It’s really interesting to think about that collocations differ greatly between languages, which was mentioned in Crystal’s article. And I believe it is also a difficulty for people studying a brand-new language. Because when I was studying English, I found lots of words couldn’t be interpreted in Chinese way. For example, in Chinese (my native language), we say “I made a dream”, but in English, we say “I had a dream”. So, this difference pushed you to think differently when you saying a new language. But even now, sometimes I would say English in “Chinese way”, which could be understood but was not correct. And we call this kind of mistake as “Chinglish” (I think?). So this means even though you know a number of words in a new language but sometimes you may still use them in a wrong way because the collocations are different. This reminded me that I need to learn language in really native and flexible ways but not just focused on remembering vocabulary and grammar. For example, I should listen some Turkish local radio or watch local TV shows. And I should often communicate with my language partner so that I can learn their language customs. Also, we can even intentionally compare the collocations in Chinese and in Turkish so that I can be aware of the difference in advance.
Also, I believe language is a purely biological phenomenon. Sometimes if you find you can’t learn a language well, this may be because your method is wrong or your brain can’t “absorb” this kind of language system. Because I have a friend who was not good at studying English. She felt that learning English was the hardest thing ever and she could never make it. So her English grades were really bad and she thought she didn’t have the capability of studying languages at all. But recently, she was preparing to go to Korea for a master degree and she began to study Korean. It turned out that she only used four months to speak Korean very fluently and after she moved to Korea, her Korean became even more perfect. Right now she doesn’t think that she can’t learn a new language anymore.
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