Then, without hesitation or slackening of time, play straight through with fewest mistakes possible. Although ultimate aim is, of course, no mistakes at all, that aim is not furthered by stopping to pick up a lost chord. Keep looking ahead, and follow St. Paul's advice as to forgetting things that are behind.

Even a foundational knowledge of harmony helps. If one if familiar with tonic, dominant, and sub-dominant chords in all keys, it will be comparatively easy to grasp general harmonic scheme; and in playing bass of duets, or accompaniments for singers, this is main thing.

But it is not enough to be able to play at sight what is prescribed for composer. A real musician should have a mental apprehension of sounds indicated by printed symbols without hearing them. If you can read and understand a book without saying words aloud, you can surely become sufficiently familiar with notes to read and understand music in same way.

Try to cultivate this real musicianship. Take something very simple, but unfamiliar. Play over scale and opening harmony, so as to be sure of pitch. Sing in your mind some of melodic intervals, and test them at piano. Form a distinct mental picture of sound of a chord, and test this in same way. Try a succession of melodic intervals, then of chords, then a whole phrase, melody and harmony together, endeavoring first to comprehend effect away from piano, but finally playing them to verify or correct your impression.

Eventually printed symbols will come to represent definite sounds; and when your brain so understands music, your fingers will unhesitatingly obey its promptings.

To acquire facility in sight-reading there is just one all-comprehensive prescription: read. Read all music you can find that is within, or, still better, below your technical grasp. It is not necessary to play it in prescribed tempo, but go through to end without hesitation. Try to get at least initial notes of each measure, but trust to future for ability to get them all. It is sure to come with time and perseverance.

According to Ellen Bialystok and Kenji Hakuta in book “In Other Words”, adults are more capable of learning a second language than most people assume. In book “What’s Going On In There”, Lise Eliot explains how Noam Chomsky discovered in late 1950s that all of world’s languages share same fundamental structure. He called it “Universal Grammar”. The language you already speak and language you want to learn both have sentences, grammar, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions. You may not be able to label those parts of your speech, but your brain is applying those concepts to your speech every day, and has been doing so ever since you were a baby. Experts believe that our brains have specific language circuits, like a computer has specific circuitry to do certain tasks. If you can communicate in one language (and if you are reading this, then obviously you can!), then you have necessary brain circuitry to communicate in any language.

Which brings us to subject of babies, kids and language. My father observed that French children must be very clever. While English-speaking teenagers are struggling with French in high school, apparently French children are fluently speaking French right from toddlerhood! (!!!)

Language courses for children exist in our communities, particularly in communities that have vibrant ethnic members. Fun but academically serious Saturday language classes for children are very popular among immigrant families. They are created so that children can learn language and culture of old country that their ancestors came from, and they usually embrace participation of other children from outside their culture. So if you want your child to get a head start in a foreign language, to reap IQ benefits of being multilingual, and to share and practise with you while you also learn a foreign language, enrol them in Saturday school for Chinese, Italian, Greek, Croatian or whatever language school you find available for kids.

As with adults, lots of multimedia resources are available for teaching foreign languages to children. The latest craze is language videos for babies! Small children find these videos very entertaining and love to watch them. Some well-known titles include Bilingual Baby and Lyric Language. On Internet, http://www.kiddiesgames.com offers fun free games for babies and preschoolers to learn Spanish and French.

Have you ever thought of learning Sign Language? American Sign Language (or ASL) is first language of half a million people in United States and Canada, and is probably third most used language in USA. Dr Bill Vicars at ASL University at http://lifeprint.com/asl101 tells us that many deaf people cherish and enjoy their language and deaf culture so much that given chance to hear, they’d rather remain deaf so as to remain part of their culture. On that website you can find a free online ASL course and visual dictionary.

The benefits of hearing babies and toddlers learning sign language are very exciting. The research of past decade has shown that hearing infants that learn sign language learn to speak verbally earlier, have higher IQs, have less tantrums during terrible twos because they can communicate their needs, and are generally happier! There is now quite a choice of entertaining videos for small children that are very effective at teaching kids signs, such as Signing Time videos at http://www.signingtime.com and We Sign videos that you can preview at http://www.production-associates.com/wesign.html. In some areas, it’s possible for children to take signing classes such as those of http://www.kindersigns.com or to join reverse integration kindergarten at deaf organizations or signing playgroups.

Have fun carrying out your new year’s resolution of learning a new language. Find some music in your target language that is in a music style that you enjoy and has words to songs. Robert Fisher in book “Head Start” explains that there is a link between music and remembering language. He reports that Ancient Greeks would listen to whole of Iliad chanted to soft lyre music, and this allowed many people to be able to remember long passages from Iliad.

Have fun! ¡Diviértase! Amusez-vous bien!