Use Them or Lose Them. Review on Studying a Foreign Language

If you are like me and, well, never shut up, learning a foreign language (or 2 or 3) is the best thing you can do. Just think of all the new people in the world you'll be able to bore (sorry 'entertain') with your opinions!

My first encounter with foreign languages was early on. My mother was a lecturer at the local university when I was growing up, and German was her main subject. When I was 6 years old I could say the odd thing - and more than enough to embarass my mother in the process....... Here's the story :

We went over to Werne, our german twin town. My mother was running the local school exchange, and took me and my sister along with her. Naturally enough, I was the youngest person around for the whole 10 days, and various people would play with me and talk to me while my mother got on with her job of interpreting. On the last day, I was sitting on the mayor's knee. He asked me, in English, what I could say in German. I came out with ''Du bist ein Dumkopf'' - literally, ''you're an idiot'' - as you can see I'd only learnt vital phrases. I'm told now that my mother could have thumped me, but luckily the mayor found it funny. Only thing is, 12 years on we still see him almost every year, and unforunately, he has a good memory. No matter how old I get, or what I do in the world, I have the feeling he'll always see me as the cheeky little 6 year old who told him he was an idiot......

Apart from this though, my experience with foreign languages has been good. I have GCSE level French and am now studying German as part of my Masters degree. I can speak enough Italian to get by, and hopt to pick up Spanish again next year. I say ''again'' because I studied it for a year at school, but only 1 year and I've forgotten most of it. This is one of the problems with foreign languages - unless you use them youe lose them.

Howeverm the advantages of foreign languages far outweigh the negatives. I'm currently living on my own in Austria for the summer and speaking German pretty much 24/7. I'm having fun, and it'll look good on my CV ;) I've also worked in Italy and Germany, and since Germany was when I was 16, it looked great on my UCAS form when applying for universities.

I've met some interesting people on my travels, and without my languages I would not have been able to talk to them for any length of time. I can travel alone and not worry about arriving in a new country because I know I'll be able to cope. Last month I was in Slovakia. In my hotel, restaurants and shops, most people did not speak English and I speak, oh, about 2 words of Sloavakian. Luckily, we had German as out Lingua Franca and so we could make ourselves understood.

Brits and Americans (especially Americans.....) are often lazy about learning a new language. We generally assume that everyone will speak English, and although it's well on its way to becoming the world language, it's not there yet. And anyway, isn't it a bit egotistical to want everyone to speak our language? Making the effort to use someone else's native language makes all the difference and could just get you that all important contract in the future.

So those are the reasons for learning a foreign language, but how can you go about it?

There are numerous options, so there's bound to be one to suit you. Local libraries have teach yourself books and tapes, and sometimes videos too, which you can hire either for free or for a nominal fee. You could join an evening class or hire a private tutor (not a frequent occurance, but it does happen). There are distance learning schemes too where you study their syllabus at your own pace, and then sit exams in a local centre. Or how about just packing up and moving to a new country for a while? Then you'll have no choice but to learn the lingo if you want to survive.