How
By Carly Schuna
Learning a foreign language is not as difficult as many people think. To gain basic conversational skills doesn’t take very long, and it opens you up to an entire world of possibilities. You can understand things you didn’t before, talk to people you couldn’t before, feel much less lost in a foreign country, and—perhaps most importantly—understand another culture that much better.
There is no “age threshold” for learning a foreign language—you can learn whether you’re 7 or 70, although the former may be a bit easier. The younger you are when you start learning, the less likely it is that you will have a pronounced foreign accent while speaking the target language. Young children are not generally as caught up in grammar rules or rigid sentence patterns as older people might be, so they may learn more quickly without stopping to question why some rules stand. All brains are wired for language learning, though, no matter how old they are, and there is no reason that an 85-year-old man can’t sit down and begin his study of Spanish just as a first-grader in a classroom can.
When learning to speak another language, you’ll get the best and quickest results by following these five tips.
#1: Make sure you learn from a native speaker, or at least from someone whose language skills are equivalent.
Learning from native speakers is vitally important. They won’t have a foreign accent, so they’ll be the best candidates to work with you on exact pronunciation. In most cases, they’ll have special knowledge of the target country or region, so you’ll get lessons in culture as well as lessons in language. They can answer every geography, grammar, and verb conjugation question you might have. And they’ll usually know idioms or slang in the target language that non-native speakers may not be familiar with.
#2: If at all possible, take language lessons in person.
Sure, you can learn a few words of German if you pop in your German NOW! software once every few weeks. If your life is already busy, odds are you don’t have much extra time left to learn a language, and so you’ll gladly settle for buying software or audio tapes and attempting to learn the language by clicking your mouse or listening to repeated, taped phrases. But (and you probably already know this) that’s not the best way to learn a language. Find a tutor or a teacher, and see if you can sign up for a class or arrange daily lessons. When you learn from a real person instead of an electronic device, you can ask questions and refine your pronunciation. You can get exact translations, and find out how to say the things that matter most to you. If the language doesn’t use the English alphabet, a teacher may even be able to give you some basic lessons in writing, and that’s something you’ll almost never be able to get from a program.
#3: Work hard and commit yourself.
If you want to learn a foreign language, you have to put in the effort. It’s not insurmountable, but it is a challenge, and usually the amount you will learn is directly proportional to how much effort you exert in the process. If at all possible, work at the language every day. The reason people in immersion environments learn so quickly is because they are forced to use the target language every day, in every interaction, for almost everything. Bring yourself closer to an immersion environment by making it a point to study or use the language for at least a half-hour every day. If something seems difficult, just keep working on it. No one can learn a new language overnight. Just do your best, and you’ll soon see progress.
#4: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
If you have any perfectionist tendencies at all, you’ll have difficulty with learning a new language because it is virtually guaranteed that you will make mistakes. The best way to not learn, though, is by keeping your mouth shut because you’re afraid you’ll say something wrong. Those that learn quickest are those that practice most, and those that practice most are those who speak the other language all the time. If you’re not sure you know how to say something, try anyway. If you have a question, ask it in the target language instead of in your native language. By speaking the new language constantly, you’ll begin to feel comfortable with it and you’ll learn much better than if you had just listened rather than spoke.
#5: Make it a point to learn about culture as well as language.
Culture and language are intimately connected, and often it’s impossible to fully understand one without understanding the other. When you’re working to learn a new language, make sure you learn about the new culture, too. Read about holidays that the target country has, and go to festivals in your hometown that celebrate special days in that culture. See if you can find or cook authentic cultural cuisine, and learn the names for the foods in the target language. Learn the history of the culture you’re studying, and teach yourself about a culture’s common religions or values. By better understanding the people that speak your target language, you’ll understand their language better, too.
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