Dear Reader! I am delighted to be sharing my secret ingredient in learning languages – it is ENTHUSIASM. But organising your learning process is as important, here are the tips on how to do it.
- Find Balance
- Some people tend to only concentrate on one of the aspects of language learning. Find ways to work on every aspect, experiment and design your schedule to tackle it all: speaking, writing, listening and reading.To those who love grammar too much: grammar needs to be used! You are a brave soul so put yourself out there. Are you feeling shy? I have got an idea to help you with this issue as well.
- Enjoy making mistakes
- Do you know why kids learn languages so much faster? They don’t have an inner critique, they simply DO it: they speak, they dance and they sing. How to switch the inner critique off? Accept that you are like a kid while learning a new language. This makes the process joyful and interesting. You are back being 5, so how would you approach your learning? You have that kid inside, believe you or not! Don’t forget to celebrate your progress and little achievements- you are doing so great!
- Little steps
- Plan and prioritise, make it doable. Yes, you have a goal, but you can only concentrate on one step at a time. It makes me feel so satisfied to make a plan and tick off little things I’ve done to get somewhat closer to my big goal.
- Don’t try to translate everything
- Instead, train your UNDERSTANDING. If you have a sentence where you can only recognise a few words – you can guess the meaning of the entire sentence. You don’t have to understand every single word to guess the meaning! And usually, you will get it right!
- Get accountability
- Do you sometimes feel lonely and like you will never get “as good as” some other person who speaks your target language? It is because sometimes we get tangled in learning and don’t get enough feedback. Invite a friend for a coffee. Join an online learners community, find them through YouTube, Tik Tok- there are plenty of them out there, make it a habit and schedule it into your diary!
- Find familiar in unfamiliar
- Isn’t it so satisfying to recognise a word a teacher explained during a lesson in a song or in a book that you are reading? Suddenly a new language becomes more and more familiar. And don’t rush it, it takes time. Keep looking for something you know and for SIMILARITIES between your language, similar words and spelling- it’s so fun when you get the gist of it!
- Songs
- This is my personal favourite way to learn a new language. If there is a song you love – get its version in the language you’re learning and a translation to your native language and read it a few times over a week or so- I guarantee you – if you use the phrases from the song, people will think you are fluent!
- Atmosphere
- We are all products of our environment . So make that environment for yourself! Surround yourself with visuals, music and podcasts- all to immerse yourself in a new language as much as possible! learning a new language we are changing the way we think, we change the way we present ourselves to the world and even can change our personality a little bit.
- REPETITION
- This is self-explanatory: keep repeating what you have learned! The science says you have to encounter a word an average of 7 times to remember it so use those sticky notes wisely!
If you are not yet inspired you can watch this video and don’t forget to choose what works for you so you can design and experiment with different methods to tailor it best for yourself!
