What are the most important things to learn when starting to study a foreign language?

Answer 1

In principle, there are 4 factors which you should bear in your mind when learning any foreign language.

1. Motivation
You need to have a strong motivation, otherwise you will give it up in the middle of your study. It is common that one starts studying a foreign language but when one meets some barriers
in the process, one tends to give it up. You may see a lot of people around you who have a pile of books and dictionaries of a foreign language at home.

2. Memorization
You need to have a certain degree of memory.
After all, studying a foreign language involves a long series of memorization of vocabulary and grammar rules. When you reach a certain level where you can make yourself understood in that language, you will feel comfortable, until then, you must be patient and memorize a lot of vocabularies and rules of that language.

3. Patience
You need to have a firm patience to be successful in studying a foreign language. In any kind of study, you need to be patient but this is particulary important in this field.
They say "Slow and steady win the race."

4. Practice
You need to have a lot of practice in actually using what you have learned in studying a foreign language.
"To know is one thing, and to do is another thing."
This can be applicable in language study. No matter how good you may be at the knowledge of a foreign language, such as the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, it does not mean you can manipulate it in actual communication. You've got to be able to speak it, write it, listen and understand it, read it.
So, you need a lot of practice before you will be a master of that
language.

GOOD LUCK!

Answer 2

Whatever works for you ;-)
It depends on your learning-style, motivation and needs. There are no golden rules.

Grammar alone won't do anything without enough vocabulary. Vocabulary can get you into difficult situations when wrongly used ;-) And an insufficient knowledge of the culture will unable you to communicate efficiently, in the real situations (and that's what counts, communicating!)

Said this, the most important thing, without doubt, is:
* Learning strategies: how do you learn languages? what's your style (are you a visual or a audial learner)? do you have resources? what do you do when you don't know or understand something? how do you learn vocabulary beter? and so on...
That's to reflect about what it actually works for you, because every person is different.
This is already the first step to independence. Being autonomous and active is important.
There are many tricks you can use to actually learn, like mind-maps to learn vocabulary in context. Most people are visual learners (that's when you need to see things written, roughly said). Then hanging this mind-maps on the wall, or post-its around the house, will help!
But for everybody counts: you need to read, listen and practice so much as possible; be positive and feel good about your potential; fall in love with the culture of the language & want to 'become one of them' at least a little bit ;-)

Answer 3

Here are some ideas many second language learners don't normally realize.

FIRST: Completely eliminate idioms when you speak. We use a LOT of phrases that are not understood in other countries, and they use ones we don't understand. Examples: Get to first base. Flip the switch. Hitch a ride. Hit the road.
Put yourself in the place of a new learner of English and ask yourself if you would really understand the meaning of 'hit the road' when you heard it, or would you litterally try to 'hit the road'?
Even between England and North America, for example 'knock someone up'. In North America it means get someone pregnant. In England it means knock on their door. So you can see how embarrassing it might be should you stumble on an idiom that means something else.

SECOND: Realize that it is not ALWAYS a one-for-one word exchange when translating. Some languages can express an idea in as little as one word compared to a few, and vice-versa.
Hand in hand with this, understanding that the idea being expressed is what's important, not the way it's said. Just because the sentence wasn't constructed the way we would have said it doesn't make it wrong.

LAST: I cheated. I learnt the worlds easiest language first and now I find I understand English better (my native tongue) and I'm in a better position to learn more languages.

That language was ESPERANTO. It is designed such that you MUST understand sentence structure, which helps to understand other languages. Plus you end up with a multitude of Esperanto friends; oh the burdens we bear.

Oh sorry. I forgot to mention, listen to and read as much as you possibly can, whenever you can. Immersion, immersion, IMMERSION!

Gxis!

Answer 4

For me, the most key thing I had to learn was that nobody expected me to be perfect except me. Mistakes are OK, just learn from them. Don't give up just because i made a mistake.

After getting my head around that, I just started working on it a little bit every day.

Like Jagg, I also chose Esperanto as my second language, but it has helped a lot with my 3rd (Spanish) and 4th (German) languages. about 85% of the Esperanto language is based on Latin family and German family languages.

Answer 5

The barrier occurence. Essentially that you will make progress til you come to a point that seems so mind boggling that you lose interest. I'm learning Russian and when I got bogged down in grammar a started to lose heart. Progress would be good until I encountered one of those sticking points and despaired. And then it'd just click suddenly without warning and I could carry on. Essentially it's just patience to cope with these peaks and troughs. Don't lose heart

Answer 6

i might initiate off with the aid of reinforcing your grammar, particularly for English, because it is so complicated! on a similar time, attempt examining books in English and observing video clips (with subtitles on your individual language) which you're conscious of on your individual language already. i'm studying French and Italian, and that i hit upon that doing this has stronger my language skills already, even nonetheless little i've got finished! yet another subject to contemplate is going to the united kingdom or u . s . a .. risk is, no person will communicate your language (regrettably, English audio equipment tend to be like this via fact English is spoken international and we've little choose for foreign places languages, on the full.), so which you would be compelled to apply English.

Answer 7

Most of all "be patient"...You spent your whole life learning your native language but hope you can learn the new one in a week ... Of course its not a real possibility... Take it easy , don't give up and go ahead.

Answer 8

Don't be shy to use it. If you pronounce it badly, doesn't matter- it does get better. Practise is the best way to learn something. Takes time and patience as well.

Answer 9

In my opinion you should be patient and work hard.
A good dictionary is good and join in a good web site based on the language you are learning.
Good luck

Answer 10

Be PATIENT!!! Im studying Japanese language and culture and its slightly frustrating but you gotta remember to also stick to it!