Learning A New Language: 3 Tips For Better Results

As a language learner, one of the easiest things that can happen is to lose motivation as making progress becomes challenging and results hardly noticeable. What is it, then, that distinguishes people who are actually successful from those who never master a foreign language? As a Linguistics student at the University of Vienna, I have done some research and selected two helpful articles by experts who will help you to significantly improve your performance.

In 10 reasons you will fail to learn a language, the blogger and British polyglot Olly Richards explains how you can improve the quality of your studies by simply diagnosing what people usually do wrong. Extremely valuable information coming from someone who speaks 8 languages and has been through the process several times.

                      

Found in http://bit.ly/2fQM4VM

Another successful language learner who’s recently published his own series of books to learn languages is Benny Lewis, author of FluentIn3Months. In How to learn a language in hours, not years, Benny emphasizes the need of looking at our progress in a matter of hours instead of years. We often claim we’ve been “learning a language for X years”, but one really should take that with a pinch of salt. Mostly, what the average language learner does is maybe open a book two times a week for an hour and we deceive ourselves by saying we are being productive.

So, having read what experts think, what can we start doing today to improve?

1.      Study Daily – It is no surprise that both these experts and most language bloggers focus on this topic. Having a daily routine where you are constantly learning and reviewing content is crucial. If you are a busy person, try dedicating only 15-20min a day and you will already see a lot of results.

2.      Focus On The Essentials – Not all vocabulary or even grammar may be relevant to know at your current stage. Use your time wisely and learn sentences that actually have an emotional importance to you and that are useful in your daily life (e.g. if you don’t like soccer, there’s no point in learning vocabulary that is specific to soccer)

3.      Speak ASAP – Whether you’re at a beginner or an intermediate level, speaking from day one is an important step to measure your progress as you move along. Yes, you will make mistakes as every toddler who’s learning how to walk will fall. Learn from your mistakes and ask native speakers to give you feedback.

        

Filipe de Carvalho is a Polyglot and a Linguistics

graduate student at the University of Vienna.

He speaks 6 languages and is constantly learning

new ones as well as doing educational research.

You can reach him on Twitter @ForkheadboxP2