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Learning strategies

Learning Esperanto

Main article: Esperanto

Esperanto, the most widely used international auxiliary language, is founded by L. L. Zamenhof, a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist, in 1887, aimed to eliminate language barriers in the international contacts. Esperanto is an artificial language created on the basis of the Indo-European languages, absorbing the reasonable factors of commonality of the Germanic languages. Esperanto has a completely consistent in its spoken and writing. The stress of every word is fixed on the penultimate syllable. By learning twenty-eight letters and mastering the phonetic rules, one can read and write any words. With further simplification and standardization, Esperanto becomes more easily to master than other languages. Ease of learning help one build the confidence and learning Esperanto, as a learning strategy, constitutes a good introduction to foreign language study.

Teaching Strategies

Code Switching

Main Article: Code switching

Code switching is a special linguistic phenomenon that the speaker consciously alternates two or more languages according to different time, places, contents, objects and other factors. Code switching shows its functions while one is in the environment that mother tongue are not playing a dominant role in students' life and study, such as the children in the bilingual family or in the immigrant family. That is to say, the capability of using code switching, relating to the transformation of phonetics, words, language structure, expression mode, thinking mode, cultural differences and so on, is needed to be guided and developed in the daily communication environment. Most people learn foreign language in the circumstance filled with the using of their native language so that their ability of code switching cannot be stimulated, and thus the efficiency of foreign language acquisition would decrease. Therefore, as a teaching strategy, code switching is used to help students better gain conceptual competences and to provide rich semantic context for them to understand some specific vocabularies.

By Different Life Stage

Early Childhood Education

Main article: Early Childhood Education

Early childhood is the fastest and most critical period for one to master language in their life. Children's language communication is transformed from non-verbal communication to verbal communication from ages of one to five. Their mastery of language is largely acquired naturally by living in a verbal communication environment. As long as we are good at guiding and creating opportunities for children, children's language ability is easy to be developed and cultivated.

Compulsory Education

Compulsory education, for most people, is the period that they have access to a second or foreign language for the first time. In this period, the most professional foreign language education and academic atmosphere are provided to the students. They can get help and motivation from teachers and be activated by the peers at any time. One would be able to undergo a lot of specialized learning in order to truly master a great number of rules of vocabulary, grammar and verbal communication.

Adult Education

See also: Adult Education

Learning a foreign language during adulthood means one is pursuing a higher value of himself by obtaining a new skill. At this stage, individuals have already developed study habit so that they own sufficient self-restrict ability to supervise themselves learning a language. However, at the same time, the life pressure is also a obstacle for adults.

Elderly Education

Compared to other life stage, this period is the hardest one to learning a new language because of the gradually brain deterioration and memory-loss. Meanwhile, language education for seniors can slow down the degeneration of brain and active ageing.