by Morgan Lowrie

Created on: March 03, 2009   Last Updated: June 22, 2011

In many ways, the world is shrinking. Corporations, which once upon a time were local or national entities, have now burst free of national boundaries to prowl unrestrained through hundreds of global markets. Thanks to modern telecommunications, soccer fans in India, England, and Argentina can converse with each other as easily as with their next-door neighbors. Immigration has ensured that, in order to function, workers in Vancouver must learn Mandarin, and Miami workers, Spanish.

Thanks to the realities of globalization, learning a second (or third or fourth) language has become increasingly useful and sometimes necessary. The number of adults signing up for language classes has been steadily increasing in recent years, despite the fact that learning a new language in later years is no simple feat.

As a Canadian who grew up in the mainly French-speaking province of Quebec, learning a second language is something with which I am intimately familiar. From my experiences in a French-immersion school program, I have learned that some language-learning techniques work better than others. What follows is a list of techniques which are effective in picking up a second language.

Immersion

Immersion is truly the only way to successfully learn a language. Technically, a language immersion program is one in which students are taught all core subjects in a second language (not just the language itself). In other words, instead of just taking a French class, an elementary student enrolled in Canada's immersion program also takes history, science, math, etc, in French. Although the student enters kindergarten without any knowledge of French, young children learn languages so easily that within a year most are comfortably functioning in the second language.

Most people use the word immersion' in a more general sense, applying it to any language program in which the student is immersed' in the language, and is forced to use it outside of a classroom setting.

The reason why immersion is essential to learning a second language is because it forces the student to truly think in the second language. All too often, normal second-language courses, whether conducted in-class or on-line, focus too much on learning grammar, spelling and correct sentence structure. Vocabulary is added on a word-by-word basis. Although some of this education is necessary to gain the rudimentary basics of the language, students who learn only this way continue to think in their native tongues and must

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