are read to a lot learn language, of course, but that those who actually converse with adults learn better. That's because language is a two-way street. It's not just for information reception; it's for communication, and you need to develop the capacity to formulate, not just receive thought.

I've written in the past about self-talk - learning key phrases for key situations and having a mental dialog with yourself to practice your language when you're in line at the bank or grocery store or whatever. To this I would add that it's useful to get yourself a small phrasebook so you can look up anything you've forgotten or haven't learned. By the third or fourth time you run through how to order what you want at the restaurant, ask for the check, etc, you won't need the phrasebook anymore - your brain will associate pulling up that language with going to a restaurant just as surely as you ask yourself if you shouldn't pick up an extra loaf of bread since you're at the grocery store anyway. The idea is that just as children get better at language by actually communicating - talking and not just listening - you can bring your language off the page and into your life more easily if you avoid associating it just with study time and mentally trick yourself into the belief that it's something you need and use in real-life situations.