Learning a foreign language: osmotic or rule-based learning?

2010-04-22

I have often wondered whether each culture learns in different ways.

Japanese are very careful learners and concern themselves with the accuracy of what they say or write.

The people of Saudi Arabia, where I teach, have a more spontaneous approach and seem to pick up language quite easily, yet find it difficult to learn and apply grammatical rules.

To ‘absorb’ language from the work environment is an effective way to acquire language communication skills, but many people, if they are not corrected, will continue to make the same mistakes, which the longer they repeat, the more deep-rooted they become and therefore, the more difficult to remedy at a later stage.

How do you learn English? What ‘tools’ and resources do you use outside the classroom?

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