Language is a skill, so why is it being taught as a subject?

Language is a skill! It is not a subject. It is something you do, not just something you need to know in theory.

There are 3 basic approaches to language learning today: Grammar-translation, "speak from day 1" and comprehensible input.

Grammar translation simply treats language as a subject to be studied, similar to other school subjects like history and biology. In this approach, it is all about learning and analyzing the rules of grammar, memorizing a lot of vocabulary, and translating between English and the new language.

"Speak from day 1" is essentially a "learn on the job" approach. The idea is to dive straight in and start speaking, however you can, right from the start. Usually this involves some basic study and memorization of basic phrases. In practice this is what people immersed in the language by living in another country are doing. It can also be done from home with a tutor.

Comprehensible input is devoted to improving understanding through listening and reading. Like speak from day 1, it usually requires some study at the start to be able to understand the most basic texts. The idea is to then progress to gradually more advanced texts, building comprehension along the way. There is an assumption that speaking will flow naturally once a high enough level of understanding has been achieved.

What is lacking in all these approaches is training the skill of speaking. The reality of speak from the start is the speaking is practiced, badly. The advantage of course is that it is better to practice speaking badly than not at all, but it is better still to practice speaking well. That is the approach we take with Fluent Hero - a progressive course which builds up your speaking skills from the very start, perfecting pronunciation and minimizing errors.

Error and conditional probability

By doing something, you increase the probability of doing it again.

Simply making a mistake doesn't mean that you have learnt from making that mistake. Mistakes are not bad per se, and they absolutely are an inevitable feature of language learning AND at the same time, every time you make a particular mistake, you are reinforcing that particular pattern in your mind, and increasing the probability of making the same mistake again.

Fluent Hero incorporates elements from all these approaches

• Train speaking from day 1 - but wait until you have the skills you need to be able to handle conversation before prioritizing real life speaking practice

• Use some translation to speed up learning in the early stages - but ONLY after the sounds of the language have been mastered

• Provide masses of comprehensible input, and use speaking to activate the language and be able to use it