Henk Oexman is this month's Linguist Learner of the Month. He is 47 years old and lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He works on a computer helpdesk for a Social Security office. His favorite hobbies are web design and assembling computers. He also considers language learning a hobby. When he was still in school he had to learn three languages. English and German were compulsory and he chose Spanish as the third language.
Henk was selected to be the Linguist Learner of the Month because of his great enthusiasm and dedication to improving his English. He has only been on the Linguist since September and he has already spent 60 hours listening. He has also saved almost 3000 words and phrases and has been very active on our community forum. Henk believes that the forum is a great way for learners to interact with each other and to exchange ideas.
Henk spent 10 years studying English in a classroom setting and although he learned a lot of grammar, he still had problems speaking and communicating in English. Henk says: I think that the quality of the lessons in the text books we had was not bad. There was one thing, however that really bothered me about the lessons in language schools; the emphasis was too much on grammar and exercises. Also there was not much time to listen to audio files in order to practice pronunciation and to learn English in a more natural way as with The Linguist. My ability to converse in English was certainly not obtained in the classroom but by listening and by repeating sentences out loud. In the beginning I could barely believe that a learner could learn to speak and write English without the help of grammar, but I know better now. I know that I have learned many new words and phrases that I can use in my email correspondence. I also find it easier to read books and articles and my listening comprehension has taken a great leap forward.
The Linguist method helped me to become independent of my own language. When I first started at The Linguist I was still stuck on grammar rules and thinking in my own language and then translating the things I wanted to say into English. That was very tiring. With the help of The Linguist approach I do that less and less often now. I think that is also necessary to become fluent in a language.
