Why studying will never help you speak a language

Why studying will never help you 
speak a language 
 | 12 1 COMMENT S | CATEGORY: LEARNING LANGUAGES 
This post has been a long time coming. 
Teachers and linguists are going to hate me for this, but it has 
to be said: 
You can never speak a language by just studying it, 
no matter how much you study 
Yes, you read that right. Studying is the wrong thing to do if 
you want to speak a language. I’m totally serious. 
Last night I ran into some English speakers and heard the 
same thing I’ve heard thousands of times about other 
languages: they have been studying German for years and 
don’t speak it yet, even though they now live in Berlin. 
Every day, I get dozens of e-mails from aspiring language 
hackers sharing their tales of woe with me; they’ve spent a 
small fortune on workbooks, CD audio courses etc. and have 
spent probably thousands of hours locked up in their rooms 
studying tables of rules and vocabulary lists. And they still 
can’t say anything. 
Most people think the reason that this happens is because the 
material/teacher isn’t good enough. Or perhaps the language 
really is impossible and it’s the “hardest one in the world”. 
I get asked all the time what my study method is, and 
precisely what books I buy. If our study materials were better 
then surely we’d finally speak!? 
No. 
There is only one thing study is good for 
The purpose of this post isn’t to tell the world to stop 
studying. However, you have to realise that studying a 
language has a very specific purpose and if you are not aware 
of this then you may end up stuck in the vicious circle 
of never speaking: Studying will never help you speak a 
language, but (as long as you do it right) studying will help 
you speak a language better. 
Most people don’t see the difference here. That one crucial 
word changes absolutely everythingyou need to take into 
consideration. 
If you already speak but your conjugations aren’t great or you 
need to quickly increase your store of vocabulary about a 
specific topic, then by all means study. Need to pass a test in 
school? Sure, study for it. When the goal is to pass a test or 
improve your grasp on something specific, then study is the 
way to go. 
But if you don’t speak the language confidently right now, 
then it’s time someone broke this news to you: studying is not 
the way to get this confidence! 
But I’m almost ready! 
When you study, you acquire vocabulary, you improve your 
grammar and you do exercises. Logically enough, your level 
improves. With time, your potential increases and you can 
understand more and you can theoretically join in on a wider 
scope of conversations. “One day”, when you’re ready, you can 
finally start speaking confidently. Not today though – maybe 
you just need to study a little bit more. 
Theoretically & Maybe. 
Based on my experience and accounts from thousands of 
learners I’ve met who need their language in the real 
world (not tests), “theoretically and maybe” translate 
to never. The academic system seems to have drilled into us 
that studying is the way to speak a language. Studying helps 
you improve (and to pass a test you do indeed need to know 
your grammar/vocab better because that’s what the test is 
usually about) but it is an artificial means of acquiring or 
improving the language. Some artificial ways are quite useful, 
but they are still artificial. 
When you look at a language the same way you look at 
geography or history or other subjects in school that can 
be tested, then you simply don’t know what a language 
actually is. 
Stop looking at conversations with human beings as a test 
that you have to pass (so, every time you make a mistake you 
get a big red X and if you make a certain amount of them, then 
you fail). It doesn’t work like that!! 
A language is a means of communication. It’s not a table of 
grammar rules in some dusty old book, or a piece of paper 
that you have to spread ink across in the right way for your 
teacher to be happy. German isn’t a rough sounding collection 
of Datives and Accusatives, it’s families sharing what they did 
that day. Czech isn’t a frustrating collection of consonant 
clusters, it’s young couples flirting with one another and 
someone buying his morning bread. 
These are not things that you can put under a microscope. 
They are people living their lives and sharing experiences with 
one another. That is what a language is for. When you are 
locked away in your room you are avoiding this contact and 
that’s why so many people never speak. They still think 
about everything they don’t know and see the world that 
speaks their target language as one big test that they are 
doomed to fail. 
How do you learn to speak then? 
So, if studying isn’t how you learn to speak a language, then 
what is? I’ll tell you, and it’s going to blow your mind. 
Are you ready? 
Are you sitting down? Brace yourself! 
You have to speak it! Yes, I know – it sounds absolutely 
crazy, doesn’t it! To speak a language you have to actually 
speak it. 
It will be hard at first – you won’t know how to say things, it 
will be embarrassing, you’ll hesitate a lot and feel frustrated 
that you can’t say things precisely the way you want to. This 
will happen even if you study for decades. Until you actually 
use the language in its natural context (or at least in a course 
that gets you to speak to people) you will always have this 
barrier to get through. You simply have to break through it. If 
you practise often enough and enthusiastically enough you 
will get to the other side quite quickly. You can do this in 
person if there are natives or other learners close by, or over 
the Internet with millions of natives. 
However, you can’t study to get this confidence. Confidence 
isn’t hidden somewhere on page 182, it’s getting into an actual 
conversation and proving to yourself (Obama style) yes you 
can. 
Too many people study to gain confidence – this is an oblique 
way of going about it. You have to simply get used to speaking 
the language. Know how it feels to have the words come out of 
you rather than in an artificial test in which you have several 
minutes to think about things. 
Last night with the English speakers I had the almost magic 
ability to turn them into German speakers with nothing more 
than a 5 minute pep-talk to boost their confidence and give 
them some language hacks. I didn’t teach them any actual 
German or tell them to study in a particular way. They had the 
potential to speak the entire time, no matter what their level 
was. 
You haven’t learned enough to say anything yet? Hogwash! In 
many European languages you have thousands of 
words before you even start. In all languages you can study 
for a couple of hours (rather than years) to get basic phrases 
and then use them. Use what you know and go from there. 
Then you will see what you do need to work on (usually it will 
be something very specific and relevant to your situation 
rather than “chapters 1 to 7″), and then very specific study will 
help you improve how you are speaking so you will be able to 
express yourself a little better. But you already have the ability 
to say something right now. 
There are a LOT of ways you can speak a language in the first 
weeks even if you didn’t study it much yet. So many ways that 
I had to write 30,000 words to describe them. 
So what do you think? Picking on the academic system is such 
an easy target because it does such a miserable job in so many 
places and wastes the time of millions of people when it comes 
to language conversing ability. There are exceptions, and 
there are great courses to take, but that is usually because they 
have students converse in as natural a way as possible. Once 
the focus changes from studying to actually using the 
language to communicate with people then the road to 
speaking well, and doing it quickly, is opened up. 
Don’t have this attitude of Leave me alone! Can’t you see I’m 
learning your language? 
A language is a social tool and being locked up in your 
room studying it is, frankly, antisocial. You can’t avoid 
studying to improve your language skills, but if you want to 
speak then stop studying and just speak already!! 
———— 
Of course, I wrote in depth about how I learn to speak 
languages with as little study as possible in the Language 
Hacking Guide. If you are a blogger check out information 
about becoming an affiliate. 
I’m sure you can all understand how passionate I am to get 
this message out there – speaking a language does not have to 
be a chore! When I hear so many people complain about 
grammar I feel like they are looking at their language wrong 
and focusing on the wrong things. Stop complaining about 
it and just start speaking! You’ll make mistakes, but you will 
get over the barrier and start on the path to fluency 
Looking forward to your comments! Feel free to call me crazy 
(as always), but offensive or irrelevant comments will be 
eaten up by the Smoke Monster from Lost. 
*********************** 
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If you enjoyed this post, you will love my TEDx talk! You can 
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language if you watch it here. 
This article was written by Benny Lewis 
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