On a poster in a United Mission to Nepal classroom in Kathmandu, “Secrets of Language Learning,” from Learning a Foreign Language by Eugene Nida (Bible translator):
Language must be automatic, or it is practically useless.
Only after one has learned to sit and listen can one profitably stand and speak.
- Three processes:
- Drill and repetition
- Thinking in the foreign language, and
- Continued opportunities to use the language
- In general one must murder a language before mastering it, and part of the murdering process must begin at once.