HOW NOT TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
In Ten Easy Steps

Step 7. Avoid instruction

After an interim of strange doubt, the value of foreign language teaching to foreign language learning has been re-established.

Accordingly, it is best avoided; particularly if you are by nature analytical or enjoy the role of disciple.

If you feel compelled to go through the motions, select a teacher who will talk to you in the literary version of the language or give you false information about it in your own language.

Ideally, choose a teacher whose personality clashes with yours, who is unreliable about showing up, and whom you pay either little or nothing (so that you will not be determined to get your money’s worth.)

Make the arrangement as informal as possible, so that you do not have fixed, definite times for study, and so that you can cancel frequently.

Translate and be damned. Formulate everything you want to say in your own language first, and translate it badly, i.e. word for word and with scant regard for context.

Insist on having as much of the target language you encounter as possible translated (badly) for you.

Target language videos, discs and tapes are best avoided, but if you do have such things, do not use them to practise the things that parroting can help you with, like phonemes, tones and formulaic language (set phrases); use them instead to try and analyse the language.

Use books to practise reading aloud: unless you intend to be a news-reader, this is a fairly useless, excessively difficult exercise - it is hard enough to do it well in one’s own language, and trying it in a foreign language is an excellent recipe for failure.