And of course, you have to find a good one!

Most of the students who come to us to learn Czech have Czech partners. Some of them initially tried to exploit their partners, hoping to have some free Czech lessons at home, which, perhaps, one day, might lead to a fluent conversation in Czech.

  But after a few frustrating attempts, they come to us, asking for a Czech tutor who could help.
Why is it we can’t learn Czech from our partners?

  The answer is simple. You can’t learn from someone who can’t teach. And it isn’t enough just to be Czech to be able to teach Czech.

 It takes many skills to teach the Czech language. We are talking about an east eauropean language which is very complex in its essence and grammatically incomparable to English. Therefore, understandably, it is impossible to explain how and why we say certain things unless you are talking to a linguist or a Czech teacher, or someone who really understands Czech.
 
Learning Czech from your partner is often limited to vocabulary, simple phrases and expressions, and maybe some basic grammar patterns, acquired mostly by repetition rather than understanding.

Joining a Czech class is another option but the results seem to be poor mostly because students in a typical classroom have very little opportunity to speak Czech and practice what they have just learned. It is really important to have as much Czech conversation as possible within your lessons, so that you can put in practice what you just learned and to consolidate often rather complicated grammatical rules.

 We run many one to one Czech lessons in London and teach students who are genuinely determined to conquer the language. It is a real pleasure to see their progress and excitement replacing the frustration and apprehension they felt initially, before coming to us to try private classes.

In fact, I spoke to one of our students recently who has been learning Czech for just over a year, starting from scratch, and his resilience and hard work as well as a great relationship with his dedicated tutor has resulted in incredible progress; indeed I recently learned that he felt so confident he was able to have an argument in Czech, over the phone, with his new mother in law!

Most of the students who come to us and request private Slovak lessons have a Slovak partner or spouse. They often travel to Slovakia with them on a regular basis to visit friends and family and feel frustrated when unable to speak Slovak or even understand a few words. They experience the famous Slovak hospitality, fall in love with the country and come back determined to learn Slovak somehow.

There are of course several ways to try to learn Slovak but lets just name a few. These are the typical pathways which students go through before getting so frustrated that they feel forced to opt for a private Slovak tutor;

1) I want to learn Slovak and will do it my own, to surprise her/him!

OK, so lets go to Waterstone’s and buy all the books they have to help me learn Slovak. At home, open the books, start reading enthusiastically, close the first book after ten minutes in panic, go to make a coffee, come back, open another book, have a quick peek at page 154, shut it, throw it on the table, have a couple of palpitations, a cup of tea, a brisk walk, third attempt, open the big dictionary, try to read aloud two or three words, tongue tangles, can’t untangle it, books shoved under the bed, anxiety attack, sedatives, bed.
 
2) I want to learn Slovak from my partner so she/he will have to teach me!
Question: Darling, why do you weirdly change people’s names all the time when you speak? Can’t explain that darling, sorry. Why do you say this differently when you talk to your mom and when to your uncle? Sorry darling I can’t explain that. Why did he say..Sorry darling I don’t know ..Why?..sorry..W..? B…… Ooooh never mind!!!
 
3) I am not giving up. I want to learn Slovak. So I will join a class. (Oh, I can’t find one! Ah, here we go..)
Sporadically, Slovak classes are run across London but as well as with Czech, Slovak is not an easy language to learn in the first place and learning Slovak in a classroom full of other keen students doesn’t allow one to either follow, keep up with or to practice what has been taught, so progress is often very slow.
 
4) I want to learn Slovak and I try and try and I still can’t speak. WHY???? I am feeling quite frustrated now.

Because it is a difficult language and unless you are a linguist or exceptionally gifted for languages you will get lost doing this on your own.
 Asking a Slovak native speaker for help doesn’t get you very far either because again, they would have to know a lot more about the language than just being fluent. And even if they knew, how would they explain a concept to a person with English as a mother tongue where such concepts do not exist?

Eventually, all more or less frustrated students do give it a go and very quickly realise that the best and by far the most efficient way, which brings the fast and steady results, is to opt for private Slovak lessons.

In our experience, there is absolutely no difference in the capability for language acquisition between a retired student and a student in their twenties. On the contrary; most mature learners find learning foreign languages much easier than a younger student, often because of the difference in their educational background; many older students have been taught grammar when they were at school and therefore have a better chance to grasp their new language quickly as it makes sense to them straight from the beginning of tuition.

It is fascinating to see a mature student learning a new language. Older students  are extremely diligent, dedicated and really enjoy their lessons! They almost always find learning languages both fulfilling and relaxing.

It is never too late to start learning French, Italian or Spanish, or any other language you feel really passionate about. At the London Language Studio we run private courses specifically tailored to suit mature students and those who have retired. Above all we make sure our lessons are interesting, enriching and fun.

I strongly believe that the best way is by learning words in a context. If you simply learn words by reading a vocabulary list, you will probably forget most of them in the following three days. Instead, I suggest you learn new vocabulary through reading and translation articles or if possible, listening to native speakers and asking them for an explanation or translation.
Learn it using Post-Its

This really works for concrete things you can see around you and touch. Decide which words or phrases you want to learn. Write each one on a post-it, if possible with a picture or symbol (This uses both sides of the brain, and makes the most of your linguistic grey matter). Stick your post its around your home – anywhere is fine, as long as you will see your words regularly. Even better, stick it to the actual thing you want to remember how to say in your target language. If we are talking mainly about things-nouns, in many languages these will have a gender. Colours can help with this – why not use blue post-its for masculine nouns, and green for feminine? Every time you come across one of your notes, simply say the word out loud. When you think there is a word you have learned and remember, simly remove the note. This way you will see less and less notes around you, which to you will mean you know more and more words. It is surprising how effective this effortless memory technique is.

Language students in this country unfortunately struggle immensely to learn foreign languages. Why is this?

Lack of motivation? English is too easy compared to other languages?

No. There is one and only reason for this and it is appalling;

The average student who comes to me to learn Spanish, Italian, Greek, Czech or Slovak has absolutely no idea what a language is about, has never heard of basic universal grammar rules and terms such as object, subject, syntax, but even worse, has no idea about the type of words of which a sentence is made.

Most people do not know where the verb is in the question we pose every day: “How are you?” in fact, a staggering majority of students answer my question “Where is the verb in this sentence?” as “hmmmmm… How?”….

Not only can they not locate an English verb in an English sentence but they have no idea about what a verb is, or what it does.

And this includes people with high skilled jobs, jobs with serious responsibilities, managers, businessmen, and so on.

How can we possibly expect anyone with this inexistent knowledge of their own language to understand and learn another one? How can they master the different endings of verbs when it comes to changing person, tense, mode etc? How can they possibly change anything at all if they are unable to even locate the word to be changed.

This represents a complete failure of the state education system and I feel terribly sorry to see how students struggle to overcome this, which often involves a lot of embarrassment for them and inevitably creates a huge lack of confidence straight from the beginning of their learning.

This national phenomenon is completely absurd and unnecessary; if only English teachers were allowed to actually teach English.

We are completely aware of this issue at the London Language Studio and always make sure we help our students to understand the principle of how their own language works as well as explaining the fundamentals of the language they embark on learning with us. It only takes a moment and certainly makes learning languages more pleasurable, less frustrating and definitely a lot of fun!

The Greek language had always had its dialects and I understand that people can get confused as to which one to learn – Greek or Greek Cypriot. But of course the language is one, that of Modern Greek. There would be, or should be, no course books or lessons tailored for Cypriot dialect only, simply because dialects are just regional speech patterns. The lessons are based on the standard Greek grammar.

As a linguist and Greek language tutor, with no specific research on the Cypriot dialect, I would say that there are a lot of differences between Cypriot dialect and any other dialect/ language use at other parts of Greece.

I find it very important that we follow one model of a language- the standard Greek and do not try to allow so many diversities in language use. But I know it was inevitable that Cyprus went through war and foreign language influences that created a distinct vocabulary with words either of ancient Greek root or English-Greek, Asian-Greek. (The same happened to the Cretan dialect, although this has very limited vocabulary that not all Cretans use nowadays because of the people moving from north to Crete and from Crete to North of Greece).

I would advise people who are interested in learning Greek not to worry much about what lessons to follow- the lessons are standard. Tutors are trying to mention some of the differences in terms of dialect, should they know/ speak of course the Cypriot dialect. The dialect will be learnt anyway through your interaction with Cypriots.