3576. Want to REALLY Learn a Language? Well, Just Some Tips for You

Want to learn a language? A foreign or second one? 

From all what seen by me and others I could now tell you some tips that might help you or your students learn that language. 

It’s obvious but think of dedicating some minutes every single day, for longer if you can. 

On these latter days I’ve learned such words as headway, fretting, overstrain, Mussulman, trader, hangout, commuting, to bog down, betrothed, don’t go overboard, née, pinnace… You know what I do? I write down those words and revise them often and think of sentences by utilizing those words… all that works to get them into memory so that I’ll later retrieve them when I need them. 

As well I try to use them in real life: if you use them, you can remember them, otherwise, no memory of them or hardly any... 

Alike you could directly study from a dictionary. 

Carrying on with tips to learn a language: you have to practice the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Plus vocabulary plus grammar. 

You have to make up and undertake and take up habits of learning that precious tongue. Every day for some time. Continuity and perseverance will help you learn it. 

I insist on purpose: listen to a radio station on the Internet for example, or watch movies that are valuable. 

Speak with somebody else who’s learning that tongue, or with a native speaker, or think of what you would say to someone in case you now don’t have another person to talk with. 

Read books, classics for example, and enjoy reading. Then go back to what already read and focus on some words that hang out of the text, so as to say: you concentrate on some words at random too and try to get them into your “hard disk”. 

And write on a blog in the target language, or write with another reader in mind – perhaps a real reader you can count on. 

About grammar? Extract it from your readings, for instance sentences you liked, and then write them down on your learning notebook, so you can revise them from time to time. And also you could search for grammar in a book or on the Internet. 

And hopefully you will soon notice your progress and headway. 

As well you could keep a diary or journal about your learning. 

This is a piece or a bit of math: the more you do, the better. 

Some of the ideas were taken from Sandy Millin, H. D. Brown and myself I guess, plus others. Have fun with learning that language.