Learning a new language is fun. Many evident learners are fond of learning new languages. People often opt for this exercise either for job or study purposes. Many individuals go for it as a hobby. People enjoy this journey of learning a new language. For some, it is exciting at the start and gets boring and more like a chore after some time.
Tips for Learning a New Language Skillfully
Here is the first tip for learning and speaking a new language, it is always better to incorporate the studies into the things and languages that you have an interest in or are somehow related to your studies. It gets more helpful in such cases.
Learn the Right words Rightly
Learning a new language is a heck of a job. Starting a new language refers to learning a lot of new words. Many people when fail to apprehend or have a new vocabulary, quit even before starting. However, here is the first tip for you. You are not supposed to know every word of the new language which you are going to learn.
Besides that, have you noticed earlier that probably you don’t know the complete words of your native language too? You can follow the tip of the Pareto principle where you get to realize that 20% of the effort that you spend on acquiring new vocab could give you 80% comprehension in a language.
For instance in English, interestingly only 300 words make up around 65% of all written material. Those words among all others are used a lot and the same is the case with other languages as well. So, you can hunt the flashcards of the most used words of the language which you are learning and can go through this.
Interact in the New Language Often
Once you have started to learn the new language. Make sure you stay in touch and communicating in that language daily should be your daily practice. This is one of the greater tips. People often make this excuse of not being in the country of the language which they are learning so lack practice.
However, visiting the country is not mandatory to have your daily dose of language. You simply need a partner for the practice and in case you don’t find one you can practice the language with yourself.
So, make sure you take some time out and make a point to practice daily for once at least. You can also hear the language of your choice on tunine.com. This app is free and quite helpful for evident learners.
Use free Resources
This is very important to note. You can use the free resources and should not be spending your hard-earned money on learning a new language. Joining classrooms often have a poor return of time and effort in the classes. Joining classrooms could come up with certain problems too.
The class has a slow pace and secondly learning a foreign language could be a bit personal too. You want to proceed at your convenience whereas in a classroom you have to take care of certain factors. The classrooms at this level hardly address personal language needs so it is better to get language acquisition in a personal space.
Keep your Motivation in Mind
You might want not to believe it but what is motivating you to learn the new language is the key to mastering it. It is important to be mindful of the factor that keeps you going for the new language. A lot of people who start learning a foreign language with no clear motivation and concept in mind often fail to excel in the course and quit way before.
You can go through unlimited tips and tricks to learn and ace a new language but once your motive is not clear you can not hold it for long. So, be clear about the reason and let it help you to get through it.
Starting with at Least 100 Common Words
Every language has particular common words which help to understand and apprehend the language and its vocabulary. It is not the right approach to think about covering all of the vocabularies because it is not practical. It rather confuses the whole storage and memory.
What you can do to have a long-lasting memory of a new language and words is to first get familiar with at least 100 words that are most common and get used in the vocabulary every now and then. Note it down, it could be very beneficial in your new language learning.
Go for Pocket Dictionary
People often take it for granted and consider it a cliche. But it does work. Carrying a pocket dictionary of the language you understand and to you want to understand makes a big difference. You can check certain words right away.
There are also free online dictionaries which you can use if you don’t want to carry one. It takes no time to access and check it. While conversating or doing practice you should always have a source you can access in times of need rather than skipping it.
Thinking in a New Language
You could find it strange, however, it is very much useful in the process of new language learning. It is challenging but doable. Start thinking in your new language. We all talk to ourselves and also have monologues running back of our minds.
However, this happens in our native language. But you can always practice deliberately in a new language and try constructing sentences and fake language and this tip can help you get through the new language more conveniently.
This type of imagination and visualization helps to have better and easier conversations in real life.
Pronunciations and Patterns
Pronunciations matter a lot in every language. All the languages with Latin backgrounds have quite similar pronunciations which are mostly based on Latin words. For instance, any word that ends with “-tion” in English will end up in “-cion” in Spanish and “-cao” in Portuguese.
It is also important to note that many English speakers are popular with adding -o, -e, or -a at the end of the English words to pronounce Spanish words which they don’t know. However, there are interesting facts that ‘destiny’ is ‘destino’, “motive” is ‘motivo’, “part” is ‘parrte” and the list goes on. So, the tip here to follow is to figure out the pattern and pronunciation to take control of the major happenings.
Embracing the Mistakes and being Stupid
When you start learning a new language and start speaking it, you get in many awkward situations. You try speaking new words and get stumbled. This is normal and there is nothing to get embarrassed about. So, you need to embrace the mistakes and accept the challenges happily.
It helps all of us in our journey of learning a new language. Thus, what you need to carry from here, is don’t stop practicing new words and accept the mistakes and rectify these.
Start Sounding more Native
Once you are into learning of new language, you get clear with goals, start working on your pronunciations, and have already been familiar with 100 popular words. The next tip you need to follow is to try sounding more native.
You can hear podcasts, and watch videos in the new language to learn and pick how the native speakers speak and pronounce certain words. Indulging in the practice of picking a native accent can help you greatly in the language’s origin country.
One Language at a Time
If you are an eager learner and your goal is to speak multiple languages, you don’t have to start learning 2 or 3 languages at one time. You should be starting with one language at a time. Engaging with more than one language at a time could ruin the whole effort.
It is important that you focus on one language at one time to have an intermediate-level mastery. Try your hands on each language you want to learn one by one and see how it helps in sustainable learning.
You can learn as many languages as you want, however, constant practice, hard work, and improvement with living your life through it is very much important. Once you get fluent in the language, it stays with you like forever depending on your efforts mainly.
Watching TV Shows and Movies in a New Language
Try watching TV shows, movies, and Netflix in your new target language. Even if you face difficulty while understanding it, you can always use the feature of subtitles but watching it in a foreign language will help you understand the words and vocabulary in a quite better way. Newspapers, movies, and magazines are good supplements and can help with the practice of a new language.
The entertainment medium helps with the situations. You get to remember the words and phrases at odd times and you can relate to the scenarios. So, this is how it helps to build a strong vocabulary in your new language learning. This is how you can make your journey fun-filled and exciting too. Make it to a point where you get to see how language learning has to be exciting and thrilling and not boring or disappointing.
Final words
Learning a new language is quite challenging. However, having a clear motive to learn it and embracing the mistakes with putting real effort to master the language is really fun. It is also important that language learning is taken seriously and practiced daily for a long-lasting relationship with the new language. Watching tv shows and movies in the new language could also help greatly.
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