DRAFT

Making progress in your ability to understand the country’s working language and participate comfortably in your environment can be fastidious.

If the working language is a Language of Wider Communication (LWC, such as English, French, Spanish…) some of the ideas below can help you:.

• Try to take a language course where you are
• Consider spending some time in a country to practice the language
• Subscribe to Duolingo or another app to learn the language
• Buy a grammar book and make one lesson per week
• Watch technical review videos on Youtube in the language to train your listening skills
• Try to organize regular meetings via Zoom with a native speaker to practice your speaking skills.

There is another approach which works well, not only for LWC, but for any language, including those you cannot take courses in.

The method was developed by Greg Thomson in 2003, to promote language learning in a relational context. He called it "Growing Participator Approach", GPA (Prestolingua in French). Although this method was created to teach English to newcomers, the principles are the same for any language.

To practice this approach, you need one or more native speakers with whom to learn the language on a daily basis. Let's call him the coach. He or she must be willing to speak the language with you, at your level. You will learn by communicating, not by memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules.Which doesn't mean we can't, from time to time, discuss grammar a little, and especially the meaning of new words. Especially if you do so in the language you want to learn.

Here's the kind of activities he suggests:

Try to have simple conversations with your coach, just to get in touch. Record your conversations and play them back with the person you're learning from. Try to take note of new vocabulary.

Find images to compare. Take turns talking about the images, then ask your coach to summarize the differences between the images. You can record this summary and listen to it with your coach, noting any new words. Find other images and ask your coach to ask you questions about them.

To learn this language, you don't first need to memorize vocabulary or grammar rules, but rather learn to communicate in a simple way.

Try to improve your comprehension. Ask your coach to talk to you about simple subjects and record it for later listening. Ask your coach to clarify the meaning of unfamiliar words in the local language. If you haven't mastered the language well enough to find out the meaning of a new word in this way, then work with photos, objects, drawings, gestures and so on. 

Look for an illustrated story, and ask your coach to tell you the story, according to his or her understanding of the images. Listen carefully

Try to broaden your vocabulary and your understanding of people's culture and daily lives. 

Expose yourself more to the language you want to learn. 

Try to speak more. Tell your coach about an event in your childhood. Then ask the mentor to tell you the same story in his or her own words. Record the conversation and listen to it with your coach. Write down any new words. 

Try telling the story of a picture book.

Both the learner and the coach must be familiar with the method.

There are documents on the Internet, for beginners and intermediates, in French and English. 

You'll probably have linguists in your organization who can give you simple advice on how to learn a new language. Ask them for advice and benefit from their experience.