4 Keys to Acquiring a New Language Quickly
With our world becoming increasingly globalized. The numbers of travelers for business and pleasure increase each year. Immigrants, as well as refugees, present new communications challenges. Acquiring a second language is becoming, if not mandatory, certainly beneficial, in many fields of business and even for day-to-day life.
Others choose to learn a new language because they have friends who speak it, or simply out of sheer love of learning. Whatever the reason, becoming conversationally fluent in a new language doesn’t have to take years and years when efficient learning methods are utilized. These 4 keys will have you well on your way to enthusiastically mastering your new language.
1. Talk in Your New Language From the Start
Many language-learning novices are under the impression that you have to achieve semi-fluency before attempting to converse with natives or masters of the language. This is a harmful myth. You can’t achieve any kind of fluency without actively engaging your brain and the best way to do this is through conversation. It doesn’t matter if it starts out by simply asking how someone is feeling, his age, his favorite color, or saying simple things such as ‘I like blue sweaters.’ You didn’t learn to walk by studying how to walk; you learned to walk by actually walking. Learning a language is no different. If you have difficulty finding native language speakers where you live, do language exchanges with natives over Skype or a similar social platform.
2. Immerse Yourself In It
Watch the weather forecast in your new language and change the language settings on all your social media accounts and your phone. Switch the language settings on movies and cartoons; listen to native music and fun songs in your new language. You definitely don’t have to travel out of the country to master a language; the key is to turning your living space into a mini duplicate of that country. Cook recipes from the land of the language you’re learning to get a taste of their cuisine as well.
3. Try Several Learning Methods
Some people learn best visually, such as seeing a picture paired with a matching word, while others are more auditory or kinesthetic learners. Expensive language programs are popular for the visual learning aspect, which can be helpful to some and boring to others.
Find a language teacher who will:
- analyze your current fluency, if you have any, in listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
- identify your needs
- find out about your interests
- use your needs and interests to plan a path to close the gap between where you are and where you want to go
- work with one-on-one, rather in a crowed classroom
- teach online, for your convenience
4. Stay Motivated!
Perseverance is crucial to success in any area of life and language learning is no different. Do whatever it takes to stay motivated. To stay motivated, you must set specific goals and not just vague, general goals that float distantly in the horizon. Goals such as ‘I want to be able to talk about Asian cuisine in German’ or ‘I want to be able to talk about the beauty of architecture from the golden medieval age’ are just two examples. After the initial excitement of learning a new language wears off, you must keep setting specific goals and finding ways to motivate yourself. Tickets to see your favorite sports team or musician, or just your favorite ice cream, …whatever it is, just reward yourself, but only if you’ve achieved your goal.
Remember to have patience with yourself, especially if this is your first foreign language or if you’re learning a whole new alphabet (or a few alphabets, as in the case of Japanese). Learning Spanish or Italian for an English speaker is often easier than learning a non-Germanic or non-Romance language, so don’t get discouraged if it takes you a while to get the hang of it. Just make sure to find a teacher who will help keep language learning interesting to avoid burn out. Remember, it’s fine if your grammar is not always on point in your new language, because communication, not perfection, is your initial goal.
I hope you find these 4 keys to acquiring a new language useful
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