{"id":441,"date":"2009-10-18T10:59:10","date_gmt":"2009-10-18T10:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=441"},"modified":"2009-10-16T11:04:46","modified_gmt":"2009-10-16T11:04:46","slug":"speak-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/18\/speak-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Speak up!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I moved temporarily to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spain\">Spain<\/a> and, with no previous knowledge of the language, have been attempting to learn <a href=\"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/language\/spanish.html\">Spanish<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst I\u2019ve had some success picking up individual words, and can already read some simple Spanish, speaking is my real \u2018problem\u2019 area.<br \/>\nMy biggest fear is getting words wrong \u2013 I dislike being incorrect. This fear is very unhelpful in language acquisition, as you learn from your mistakes! <\/p>\n<p>And as a recent study shows, conversing is essential to language development. A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucla.edu\/\">UCLA<\/a> study found that activities that got children talking were more conducive to language acquisition than other methods. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Each day, children hear an average of some 13,000 words spoken to them by adults and participate in about 400 conversational turns with adults. More conversations mean more opportunities for mistakes and therefore more opportunities for valuable corrections. Furthermore, they also provide an opportunity for children to practice new vocabulary. (Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/pub_releases\/2009-06\/uoc--chl062909.php\">Eurekalert.org<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Whilst the study focused on language acquisition in children, I think the findings can be applied to all language learning. Make the most of any opportunity you have to converse in your chosen language \u2013 and don\u2019t be scared to make mistakes! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I moved temporarily to Spain and, with no previous knowledge of the language, have been attempting to learn Spanish. Whilst I\u2019ve had some success picking up individual words, and can already read some simple Spanish, speaking is my real \u2018problem\u2019 area. My biggest fear is getting words wrong \u2013 I dislike being incorrect. This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,40,327],"tags":[335,332,123,331,328,327,329,330,333,334,10,44],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hints-and-tips","category-language-acquisition","category-spanish","tag-conversation","tag-language-development","tag-language-learning","tag-mistakes","tag-spain","tag-spanish","tag-spanish-language","tag-speaking","tag-ucla","tag-ucla-study","tag-vocabulary","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}