Annoying as it is, the old adage “use it or lose it” is particularly apt when it comes to foreign language learning. It’s not uncommon for a person to have studied a language for several years, then stop using it and after a while feel like it’s lost for good. Fortunately, it probably isn’t. The situation is referred to as “language attrition” and it’s unsettling, but usually fixable.
I’ve just come back to my “home base” after about two and a half years away and I was surprised at how hard it was to get back into the flow of the language. While away, I listened to the radio and wrote emails in the language, but except for the odd phone call, I hardly ever spoke.
I’m used to being able to express whatever I need to in this language without thinking much (which has its own hazards!), so it was a shock to find myself unable to say the simplest things sometimes. I could communicate fine, but not fluently. Most of it was that “tip of the tongue” feeling, but some was also strange grammatical errors that felt like somebody else talking. Meanwhile, I could understand with no trouble at all. Very frustrating.
It’s taken me almost two weeks to really get back up to speed again. Below, I’ve listed a few things that have helped me. If you have any suggestions for anyone trying wake up their hibernating language skills, please leave a comment, because I’d love to hear about them.
Here are a few tips I can pass on for reviving speaking skills…
Listen a Lot
Load up on auditory input. By “load up,” I mean get as much as possible and preferably all in your target language. You’re not trying to learn anything new, just bring up things that are already firmly planted in your memory. Reading helps, too, but listening lets you review more words faster. Chatty friends come in handy here. Ideally, talk with people who know you understand and used to speak better, so they aren’t tempted to slow down or simplify too much.
Adjust Your Thinking
Until you get your language skills back to where they were, try to think only in the language you’re re-activating. It’s probably impossible to do 100 percent of the time, but aim for as much as possible. This helps re-set your “first reaction” language so you’re ready to answer in the local language when someone speaks to you. I’d spent several months speaking a lot of Russian and based on the grammatical errors I was making in Hungarian, I realized I was trying to make Hungarian fit Russian grammar. That situation quickly improved once I stopped thinking in Russian so much.
Talk Anyway
If you mispronounce things and stumble over grammar, it’s only natural that multilingual people are going offer another language to try to help you (or themselves) out. I got this a couple times in the last few weeks and my tactic was to completely ignore the fact that they switched languages and continue in the local language. I wouldn’t try it with airport security, but talking to a cashier or taxi driver, you’re probably fine.
Of course, this works best when you’re fairly sure all you need is a few seconds to remember a word or arrange a sentence and then you can continue. If you’re having trouble saying anything at all, you might want to accept the offer of an easier language and save your practice for friends. It depends on your tolerance for trying other people’s patience. 
If you feel uncomfortable because of your tongue-tied-ness and don’t have another language to use, try mentioning that you used to speak better, but haven’t had a chance to use the language in X-amount of time. It seems to reassure people that you can understand them and will manage to get your thoughts out if they give you a second.
Lean on Another Language
When you’re trying to learn a language, giving yourself time to remember a word or construct grammically correct sentences is good practice. Taking time to work things out for yourself helps you build mental connections so you’re more likely to remember the next time. When you already know, though, just asking will save you from a lot of frustration. If you’re talking to a friend you have another language in common with and you can’t remember a word or can’t remember how to phrase something, asking them to translate will get you back up to speed faster.
Ever been in this situation yourself? If so, what helped you recover your language skills?
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Thanks for the interesting read!
I have a quick question: what other sources other than ‘chatty friends’ do you recommend for loading up on auditory input? Often times, people on the radio or tv speak too quickly for me to process — I get the gist of the audio stream, but lose out on details.
Thanks for your comment, Michael! Glad you enjoyed the post.
Here I was focusing on switching back into a language you used to speak well, but you’re out of practice with and was assuming listening skills are intact, which it was often seems to happen to people. So I didn’t touch on methods for someone still developing their listening skills.
If you’re getting the gist when you listen to native speakers, though, you’re already doing well. One thing that can help is listening to a recording repeatedly. Listen until you can get all the details. It might seem like an unnatural way to practice because no one in real life will repeat themselves 10 times, but it does seem to help increase your speed of understanding.
When doing listening practice, language teachers often have students a listen for the gist, then listen a few more times to catch all the details, so it’s an accepted way to practice.
It looks like I don’t have anything up that addresses this question, but I do have something on finding more ways to interact in your target language. These can also improve listening skills.
Hi,
) I still have a lot of work to do, especially for pronunciation and speaking. But I’ve already have an experience in learning french, and it seems that this is helping me a lot: It’s always the same process, learning the bases and then practicing…
). I hope my German language is not lost for ever, and that I will find it inside me as I learn it.
I found this article through Google, very helpful by the way.
Here is my story :
I was born in Germany, I lived there till the age of 6, I then moved to Tunisia (Official language is Arabic) and did all my primary and secondary studies in Tunisia (almost all science courses are in french, so I was well prepared to live in francophone environment). At the age of 18 I moved to Canada(Montreal) to study Software engineering at “Polytechnique de Montréal”. So I was then practicing my french all the time. I, now, speak french almost 100% fluently. At the same time was learning English too, it’s been almost 3 years that I started learning English seriously (You can tell from this comment that I’m still learning
As I said before, I was born in Germany and back then, I was speaking German very well, unfortunately I “lost” this when I moved to Tunisia and never returned to Germany (until the age of 18, in a 3 weeks trip…). And now I think I have the time to learn(or re-learn?) a 4th language (actually it’s my first language
What keeps me motivated too, is that one day when I was practicing my french when I came to Montreal, some one told me that I have a German accent in my French, so I hope this is because my German is trying to get out from its hiding lol.
That’s it and I hope that this helps some of you