What's the best way to approach learning another language?

Answer 1

This is a big question! I've been studying this question as a graduate student now for about four years, and I'm not done yet!

There are many theories today in applied linguistics about how people learn new languages and what is the best way to learn and teach them. I will give you some that, in my opinion, are the keys to language-learning success. Most of these are uncontroversial in my field.
1. Make sure that you get as much exposure as possible to the language, and it must be exposure that you understand. That is, make sure that you are getting some kind of meaning out of whatever you are reading, watching, or listening to in the language. In other words, when you watch a movie, don't use the subtitles, for example, because if you use subtitles your brain won't have to pay attention to the target language. Even if you understand very little you will learn from the experience. As you continue to do this, you will be able to understand more and more, and your growing knowledge of the new language will have more material to work with. In fact, if I had a choice between giving my students input like this in the language and having them practice something new about the language, I would go with the input, because you can't practice something that's not already in your brain. Find material that you are already interested in, and learn something new in the target language. Much of this can be done on your own if you are disciplined enough, but if not, take a class. (If possible, I'd recommend a class at a community college or two-year college over other kinds of classes, followed by classes at unversities and then other kinds of classes. You get what you pay for, to some extent, so choose wisely. Look for a teacher who actually is a professional langauge teacher and not just doing this until something else comes along.)

2. Although we haven't figured out the perfect formula that will help people to learn languages, we definitely know some things that do not work. Here are some activities that you should avoid:
- translating sentences back and forth between your native language and the target language
- memorizing dialogues
- memorizing long lists of grammar rules, at least at first. Just knowing about how the grammar works does not mean that you can speak the language. There is nothing wrong with studying grammar, but it should not be your only type of knowledge of that language. The exposure to the language that I talked about earlier will be more helpful.
- memorizing vocabulary by glossing it with the native language. In other words, if you're learning German and you want to learn the word "Tisch", which is the equivalent of the English "table", don't memorize it by associating it with the English word "table". Instead, associate the word "Tisch" with the concept of a table. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but try to associate new vocabulary items with their meanings instead of their English equivalents whenever possible.

3. Finally, make sure that your personal goals for learning the language are clear. It is not a realistic goal to try to know everything about the target language, since even native speakers of a language don't know that. For example, I am a native speaker of English, but there are many fields that I don't have the language to speak about properly, like hang gliding, rock climing, nuclear physics, and so on. Learn things that will truly be useful to you. That means you might not need to know how to say "coffee table" in Italian, but who cares? How often do I talk about coffee tables in any language? When your goals are realistic, you'll be able to focus on learning the aspects of the language that you'll immediately find useful, and you'll sense your progress more quickly.

Remember: if the old way of doing something doesn't seem to work for you, try a new way. I often have students who have been studying English grammar by trying to memorize rules for 10 or 12 years, but still haven't got it. I am sometimes surprised that these people are unwilling to try another method of language learning, even though the one they have used for a dozen years hasn't worked yet. Don't make that mistake.

And enjoy language learning! It's great, isn't it!

Answer 2

I found out French in top university, which of path has became out to be valued at rien de tout. My spouse found out Spanish and he or she makes use of it fairly usually given that we run into increasingly folks this present day who're Spanish speakme. She will get a kick out of it too since it's this type of voluptuous and lengthy-winded language. It's a laugh to talk. We even have a buddy who made a sexy well dwelling in Kyoto a few years in the past after he found out adequate Japanese to supply English classes to businessmen. But with pc language-translation and voice-cognizance methods getting larger and larger always, I surprise how lengthy it's going to be earlier than there might be rarely any call for for human translators.

Answer 3

The first answer is great but I have one a bit better but harder to do.
Move in with a family speaking the language you want.

Answer 4

Practice constantly (at least daily) spend time speaking and listening to the language.

Answer 5

sleeping with somone that speaks the language

Answer 6

For conversational stuff I think it is the Pimsleur method.

Answer 7

strong desire or necessity to live in that country