Want to find out how you can learn a new language as fast as possible? If you commit to your new language, work hard, and have an open mind about making mistakes, you can go from basic conversational skills to fluency without the need for expensive classes and years of dedicated study. We’ll let you in on the easiest language-learning secrets so you can get up to speed quickly and start speaking a new language.
1. Watch shows and listen to podcasts.
Immersion can help you quickly improve your listening and speaking skills. Possibly the easiest thing you can do is watch television shows or movies in the language you are trying to learn. Try to avoid subtitles, so you don’t develop a reliance on them. To make things easier, try to watch shows or movies whose plots you are already familiar with like kids’ cartoons or dubbed versions of English movie knowing the context will help you to decipher the meanings of words and phrases:
- Download podcasts or tune in to radio stations in your new language. This is a great way to immerse yourself in the language while you’re on the go. Not only does this help with your listening comprehension, it also allows you to hear the correct pronunciation of common words and phrases.
- Listen to songs in that language. Try to learn the lyrics, then check what they mean. That way, if you hear it again, you can tell what the conversation is about at that point.
2.Read kids’ books and simple texts out loud.
Start at a basic level so you can learn easy vocab. As your language level progresses, you can move on to more advanced reading material like newspapers and magazines. When you read out loud, rather than silently, you can work on both your overall reading comprehension and pronunciation skills. Rather than trying to translate each phrase, force yourself to think in the language you’re reading.
· You should also try to write a few simple things in your new language whether it’s a pretend postcard or a shopping list.
· Change your language settings on all your electronic devices so that you can pick up words you know already in English but not in the new language.
3.Learn basic phrases.
Study smarter, not harder. Mastering everyday conversation will let you hit the ground running. It’s more important to master basic phrases you’ll use frequently than it is to start off by learning the alphabet or the perfect sentence structure.
- For example you can learn phrases like: Hello, Goodbye, How are you?, I’m doing well, What is your name?, My name is… , and so on.
4.Focus on the 100 most common vocab words.
Knowing a few keywords can help you grasp what someone is saying. Mastering basic vocabulary is probably one of the most important things you can do when learning a new language. Even if you can’t understand whole sentences, the ability to pick out keywords can help you to understand the general meaning of a speech or text.
· Picking out the most common 100 words in a given language is a clever way to start. From there, you can work your way up to the most common 1000 words. It is estimated that learning the 1000 most common words in a language will allow you to understand 70% of any text.
· Focus on the vocabulary that is most relevant to you — learn business vocabulary if you’re learning a language for business, don’t waste time learning the words for different species of fish (which you might want to do if you’re traveling to go scuba diving!)
· You should also learn words and vocabulary that pertain specifically to you, so you’re able to talk about your life and your background to people you meet.
5.Work on pronunciation.
Pronunciation is the key to being understood by native speakers. There’s no point in memorizing hundreds of words and phrases if you pronounce them so oddly that they can’t be understood. Therefore, it’s important that when you learn a word, you learn the pronunciation simultaneously.
- Pronunciation can be difficult to learn from a book so this is where chatting with native speakers (or using interactive software programs and applications) comes in handy. You need to actually say the word out loud in order to learn how to pronounce it correctly.
- If you’re practicing with an actual person, make sure that they’re not too timid to correct you when you pronounce a word incorrectly, otherwise you may never fully get the hang of it. Remember — pronunciation can be the difference between speaking a language well and speaking a language fluently.
6.Don’t worry about perfect grammar.
Focus on conveying a message and being understandable. The reason why most people can’t remember most of the language they spent years learning in school is that school curricula tend to focus a huge amount of time on learning grammar and very little time on speech (or “comprehensible output”). This is pretty much backwards if you want to learn a language quickly, you should learn how to converse first. The specifics of grammar will come later.
- Of course, there’s no denying that grammar is important you need to learn how to conjugate basic everyday verbs and have some idea of the correct word order in a sentence.
- The point is that you shouldn’t spend hours and hours learning verb tables by heart, or worrying about the specific circumstances in which a certain preposition can be used. You’ll learn these things as you go along!
7.Learn to count in the new language.
Numbers will likely come up in everyday conversation. Start off with clear goals. Try learning to count to ten since 1–10 is usually the easiest thing to memorize at first. Each day learn a new set of ten numbers, keep going each day until you are satisfied with how high you can count. If you are up for a challenge, memorize all the numbers up to one hundred in one day.
8.Study the alphabet.
Learning the alphabet can improve your reading and pronunciation skills. In turn, better reading and pronunciation can help you memorize words with greater ease. Plus, it is better for you to be sounding the words out rather than looking at the romanization for the words.
9.Connect with a native speaker.
Hands down, the best way to learn a new language is to speak it. Too often, people spend all of their time studying grammar and memorizing lists of words instead of actually going out there and putting what they’ve learned into practice. Speaking with a real, live person will help you to feel much more motivated about learning the language than staring at a book or computer screen.
· Try to find a friend or colleague who speaks the language you wish to learn and who’d be willing to sit down with you and help you practice.
· Alternatively, you could try putting ads in local online forums or newspapers to find someone to tutor you or participate in a language exchange.
· If you can’t find anyone who speaks your language nearby, try to connect with someone online. People in foreign countries are often willing to exchange half an hour of speaking in their native tongue for half an hour of speaking in English .
10.Study the language every day.
Consistent study will get you quicker results. People often claim to have studied a language “for five years” and still not be fluent. But when they say five years, they probably mean that they studied the language for only a couple of hours a week over that entire time period. If you want to learn a new language quickly (that is, in the space of a few weeks or months), you’re going to have to commit to studying the language for a couple of hours per day.
· Language learning is based on repetition hammering something into your brain over and over again until you remember it. If you break too long between study sessions, you are much more prone to forget what you learned last time and you will waste valuable study time going back over what you’ve already learned.
You can cut down on this wasted time by studying every day. There are no miraculous shortcuts when it comes to language learning you just need to commit.
See you next….
Xoxo,Julia.
