Ten Top Tips For Learning A Language

14 July, 2011

Want to experience a culture in a way that’s more hands on and more intimate than most other travellers? If you’re traveling somewhere far flung, or even just hopping across the border and want to communicate in a more personable way, there are few better ways than learning a language. Of course, learning a language is a very individual process, and not everyone’s brain makes connections in quite the same way. As a general starting point, though, here are a few tips:

- Do things regularly. Learning a language is very much not like ‘riding a bicycle’. You get rusty fairly quickly if you don’t keep chipping away at it. Think ‘use it or lose it’, and try to get in a couple of hours even on very busy weeks.

- Mix your styles. It’s no good knowing everything on paper but not being able to pronounce the words, or use them in spoken language. Covering every base means reading, learning, listening and where possible speaking to as many native speakers as you can to get the sound correct. Writing, unless you’re in it for business, you can probably muddle by on until later.

- Allow a LOT of time. Think how long it took you to develop from a baby to a child with a good grasp of the language. It could take even longer as an adult, as you’re unlikely to be surrounded by the language on a day to day basis. Unless you plan on doing only the very simplest of things, there’s no point in starting to learn a language only a week or two before you leave.

- Don’t be shy. Speaking develops with use, and mistakes are expected, and very much part of the learning process. You can’t learn a language without making at least a thousand small mistakes along the way.

- If you can afford it, go intense. Being surrounded by a language in a professional teaching environment, perhaps combined with a homestay, is difficult to beat. It can be costly, but you can expect impressive short term improvements. If you really do only have a week or two, and it’s urgent, go with this. You won’t be perfect by any means, but it’s a great start.

- If you can’t afford to go intense, go for an exchange. Help out a national from your chosen country with English and get some help with your language in return, and you’ll be pushed forward far more quickly, and make a new friend and pick up some cultural tips along the way. Can’t find somebody local? Try a Skype language exchange, like this.

- Learn the basics very well. If you don’t know your basic verb tables, or things like the difference between ‘ser’ and ‘estar’ in Spanish, you might as well not even bother learning the harder stuff. Think of it as building a platform, and make sure you’ve got the foundations right. As a teacher, helping somebody ‘unlearn’ something they’ve got lodged in their skull is one of the hardest experiences there is. Students don’t enjoy it much, either.

- Try to avoid direct translation. While it can work for beginners, and sometimes does fall together for more advanced speakers, too, good language speakers don’t translate. The grammar rarely matches up, so while your message might get across, you’ll end up with a huge amount of the context and ideas lost in translation.

- Have some fun with things. After all, that’s one of the things you want the language for, right? Films with subtitles, podcasts, special interest websites… anything that is both interesting to you and in the right language is bound to help keep you motivated.

- Think of language learning as a life goal. We’ve all met those incredible people who speak half a dozen languages with comfort, but most of us just can’t pull that off. If you start off thinking of your language learning as a short term process, you’re never going to be all that good. It’s something that takes an age to work through well.

Do you have any special tips that have helped you to pick up a language?

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