It is important to understand that learning a new language from scratch takes time and dedication. It won’t make you fluent from one day to another. You will need to practice and have a lot of patience because it can be time consuming but you will learn a lot from it. I detail in this article some advice to significantly improve the ability to learn a foreign language you have chosen to study.
Cet article participe à l’évènement inter-blogueurs “mes 3 meilleurs conseils pour apprendre une langue étrangère ” organisé par Machiko et Laurent du Blog : apprendrelejaponais-decouvrirlejapon
This article participates at the inter-bloggers event “my 3 best bits of advice to learn a foreign language” organised by Machiko and Laurent from the blog: apprendrelejaponais-decouvrirlejapon
Advice 1: Organisation
In order to be efficient while learning a language, it is important to plan and be organized. Take some time to plan your week and decide when during your day you like learning the foreign language.
You could do a few minutes several times a day.
In the morning, listening to the news on the internet for 10 minutes.
During your lunch break, take 5 minutes to learn a new word, repeat it out loud and then write a sentence with that word.
In the evening, read one or two pages of a book.
You do not need to spend two hours a day, just a few minutes 🙂 With this planning, you will create a routine and little by little it will become normal for you to do it everyday.
I am sure you can find 30 minutes everyday in your diary to learn a foreign language! Perhaps you can reduce your time spent on social media 😉
For more information, you can take a look at my article “Zen to Done method: be organised to gain time to learn French, in 10 steps”.
Advice 2: Immersion
Learn a language by watching movies
It can be frustrating to watch movies in a foreign language when you are a beginner because you feel like you will not understand much and might be intimidated. But you have to start somewhere and I will give you tips to make it as smooth as possible. Learning a language through movies is possible. It is a fun learning tool and one of the best ways and advice to learn a foreign language because it is multi-sensorial (audible and visible). It certainly helped me through my journey learning English!
First of all, it is important to be equipped when watching a movie in the language you wish to learn. Get a pen, a notebook and if possible a voice recorder. It is crucial for you to be an active watcher and listener and take all the benefits from watching these movies.
Above all, it is not only a language you can learn with movies but the opportunity to learn about the culture in action and being immersed in it. Also, movie dialogue is spoken in realistic conversational scenarios where you can practice hearing different accents, tone and intonations.
Here is the method I would suggest following when watching a movie:
- Choose a movie you know: to start, it will be much more fun and easier to watch a movie you have seen before, so let’s put your favourite movie!
- Break it down: the duration of a movie is between 1h30 to 2h so it can be long especially if it is your first one in a language you are learning. Let’s watch it half an hour by half an hour during a week so you can a break in between to review the vocabulary you learnt.
- Have your equipment ready: your pen, notebook, voice recorder and a dictionary!
- Choose the subtitles in your own language so you can start slowly.
- Start watching a few minutes of the movie and try to guess the meaning of words you do not know. In movies, you have objects, you can see the place the actors are and all of this can give you clues. Check with your dictionary.
- Repeat the words out loud to practice on your pronunciation. You can lower down the speed so you can hear easily.
- Have your notebook ready to write down new vocabulary.
- Continue your movie with the next few minutes and so on.
Want to know more about learning a language by watching movies, take a look at the article “Learn French watching movies” (it works for any language ;-))
Join groups on social media
Nowadays on social media, you can find so many groups you can join on various domains. So why not joining groups where people learn the same language as you? Be curious, tap some keywords, and I am pretty sure, you can find something that suits you 😉
What about meeting people from social media who live in your town/city or nearby and who speak fluently the language you want to learn?
It is possible!
For instead if you are British and you live in Chester, you want to learn Japanese.
By writing: Japanese in Chester
You might find discussion groups and then you can offer to meet them for language exchange!
Don’t be shy and start exploring 🙂
Advice 3: Repetition
Remember this word, REPETITION! I won’t stop repeating it and you will see you will remember 😉
You remember earlier I was asking you to write in a notebook new words you learnt while watching a movie?
Well, firstly, you can reproduce this for anything, while reading for instance. Keep your new words together!
Secondly, once you have your new words, the purpose of that notebook is not to be left in your draw or on top of your dusty shelves.
Bring your notebook everywhere with you!
An appointment to the GP? Take your notebook, you know in advance you will be waiting an hour if you are lucky!
Taking the bus to go to town joining your friends? Take your notebook!
Can you imagine all this precious time you have to review, repeat words you have learnt? Instead of wasting time watching at a mum screaming after her kids because they are drawing on the seats. 🙂
Keep practicing regularly!
Take a look at this article for tips on how to remember vocabulary (again here, it works for any language) “How to easily memorize French vocabulary“.