Learning a foreign language could be a tiring and lengthy process. However, depending on your attitude and approach, it could be inspiring, efficient, and intensive as well. To make it the second way, you should always remember two things. The first one is that different foreign languages take different amounts of time for mastering them.
And the second one is that all people split into two categories: those who can easily learn a language and those who have no turn for learning it at all. If you belong to the first category – congratulations! You are a lucky one! All you need to do is to plan your studying and take some patience. If you are a second category person – it may be much harder and would take lots of patience and persistence, but we are all aware that practice makes perfect and hard work always result in a success.
Would you like to learn a new foreign language? Are you eager to do this in record time? Here are our tips for you to become fluent in a short period with a maximum of the results.
Set up a schedule
First of all, planning and scheduling your learning activities is vital, and you should not underesrimate this point! Whatever you master in record time is all about the schedule of your studying. For example, you know Spanish at the pre-intermediate level. You can easily attend Spanish courses two times a week.
A lesson would take an hour and a half. Probably, in a year, you would already boast with intermediate level of Spanish, but it took almost 365 days to gain these successful results. On the other hand, you can attend the same courses, but the lesson would take three hours instead of an hour and a half and you would go there every day. There is no doubt that in four months, you would know Spanish at an intermediate level. The results are the same, but the ways of hitting the target differ.
When you are already aware of the amount of time you are willing to dedicate to your studying, find the courses, take lessons with a tutor, or make up your own program to fulfill the time you need to achieve your goal.
Language must be everywhere
As soon as you are determined to learn a foreign language, make sure that it surrounds you everywhere. If you have a dream to speak French, start listening to French songs or audiobooks, watching French movies or cartoons, reading French newspapers or books. The language you learn should be wherever you are to make you even think in it. Only by overwhelming yourself with something you want to know, you can achieve desirable results.
Read, listen, watch, write, and speak
In order to achieve fluency, you should practice reading, listening, writing, and speaking skills every day. This rule is a guarantee of the efficient language training. Probably, you can practice one skill a day, but here we would have the same situation as we do with language courses twice a week compared with every day. The result is the same, but the time taken to achieve the goal is different.
Smartphone language
It is so difficult to put yourself in a foreign environment, especially if you are still at a beginner level. In this case, there is no need to try too hard for 24 hours a day. Make efforts systematically. For example, change the language of your smartphone into the one you learn. Since you are already familiar with the structure and menu of your cellphone, it wouldn’t be so difficult for you to get acquainted with the new one, and yet you would learn new vocabulary.
Pen friend
Pen friend is a perfect way to improve your writing and reading skills in learning a foreign language. By communicating with foreigners via email or ordinary messages, you will expand your vocabulary as well as find out how to build sentences, new collocations, and slang, which is also very useful for learners. No one can teach you a language better than a native speaker will.
Chores
Since you are progressing in a foreign language learning, try to do simple and ordinary things using it. For example, try to write down a shopping list in Japanese (if you learn Japanese), make some notes in your copybook while listening to a lecture, or even write EssayOnTime. Create your own motivational posters in Italian, if you are an Italian learner. Basically, you just need to apply the use of foreign language you are trying to learn to your ordinary, daily things.
Well, this is only the beginning, and I think for all you, language learners out there, the goal seems closer after reading this list. No more idle talking, start learning a new language!
The article is written by Joseph Sartori.