In what way? Worries about learning and teaching foreign languages

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Feb 20, 2016 22:05
I have a question: In what way do you acquire foreign languages?

I've been teaching English in a junior high school since 2013. When I was young, I liked English classes and I was glad to get some knowledges about the new language. That's why I became an English teacher.

Through this 2 years, I've been teaching as I was taught. Things I do in my English classes are to explain grammar rules, to let students try some paper drills, to let them read dialogs in a textbook and translate them into Japanese. It's a kind of inductive way. I have to use thick textbooks to teach. Sometimes I prepare some conversation activities, but most of them doesn't sound authentic; it is just for making classroom ready relaxed.

However, I'm getting less confident of what I'm doing these days. I've never found English classes in which teachers explain something a lot is boring, but is it really OK to continue these ways of teaching?

The answer, I've already know, is "NO". Actually, according to the questioners from some students,
many of them said "I can't understand English at all." "I don't want to study English any more." They cannot find any pleasure in learning English. These words make me really shocked, but tell me that I should change my way of teaching.
I want my students enjoy learning English. I want them to improve their English, too. I need changes. I'm thinking of what I should start from. I'm really interested in how you learn foreign languages or how you were taught it at schools.

By the way, I started learning Russian. At first, I wanted to learn grammar rules first, in the way like having learned English. However, it didn't work well. Russian grammar is too complicated. After that, I started using Memorise, a website. It has a Russian grammar course, in which many Russian sentences are shown. A lot of imput make me understand grammatical rules little by little. It's derisive. I'm very surprised at this way of learing and I enjoy it more and more.

There's many ways of learning I've never known.
What do you think is the effective way?