BLANK CASSETTES
We have do it yourself gasoline pumps. We do not have do it yourself eye surgery. It may seem strange to some (and wildly objectionable to others) to recommend do it yourself language cassettes starring you in the language you are trying to learn. Orthodox language teachers are likely to consider that something akin to doing your own eye surgery.
I’ve found it extremely helpful. At some point you will have gotten the hang of pronunciation sufficiently to push the record button of your cassette player and recite your own words and phrases onto a blank cassette. Your pronunciation will not be good. It may be bad. But the value of being able to listen to a cassette with the words you need and want at the moment – rather than a cassette prepared by somebody with no knowledge of you, your desires, or your needs – much more than outweighs the disadvantage of your imperfections.
So, get blank cassettes – the shortest possible – so you can start building a cassette library of the words and phrases you want to know to supplement those the educators who produced all the standard cassettes decided to teach you first.
It’s better to know the word – its meaning, its spelling, its use in sentences – even if you have to listen to it in your unskilled accent, than not to know the word at all.
FLASH CARDS
Printed flash cards are available in the major languages. They’re about the size of business cards and usually provide a vocabulary of a thousand words. Flash cards are the most underrated language learning tool of all. They’ve been around for decades and go widely unused, even by those who own them.
Flash cards commonly list the English word (plus related words) on one side of the card and their foreign equivalents on the other. Some sets of flash cards give you a little grammar at no extra cost, adding to the word itself the forms of that word a student of the language should know.
The language student should reach for a fresh stack of flash cards before he leaves home in the morning as instinctively as a policeman reaches for his badge. The flash cards, more than any other tool, can help the student take advantage of the day’s “hidden moments,” the secret weapon upon which the promise and the premise of this method is based.
Learn how to keep your flash cards handy. Whip them out and flash test yourself the instant you find yourself with the time. (The person you’re walking with stops to look at a shop window. You’ve read the menu, finished the newspaper, and the waiter hasn’t come yet. The clerk has to validate your credit card. There’s a line at the bank or at the ticket counter. The elevator seems to be stopping at all floors.) Learn how to draw those cards out and start flashing even if all you’ll have is five seconds. If the person you’re telephoning doesn’t answer until the fifth ring, he’s given you time to go through two or three entries. Learn to be quick. I’ve learned how to master a whole new Chinese character between the time I dial the last digit and the time my party says hello.
BLANK FLASH CARDS
Whether you can locate prepared flash cards in your target language or not, go to your nearest stationery store and get a hefty supply of blanks. As you travel through the language you’ll constantly come across new words, modern slang, special phrases you’d like to know, cute sayings a native speaker teaches you at a party, and the like. Capture them immediately on your blank flash cards and carry a stack with you at all times. In later chapters when we learn how all these tools interrelate, you’ll realise the importance of your own homemade flash cards. Purists may quarrel about recording your own foreign language vocabulary building cassettes. Nobody can quarrel with you preparing your own flash cards.
STURDIKLEERS
Sturdikleers are the handy celluloid or plastic packets that protect passports, driver’s licenses, etc. Find the size that best accommodates a stack of flash cards and pick up as many as you need, or more.
FELT HIGHLIGHTER PEN
You’ll need a felt pen to mark all the words in your newspaper or magazine that you don’t know. Choose a colour that highlights but doesn’t obscure the word when you mark it.
Those are the tools. Now let’s go do the job!

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