Many of us want to learn a new language or hone their language skills before going on a trip or holiday. Some of us learnt a second or third language at a young age, at school or at home, but afterwards don’t get around to maintain it unless we’re in a situation where we can use the language regularly.
For instance, I used to speak and write English as a consultant and enjoy reading books in English but my French and German are getting rusty since I’ve stopped regularly visiting those countries on vacation.
A friend of mine started to pick up Italian, just for fun. So that inspired me to write up some tips and sites on learning a new language. Maybe I’ll pick up some new language myself, eventually.
General tips
Discipline
All things learning come with discipline. Try to put in 30 minutes daily at a specific time. This helps creating a habit.
No learning path is straightforward and you will encounter plateaus or even roadblocks. So to keep being motivated, you might want to set some (intermediate) goals and celebrate certain wins:
- Understanding song lyrics or being able to sing along
- Being able to order something or ask something in a shop
- Understanding a news paper article or news item on the TV
- Asking for directions and understanding them
Gratification and dopamine release just seems to work.
Immersion
Try to immerse yourself into the language. By watching/listening to native speakers you easily get a lot of the ‘daily basics’ into your head.
I’ll never forget that moment when I said ‘Good morning’ in Portuguese to a security guy in Lissabon and he started ranting in Portuguese. The only Portuguese I knew at that moment was ‘bom dia’.
All languages have certain constructs and filler words that are very useful in getting a conversation in that language started (and going without your conversational partner reverting to English or your native language). In some countries (e.g. Germany) the actual words and grammar you choose are the difference between being polite or rude.
Consider:
- a tutor (e.g. through Italki)
- language partners (e.g. through The Mixxer or Tandem)
- watch tv/movies/series
- listen to music (even though you might not understand the lyrics at first)
- read newspapers/books (a friend of mine swears by comic books :))
- go to the country (duh) or find local Italians if you want to learn Italian
- label object in your house with their foreign language names
- try to translate your daily habits/routines into the language you wish to learn
- switch your phone/tablet/computer to the language (not for the faint of heart)
- cooking dishes of that country and learning the ingredients and preparations (hey, I’m still a cook)
Tools
A fool with a tool is still a fool. But I’d rather start stumbling around a language like a five year old when engaging in my first conversation than having had no practice at all. And there are quite a few nifty tools around.
Duolingo
Duolingo has been around for quite a while. It can teach you the basics of a language but can get quite repetitive. Oh well, repetition is good, right? Also, some of the sentences created in courses are ridiculous (e.g. ’the elephant drinks milk’). But it’s free.
Memrise
Memrise has both a free and paid plan. The people from Memrise say they set themselves apart from DuoLingo by being a full AI tutor that teaches you phrases you’re actually going to use in the real world.
Beelinguapp
Beelinguapp is an app that uses stories to learn a new language. Haven’t used it yet but it looks nice.
Flash cards
You can make flash cards yourself or use flash card tools like AnkiWeb. Most of these kind of tools already have shared decks for several languages.
Language Transfer
A friend of mine recommended this site. They have an app or lose files and they explain the structure of the language, a good base of vocabulary and the skills to further excel in language learning. They also explain their methodology ‘The Thinking Method’ in a freely available book on the site of Language Transfer.
ChatGPT
AI is very promising, but language is primarily a means of communication between human beings (for now), and engaging in conversation with real people is invaluable for language learning. You also get non-verbal clues, manners and feedback which just engrains everything you learn that much better. And you get more feeling for pronunciation, cultural understanding, and expressions.
Still, there are already some useful articles on how to employ ChatGPT for language learning:
- 9 Ways to Use ChatGPT for Language Learning
- https://blog.alexanderfyoung.com/chat-gpt-for-language-learning/
Resources
General learning tips, also on language
Lifehacker - science of learning a new language
Lifehacker - language learning tips