In every language there are six areas: listening, reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary, and grammar. We need to work on all of those areas simultaneously in order to be fluent in a language. Here I’m sharing advice from my own experience about learning languages. I became fluent in English just by watching TV series and movies, and I am now learning Korean on my own as well. So let’s jump right into it.
The six main areas:
1- Listening:
When we were little, we spent two years listening to people around us talk and tried to make sense of what they were saying till we started talking and finally learned our mother tongue. We learned mainly through listening. Like so, when learning a language, listening in my opinion is the most important element so I suggest listening There are several options to use as listening material: watching movies or TV shows, listening to songs, watching or listening to news, or listening to audio podcast or anything that’s spoken.
The key thing when you listen, or watch, is that you shouldn’t focus on hearing every single word that’s being said, instead just let yourself enjoy what you’re watching or listening and be fully engaged and emotionally invested in it, your brain will absorb the language and before long you will find yourself repeating and imitating what you heard which will be enough to speak fluently. Don’t underestimate that, that’s how I became fluent in English; I let myself enjoy and be fully emotionally invested in the movie or the series that I was watching and I found myself repeating in my mind what I heard and started imitating it and in time I picked up a lot of words and even grammar J
2- Reading:
Reading is similar to listening as it’s another way you can see how that language is used. When you’re a beginner, you want to start with something simple that doesn’t have a lot of text to read like maybe cartoon stories. You can read: cartoon stories, news articles about what your interests, or blogs.
The key thing when reading is as in listening: don’t get hanged up on every word you don’t know, just keep going as long you get the general idea of what is being talked bout. Mark only the words that are repeated a lot in a specialized search notebook to search their meaning later. Just read and get your eyes accustomed to the language.
You can use Hi Native app to ask about what you don’t know. Hi native smart phone application is an application where you ask any question about the language you’re learning and you get answers from native speakers, you can also post pictures of anything you see and want to know its meaning, it’s a very convenient language learning app.
3- Writing:
For writing, I really like journaling in the language you’re learning. There is a really cool website called lang-8 where you post your writing and get corrections from native speakers.
When you write, you will come across words you don’t know, just write them in your mother tongue and if you find yourself repeating those words in a lot of journal entries, add it in your search notebook to search them later.
Also you can text chat a foreign friend, you can practice what you learned and it also counts as speaking practice since writing and speaking are not that different. You can meet people and make friends through a website like lang-8 or an app like Hi native, or through Facebook language exchange groups. If you search Facebook, you will find those groups J
4- Speaking:
Practice speaking with a native speaker friend through lang-8, hi native, or Facebook exchange groups. As I mentioned in my previous point, writing can count as speaking and sometimes cancels the need for practicing speaking if you’re really good at imitating how people speak and can really imitate the pronunciation correctly, but it’s more favorable if you practice speaking though.
5- Vocabulary:
If you had a gathering with a group of friends, what would you talk about? Learn the vocabulary involved in that talk. Pick words you want to learn and search, learn, and memorize them. See how your daily routine goes and search the words and phrases you need to talk about it. You will forget the words that you don’t need and don’t practice, so learn only the words you need. Also learn words in their context and memorize the word in a sentence because it will stick better this way.
You can create an excel file for your vocabulary and categorize your words into sheets within that excel file. You can then upload that file to your Google drive and access it anywhere. Alternatively, you can use Google translate phrasebook feature which collects all your collected words into one place and you can also search it and access it anytime anywhere.
Make flashcards of your words using an application like Textgram that allows you to add text to images and you can create a flashcard using its clear canvas option. Add a sample sentence to show the word in context as well then upload your flashcard images to a word learning tool like memrise where you can create your own set of words to learn, it will help you memorize them in a fun and a game like manner. Another app similar to memrise is quizlet which has a sound feature that allows you to listen to native speaker pronounce the word.
When you learn a language that has a different looking alphabet from your mother tongue, avoid romanization completely because romanization will slow your progress in reading. For example, I’m learning Korean using English; in Korean there is a letter that looks like this: ‘ㅐ’ it looks like the English letter ‘H’ right? So if I use romanization, my brain won’t be trained to translate the Korean letter ‘ㅐ’ to its corresponding sound, it will think it has an ‘H’ sound, so don’t romanize.
6- Grammar:
Grammar is probably the hardest part of any language isn’t it? The best advice that I have to learn grammar is to not really be too focused on it. If you listen and read a lot, you will learn it. In high school, my English teacher asked us to pay attention as he was about to explain a new complex grammar rule and when he did, I thought so myself “No, I know this grammar, we studied it before” but my colleagues were finding it difficult and awkward since it was new. I kept wondering how did I come to know it and it came to me that I actually picked it up while watching TV J
That said there are some languages where you really need grammar to be able to speak like Korean for example. To help memorize grammar, try to apply it once you learn it whether in journaling, speaking, or chatting with your friend.
Also a really great way to organize grammar that you learned is to create a grammar book on any software that has a ‘find’ function like Microsoft Word or Excel and keep adding grammar rules to it. You can review it anytime and also you can search it to find a rule that you may have forgotten.
To find grammar study material, you can search websites and collect information from here and there and you can also buy textbooks. A great website that has a lot of languages is Innovative language. Some language websites under this website provide free grammar learning.
A rule of thumb, you want to focus on listening and reading as your number one priority because these are the input methods which are going to teach you vocabulary and grammar. Speaking and writing are the output methods with which you are going to practice your language. If you input a lot of knowledge, you have no choice but to output it as words and expressions :)
Learning Styles:
Knowing your learning style is going to help you decide what’s the best learning tool for you. Not every tool or method of study is suitable for everyone because the way our brains process information is different from one person to another.
There are three main learning styles: visual, auditory, and dynamic or tactile. You can be a mix of two or a mix of all three. Here is a test to figure out which one you are. Your highest percentage is your dominant style. If there is a slight difference between your two highest styles then your dominant style is both like me, I’m visual-auditory, I scored 45% visual – 40% auditory – 15% tactile.
Design a study plan:
In order to make a study plan, you need to decide whether you’re going to build it based on the time you have or based on your goals. In my opinion, the best way is to build it based on the time you have because this will spare you the bad feelings you will get when you don’t study as much as you wish. Define how much time you are willing to commit to learning each day and stick to it even if it was five minutes, just stick to it. Here are a few key points to consider when designing your plan:
Each day focus on one of the six areas or two at maximum.
Take time to collect your learning material: making flashcards, collecting song lyrics, collecting websites…etc.
Make a search notebook or a digital memo of the things you don’t know and set a special time to search them either daily or weekly depending on your time.
Set a day regularly either weekly or monthly to review and practice what you know so far. Maybe practice speaking or watching a movie. Also having someone to practice with can double your learning speed.
When practicing, you are going to make mistakes, embarrassing ones, but that is just part of learning because if you don’t make mistakes, no one will see them and so no one will correct them for you and you will not learn as fast as you wish for.
The most important thing is to stay flexible which brings me to my next point.
You’re going to fail following the plan and that’s okay:
Let’s be realistic, you’re not always going to be able to follow the plan to the letter; you either going to be busy, sick, something unexpected happened, or just plain lazy. That’s fine, be gentle to yourself and just pick yourself up and go back to your plan. Don’t try to punish yourself and make up for the time you didn’t follow it unless you really have time and you feel like doing it otherwise, you’re doing more harm than good because this feeling of “I have to do this” creates pressure and pressure holds back progress and fun and we want learning to be fun :)
Useful Tools, Applications, and Websites:
Facebook exchange groups
I hope this post provided you with some helpful doable advice on learning languages. Good luck :)
Do you have other language study advice? If you do please do share them in the comments or on social media, I would love to hear them.
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