People often ask me how I learned 20 languages. I will tell you what works for me; you’ll have to decide if this can work for you. Here are the first four secrets to language learning success:
1. Spend the time
The first secret to successful language learning is spending the time. When I study a language, I spend at least an hour a day trying to learn that language, and I know that it’s going to take me months and months of continuous studying.
But when I say study, I don’t mean sit in a classroom, I don’t mean answer questions or drills, review grammar rules or lists of words. What I mean is spend time with the language, listen to the language, read things that are written in the language or listen to songs that are sung in the language, even watch movies if you can. If you have friends who speak the language, spend time with them, even if most of the time you’re just listening because you don’t speak well enough to say very much.
The classroom can be very important as a place for you to meet with your friends, to find stimulus from a teacher, but in the classroom you’re listening to the teacher half the time or you’re listening to your classmates. What matters is how much time do you spend away from the classroom with the language. Spend that time with the language. Do it month after month after month and don’t let too many days go by where you don’t spend time with the language. Depending how difficult the language is – that means how different it is from your native language or from a language you already speak – the amount of time required might be years. If you can only spend an hour a day, it could be six months to a year to two years. If you can spend three hours a day, then it might be less than a year, but it does take time. There is no shortcut to fluency.
2. Do what you like to do
If you don’t enjoy studying the language, you won’t put in the time, so it’s important that you do the things that you like doing.
What I like doing – and something that has proved extremely effective for me – is listening and reading. When you are listening and reading you are relying entirely on your imagination to convert words into meaning. To me, that is a more intense learning environment than, say, watching videos, but there are other people who find success in watching videos and will watch videos over and over again.
When I start out with a language, I will quite often listen to a short piece of content until I understand 50-70%, , Sometimes even less. Basically I move on to the next lesson when I feel like it. I can always go back. I always want to read whatever I listen to and I want to listen to whatever I read, certainly in the beginning. I listen to things that I like, where I like the voice and where I’m interested in the topic.
I find the Mini-Stories at LingQ especially useful to get a start in a language. They have a lot of repetition and focus on the most frequent verbs and structures in any language. I end up listening to these simple stories 30, 40 or 50 times. The basic structures and most common verbs gradually start to stick in my brain. The Mini-Stories are available in 46 languages.
I think to be a successful language learner you have to enjoy the process, so you have to decide what it is you like doing. Do you like listening and reading? Do you like watching videos? Do you like just hanging out with people if that opportunity is available to you?
So it is important to do what you like to do, that’s going to be a major condition for success because if you like doing it then all of a sudden it’s the process of language learning that becomes its own reward. As a friend once said, “In language learning there is no finish line. If we do what we like to do, it’s the process itself that is the reward”.
3. Learn to notice
This is extremely important. The ability to notice is probably the most significant difference between people who are good at language learning and people who are not good at language learning. So how do you develop the ability to notice? There are a number of things you can do.
First of all, you need to make sure you get a lot of exposure to the language through listening, reading or, if you prefer, watching videos. You can’t notice something until you’ve actually consciously and subconsciously experienced it at some level. So you need to first absorb a lot of the language.
Next you have to hone your ability to notice. If I’m reading, I’ll often underline certain expressions or words. If I’m reading online I will save words and phrases to my personal database. Just the act of saving them helps me to notice. When I review these words as flashcards that again helps me notice. Some words I’ll remember, some I won’t, but it all slowly builds up this ability to notice.
For example, every time I listen to these Mini-Stories, I notice something new, a vocabulary item or a language pattern.
Language learning requires a certain level of knowledge and experience before certain details become noticeable. Corrections from others may help in noticing errors, but may not always correct them. It is essential to review grammar books and pay attention to pronunciation to improve language skills. Noticing and incorporating new words, phrases, and patterns into language usage is crucial for language development.
Vocabulary is more important than grammar in language learning. By accumulating words through listening and reading, grammar will naturally fall into place. Learning words in meaningful contexts is key to language acquisition. Grammar rules should be learned gradually, as having a large vocabulary allows for better communication. Focusing on words through listening, reading, and exploring different authors and subjects helps in increasing vocabulary effectively.
In conclusion, the emphasis should be on words rather than grammar in language learning. Strategies such as flashcards, listening, reading, and focusing on specific authors or subjects can aid in vocabulary expansion. By consistently exposing oneself to new words and contexts, language skills can improve significantly. Please rewrite the following sentence.
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