Useful and less useful learning -

Anything that we learn we learn better the more relevant it is to our daily life, to our interests and to what we like talking about with Joe the postman or Nancy, our neighbour from two doors down the road.

The best way of acquiring new words and improving our skills is to talk about what you actually want to talk about. The more actively you are naturally engaged in the content the quicker you will learn, the more easily you will remember words and phrases-and, more importantly, the more easily will you FEEL the language.

Stephen Krashen, an American linguist, calls this "compelling input".

Dr. Krashen encourages teachers to make the content of their classrooms comprehensible for language learners. Even more than comprehensible, he suggests the content must be compelling. That is, it’s so interesting, so engaging, that they can’t help but get involved, trying to understand and trying to be understood. It is at that point the effort of learning content or language falls away and acquisition begins.

This is why speaking early on is fundamental.

Your nuts and bolts is grammar. It will hold your building together. The architect who designs it is you. You design it by applying what interests you most and what you love talking about.