EPT
flicky’s guide to learning a language!
After experimenting with language learning in German and fixing my methods for Italian I decided to write a quick and simple guide to how I like to learn a language. I’ll explain my reasoning but the idea is to have a basic outline for you to play with that you can adapt to help your own study. The methods are plucked from here and there but are simple enough to follow. This is based on about 30-60 minutes of study a day. I wrote this because I was bored and because it will hopefully help people.
(A little about me and languages)
+ Show Spoiler +
Like most people from England, I’ve never properly learnt a language for conversing. I learnt in school (which is useless for everyday life) and a little for travel (Ou’est le post?). In late 2012 I saw a video (google “Two polyglots speak dozens of languages in a mall” that really pushed me to learn and I took to German (something I’d always wanted to learn). After six months of messing my way through methods I spent five days in Germany, speaking nothing but. For the last month I’ve been learning Italian and have sharpened my learning method. Doing this right, I would say it should take about 3 months to be comfortable speaking with friends, 5 to be comfortable with strangers.
You Will Need:
Pen & Paper
A Good Introductory Course (Teach Yourself recommended)
A good friend from target country
A reason to learn/motivation
This Stuff Helps
A phrase book (Lonely Planet) or website.
A second, more content heavy Course (Assimil is an example)
A Smart phone (for flash cards)
Step 1 – Introduction
Start now!
For the first stage, think of this as a preview of the language. You can do this for as long as you want but one to two weeks is enough. A little bit of exploring each day. I do this in three ways:
1. Using Flashcards (Memrise/Anki) start to learn the 500, 1000 or 2000 most common words in the target language. It’s no secret that you can say a lot with only 2000 words but there’s a little more reasoning for me to learn these. I did this with German and tried not to do it with Italian. Long story short, it was a bad idea. Not only does it make figuring out sentences later easier, but it also allows you to try to talk and broaden your scope of conversations. It’s hard to practice talking when you’re repeating the same things but if you can attempt to say something new, you’re treading new ground. You can learn about 20-30 words a day quite comfortably. Once I’ve hit 1500~ words I find it hard to finish the rest as by this point, I’m usually happy with what I have and can start to pick up words from use. Stop when you get fed up.
2. Listen to some of the target language. Just try to follow it. It doesn’t need to be difficult, just make sure it’s along the lines of what you want to learn. You’re not really doing anything with this, you’re just getting used to the sounds. Songs are really good for this.
3.(optional) Whip out that phrase book and torture your friend(s) over skype! Pick a question from it and throw it at them! This is a bit of fun and helps you with earlier pronunciation and gets you used to making mistakes when you have no expectations.
Step 2 – Beginner
After a week or two
You can start this when you want. A few weeks of step 1 is good and feel free to continue what you were doing through into step 2.
In this step, you actually start to study the course that you have. I have a way of doing this (taken from Luca, a famous polyglot) which is stress free and takes about 30 minutes a day. I think the Teach Yourself books are good here for beginners. He uses Assimil but for reasons I’ll explain later, I think that’s too much to start with. I suggest a simple book with clear instructions and lighter dialogues. They’re frequently up to date, don’t cost too much but can be light on casual conversation (but you have other ways to learn that). Use what works for you.
This is a day-by-day method which means that you will complete a dialogue over the course of a several days and work on several dialogues in sequence:
You can do this over as many days as you like – I use 7. Each progressive day has a new task associated with it. The below is all for one dialogue.
A – Complete the section of the book from the beginning of one dialogue until the start of the next. For me, a dialogue is anything that’s translatable (numbers, pronunciation don’t count). Simply put, if you start on track 1, work through the book until it asks you to listen to track 2.
B – Speak over the dialogue as you listen to it (this is called shadowing), then read it.
C – Read the dialogue aloud.
D – Translate the dialogue into your native language (pen and paper!). Make notes if you wish.
E – Do nothing
F – Do nothing
G – Translate back into the original language (pen and paper again!). Make grammar notes if you wish.
That’s it. You can add in extra gap days or extra days of going over the dialogue if you want. It’s up to you. This process with give a simple revision of the dialogues and is pretty light, depending on your course book. You add a new lesson each day, so a progression looks like this:
Day 1 - Complete A for dialogue 1.
Day 2 – complete B for dialogue 1, A for dialogue 2
Day 3 – Complete C for 1, B for 2, A for 3
Day 4 – Complete D for 1, C for 2, B for 3, A for 4
And so on. It’s important that you revise the dialogues themselves, rather than the extra bits and the grammar rules.
Extra Stuff
During this section, feel free to do some light reading (foreign language IGN is good) to help figure out some words and grammar.
Listening to some native songs is a really good way to get used to the language.
When you’re confident, try talking to your friend. Some people suggest trying to stay entirely in that language, but to start with, it’s up to you. This is a very good revision tool and can be very encouraging.
Step 3 – Intermediate
After two-three months
This section makes this a little trickier but is very effective. I wait about two or three months before starting this and will happily add it while finishing the previous section. I’ve tried starting this step while starting step 2 but it became overwhelming and discouraging after a little while. With the right language course however, it could be used from the start. Just adjust so that you can fit both in (I do this by adding lessons every other day for either method). Once ready however, the benefits are incredible. Ultimately this step is optional but I’ve never finished one course and felt ready and confident.
A note about Assimil
While I recommend Assimil here there are some problems with it (I think) that may take some getting used to. If you’re experienced in the language, these aren’t a problem, but when you aren’t they can be discouraging. The main problem is that the books seem to have been written for the upper class from the early 20th century. They talk to their servants, go to the opera and complain about standards of society. The books are still very good for learning languages but wrapping your head around what becomes very complicated language (have you tried speaking with perfect English? It takes some thinking about). The books are all different however, I loved working through my Assimil German book from 1950 but by 1973 Assimil Italian has been a slog without a foundation in the language. This is why I recommend holding off on this until you have a vocabulary. From there, this becomes a brilliant way to improve your listening comprehension, pronunciation, reading & writing. Just beware that you may sound out of place if quoting the book verbatim.
Anyway, for the intermediate step, I begin to adopt the Shadowing process for working through Assimil. That link has a lot of information about the process but it does lack in one place which I’ll outline here:
On that page, steps 9-12 are to be done later on and are not part of the first set. You can either do these after finishing every lesson or when the book tells you to translate lessons. Where it says to type out the lessons that means to translate the English provided into the target language.
And the rest
After three months or so, I would recommend beginning to watch TV shows and movies or listening to podcasts. You can start earlier, but may find yourself unable to understand anything and not concentrating. Be smart with your choice of show. Futurama & The Simpsons are easy to understand, Scrubs & Arrested Development are not.
After three months, you should be trying to talk with a friend every day. About this point, conversation becomes more natural and it’s not such a strain. Remember to pay attention though, it’s hard to focus on one thing while talking with your friend. Playing games together is perfect for this.
While on games, start playing games in your target language too. This is full-blown immersion for about £30 that you would’ve spent anyway. If you’re worried about it affecting your enjoyment of the game, set audio to target language and text to native or vice-versa. If not, make the little sacrifice. Odds are, most of your bilingual friends learnt a lot of their English from video-games.
After about 5-6 months, start reading fiction. This varies from language to language but it can be incredibly hard to understand fiction when you don’t have the vocabulary (I’m looking at you German novels). Alternatively, if you’d like to start reading earlier, you can grab a dictionary and translate as you go: Note down the word you don’t know, translate it and make a flashcard for it. This can boost your vocabulary immensely quickly but can overload you with flashcards. At this point, I usually just read and figure the words out for myself.
Finally – After six months (or less), go to the native country! You won’t know how important this is and how incredible it feels to know a language until you’re there. Being able to decipher signs and ask your way around will compound all the things you’ve learnt and will be proof that you have learnt a lot. You won’t be fully aware of this until you’re there (natives complimenting isn’t the same). You’ll also progress leaps and bounds on this trip. If you’ve driven a car after passing your test, you’ll know what I mean.
Well, that’s it. A lazily-written and rag-tag guide to learning a language without a single unique idea. It’s not been proof read and I don’t have links. I wouldn’t expect it to be improved, which is why it’s in blogs.
Any questions, just ask.
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