Knowledge of advisers: How languages work and how they are learned

Part of what we try to provide learners with is knowledge about how to learn a language, knowledge about how to learn a language, knowledge about what a language is, how it works, how it works both in terms of construction and linguistic mechanics, or in terms of how it works in the mind, i.e. what we actually do when we use a language, particularly a foreign language.

Sometimes the advisor works with a learner who is learning a language that the advisor does not know, or knows only to a very limited extent. You don’t need to be an expert in the language the learner wants to master to be an advisor. But you do need to know about the resources available for learning the language.

The theoretical parts take place on two levels, the psycho-linguistic level, i.e. what it is to speak a foreign language, what it is to learn a foreign language, what it is to use a language in a global way, how it is made. And outside psycho-linguistics, at the level of the language itself, how does a language work, how do we use it? Apart from the traditional images of grammar and vocabulary, what does it mean to use a language, what activities does it involve and what does it imply in terms of knowledge? Another area in which an advisor needs knowledge is learning. What does it mean to learn, what happens when you learn, and perhaps what are the problem areas in learning. So, generally speaking, you need to have a more or less in-depth theoretical knowledge of how language works, how learning works and how communication works in a foreign language as a whole.

Knowledge of how learning takes place, what factors come into play in learning. Knowledge of how a language works, how it works in the mechanical sense, what a language is, how it is constituted, how it is arranged. And there’s a second dimension to how a language works, which is practically how we use it. There are things that aren’t always very obvious to learners, things as basic as you don’t speak the way you write, you don’t write the way you speak. When you say it, it sounds obvious, but in terms of practice and implementation, it’s not as obvious as that. So it’s part of a theoretical background that needs to be mastered, on the way a language works, so we have learning, the language itself and the way the language works.