How to Have Fun with Learning a Foreign Language: 8 Tips from Teachers and Translators

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Teacher and writer Elena Devos has compiled eight of the most valuable tips for language learners. You have known about some of them for a long time, about some, perhaps, you have never heard. But these tips have one thing in common: they work.

1. Motivate yourself every day

There is no age limit for language learning. The only thing a person of any age needs is motivation. It's great if you have an interest in the language itself or, if you like, in a certain reality that is in this language (when you like films or books, songs or video games, an artist or a writer, or just a young man or girl).

Let us recall that Ludwig Wittgenstein learned Russian in order to read Dostoevsky in the original (and in the course of his studies put down all the accents in the novel "Crime and Punishment"). And Leo Tolstoy studied Hebrew also because of the book: he became interested in how the Bible was actually written.

Sometimes there is no interest in the language, but it is necessary to teach: at work, for business trips, in order to live in another country. Take the time to jot down a list of what you generally enjoy in life and connect those hobbies with language. Do what you always liked, but now with the involvement of your new - foreign - language.

2. Don't be afraid to experiment

There is also no perfect language learning method that suits everyone. Various methods, different language schools, different theories flourish and compete, become fashionable and forgotten. So far, none have defeated the others.

Try several tutorials before settling on one. For lessons with a tutor, take part in the choice of the textbook yourself. Realized that you made a mistake (even if others are happy, but you are uncomfortable), change it. If there is no choice (at school, in group classes), and you don’t like the textbook, find another and read it yourself - as a dessert for compulsory classes.

In general, try to personalize your approach to language as much as possible. Explore sites, YouTube channels, movies, TV shows that interest you. Look for like-minded people, share experiences, communicate: language, whatever one may say, is a social phenomenon.

3. Choose a teacher

The person with whom you study the language - your teacher - will have a huge impact on the effectiveness and result of your lessons. If you are uncomfortable with this person, he is unfair to you, you do not understand him - look for another without any hesitation. Especially when it comes to a tutor for children: the child's opinion will be decisive here, even if you like the teacher with strictness, responsibility and all sorts of other adult qualities.

Again, if there is no opportunity to choose, and the teacher does not like it, be sure to find a way to learn the language in parallel in such conditions where you are comfortable and cozy. These can be Skype lessons, private lessons, and so on. Don't believe the prejudice that the best teacher is a native speaker. On the contrary, the grammatical subtleties and rules will sometimes be better explained to you by a person for whom, as well as for you, this language was not native.

Be careful about lessons with close people (when a parent, husband, wife, sister, and so on) becomes a teacher: nothing good comes of them if the “professor” bluntly criticizes and ridicules the “student”.

All good teachers have one thing in common: they don’t scold for off-topic questions (and they don’t scold at all), and if they don’t know something, they say so. And they come to the next lesson with the answer to your question. This is sacred.

4. The five minute rule

To learn and maintain a language, you need two conditions:

• you use it;
• you do it regularly.

A person who devotes 30 minutes a day to study will advance faster than someone who sits over a textbook for three hours every Saturday and does not open the textbook the rest of the time.

Moreover, just 5 minutes in the morning and in the evening can work wonders. Place the textbook next to the toothpaste. Brush your teeth - look at the rule, the conjugation table. Take a picture of the homework or vocabulary page on your smartphone. Stand in line - look at your phone, check yourself. Before bed, write two or three phrases (if you do two or three exercises, it's generally wonderful). Etc. Little by little, but often - better than a lot and never.

5. Don't cram - learn

You don't need to cram the rules and case names - you just need to know how they work. But the correct phrases, words, sentences, language constructions, its conjugation and declension must be learned by heart.

Try not to cram, but to teach: understand and use this in practice. Learn poems, sayings, lyrics. And not those that the teacher asked, but those that you yourself like. This will be an excellent lexical aid, and in general it will have a beneficial effect on the ability to speak and think, including in the native language.

6. Correct the error immediately

The sooner you correct the mistake, the less time it will be in your head at all. Therefore, when doing it yourself, do not start with long tests, where the correct answers are given only at the very end. So they suffer only on exams.

Ideally, after a mistake, you should absorb the correct version immediately, that is, correct it with the help of a teacher, a textbook, a language program. This is especially true for independent work: exercises and tests.

Everything should follow the pattern “your option is the right option”. This method is very effective for several reasons: you reinforce the rule if you have no error. And if there is a mistake, you can see what it is, and your next step will be correct.

Don't trust textbooks without clues (correct answers to exercises). At the same time, it is advisable to show your work to a teacher or native speakers from time to time. Indeed, even in high-quality textbooks, there are typos and mistakes, unnatural language expressions.

7. Write more

Write and type in the language you are learning. Do not correct what you have written, it is better to cross out and rewrite the word. When spellcheck shows you a spelling mistake, take three seconds to type that word again - correctly.

The memory of the correct spelling always remains at our fingertips.

8. Praise and Reward Yourself

And the last thing. Whatever your teacher, whatever book you study, whatever language you learn - praise yourself. For every task done correctly, for taking the time today and opening the book, for any success, even the smallest. If you are unlucky with the teacher, give it double praise. For perseverance and patience.

“A person needs to be complimented every 15 minutes,” Carlson said, and he was absolutely right. This is another kind of motivation, only subconscious. Therefore, if you want to learn the language easily and with joy, celebrate your every achievement. Don't compare yourself to others. Compare only with yourself: how much you knew yesterday and how much you know today. And enjoy the difference.