here are 24 ways to get fluent in language in 2024 and only two of them have anything to do with AI because AI got boring a long time ago let's do it sh chos number one is delete social media I mean put things in place to limit your use of it sign out of it take the apps on your phone ask a friend to change the password whatever you need to do and if you see a net benefit from doing those things maybe consider actually closing the account I know you hear it all the time
but seriously stop spending your most important asset your attention on social media there I just gave you like 2 hours of your dayb number two watch a movie revolutionary I know but for people who only do the duo lingo and the well yeah just the duo lingo that's it for beginners the idea of watching an entire movie all in the target language can be quite intimidating so guess what it doesn't have to be originally in the target language I recommend you start with an animation that you've seen before like inside out or Kung Fu Panda
or into the spiderverse and if you haven't seen into the spiderverse watch into the spiderverse number three stop talking yeah that's what I said shut up look I know this advice is level specific for example someone like me in Swedish competent but not perfect I could probably do with a lot more speaking but a lot of people who don't know all their core words can't understand things at everyday speed Etc are trying to speak on a daily basis and just not improving and you might wonder why that is and that's because you're trying to improve
prove at the thing that is not the constraint of your skill it's like putting better tires on a car to make it go faster when it still doesn't have a working engine basically if you can't understand most of what you hear or read in the language then I guarantee you that that is the constraint of your skill in that language and that is what you should improve number four on that note uny or something similarish an alarm on your phone a notebook I don't really care how you do it but something that serves to remind
you of a word phrase whatever anything that will capture Snippets of audio is great that's what I have on my PC and that way when I hear something that I think I'd probably like to remember that but I bet I won't I just grab it put it into uny and that way every now and then I come across it I'm forced to listen to it and then when I hear it again in something I'm watching or reading I know what it means and I'm not religious about doing my uny like not even close incredibly it
is possible to benefit from space repetition without the spaced bit just some repetition number five where I'm getting this material from is the country of origin the tip being don't Google how to learn Hungarian if you're learning Hungarian that is if you're not learning Hungarian then don't Google it either instead translate something like best free streaming service into Hungarian and then search that a quick search like this in Swedish will throw back SVT play and a lot of countries have something similar to this they're almost always free and a fountain of material in that language
and all you need to do to get at them is convince the website that you are in that country enter today's sponsor surf shark VPN I'll be honest I get approached by VPN sponsors all the time and I always have to knock them back because I was using surf Shark 2 years before I worked with them and it's the best VPN I've used you've probably seen a VPN ad before so I'm not going to bore you with all that Halo about cloaking your IP address and stuff it's all very important good stuff but it's not
why I personally like using surf shock I like it mainly because connecting is very fast and couldn't be easier it stays complet hidden on my computer until I say take me to Sweden and then boom we're in Sweden and it goes back to hiding again they're also constantly updating their technology so that websites that try to stop you doing this still can't for example Netflix which not only blocks content by region but more frustratingly languages by region so see this list of languages no wrong that is not all the languages they have for that show
it's just the ones that they decide are relevant to you based on your location Gross I'll be the the judge of what language I want to watch the 1992 Batman animated series in thank you very much it's also added some really cool features that are built into the same app like a full antivirus data breach alerts alternative ID generators so that you don't have to give your data in the first place and a webcam Turner offer that is the technical term and during December you can take advantage of the surf shark VPN holiday season deal
enter promo code Lamont l m o NT to get up to 6 months for free on top of the discount that they're already offering that makes it a steal it's probably the best value service that a language learner can get link is in the description and thanks to Surf shark for making more than one camera angle possible it's actually still only one camera I just make it look fancier by moving it around number six research something that is important to the culture of the language that you're learning and do it super in- depth and if
you're thinking wow that sounds really hard you don't have to do it in the language you want to make the objective to learn a lot about that topic and don't worry about the language but if you find the right topic that is something that interests you and is important to that culture you'll probably find that the best info about that topic is in the language and since it interests you already you'll be compelled to spend more time in the language researching the topic I just started something like this so if you ever see me release
a very very long video about a very specific Swedish thing you'll know why number seven read a book in the target language and if you think you can't it's more possible than you might realize some tips to get you started you may be an adult but not in your target language read a kids book it's fine also read something that you've read before it sounds obvious but people forget and if we're talking about a language with a character-based writing system it might be worth paying for a bilingual book number eight this is a separate tip
but it does go well with number seven and that is listen to the audio book at the same time as reading and to be clear I do mean reading in the target language as well so that the audio matches the text I call this scuba diving and I can't possibly describe to you just how well it hits so many of the points that you're trying to hit in Lang language learning all at the same time getting audio books in some languages can be hard I use Storyteller which covers about 35 languages but obviously some better
than others but definitely try to find audio books they are very very very good number nine okay let's do some AI stuff I mean I suppose 2024 might be the last year that anyone speaks about it positively anyway AI because there's a small chance that it won't wipe out Humanity one of the better language learning uses for chat Bots that I've seene came from a friend of mine Eric Wen who speaks Spanish and he came up with a very specific prompt for it that I will put in the description if you want to copy it
all the times that it says Spanish change to your language obviously and when Eric first showed me at working I was like wow this is really cool very good prompting Eric it's almost like you were born and raised in Silicon Valley and then after about two replies from the bot I was like boring look I get that there are some wildly useful things that you can do with AI within Lang language learning because that's really what a lot of AI is it's just a language learning algorithm so I understand that it's very useful especially in
smaller languages it's just that to me it's like sugar-free chocolate where the sugar has been replaced by diaphram aladine in theory it's cool but in practice it's a weird combination of bland and gross and we have no idea of the long-term consequences and number 10 while we're talking about zots another decent use for them is as information sorters so if you think about any task that has traditionally been laborious because of the amount of information there is to filter that's obviously going to be a lot easier with AI so if you've got say a chapter
of an ebook and like me you're frustrated by not knowing the words that you don't know so you just want to learn all the words that you don't know before you even start reading then you can tell one of the Bots Gemini chat GPT doesn't really matter you the same to me that you have a vocabulary of X number of words paste the passage in and say list the words that are not likely to be part of my vocabulary and while you're there what they mean in this context now obviously even now in 2024 it's
not going to be perfect but it removes so much manual labor and I would prefer to do it that way than to try to read the passage and filter out the words that I don't know at the same time also last thing on AI and language learning refold which is a company that specializes in learning languages via immersion has a video on this that's pretty good I'll link it in the description number 11 have a sentence of the day this is something that I've heard a number of times and every time I hear it I
think that would be a good idea but I have never done it so this is me telling myself to do it do it you find sentences that are definitely above your level now ideally not too far above but definitely not something that you could just rattle off like it was nothing so depending on your level they might be like 10 to 25 words long and they should hit some points that you do have difficulty with when speaking at everyday speed in your language and then one sentence per day becomes your sentence of the day so
maybe you just want to start with seven and you try to do this every day for a week so you write it down have it in your pocket or on your phone ideally you've got a recording of a native speaker saying the sentence and you just basically drill it at various times through the day like I said I haven't done it so I can't personally attest to how well this works but I know people who do speak their language or languages very very well and have done this including ilis whom I made a video about
a few weeks ago yes it is a bit of work to set up and everything but I can imagine that the results would be very good do it number 12 I guess this might sound a little bit weird but write a song now I don't mean sit down and try to express your love for quason in a beautiful French opera or something I mean you can do that if you want but I was made aware of a British guy named maai who did something very creative with something that I said in Spanish okay I don't
know what it means but it sounded cool so I decided to turn it into myself [Music] [Laughter] funniest thing I've seen in ages but also not a bad idea I'm kind of busy at the moment but do expect one of these in Swedish at some point and for you watching this at home make one of these in your target language upload it to YouTube and tag me at days andw and if I get enough of them I'll make a compilation of it I really like this idea well done Mai number 13 go for walks do
you feel like you're stupid if you said yes that's because you are no I'm not joking humans who move less which is when compared with our ancestors all of us are literally dumber than humans who move more to simplify that because we're all dummies and we need it simplified move body more brain work more good this is so important that I'm going to say if you're watching this on your phone keep watching but get up and go for a walk while you do so please be aware of your surroundings don't get hit by a car
but just move your body for like 15 minutes a day and your brain your mood your sleep your overall health will all thank you and your language learning will too number 14 and talking about moving do language Sprints I know some people like the idea of just doing something in their language for 15 minutes a day for 10 years and becoming fluent that way sounds lovely but if that really is all you do for 10 years it's not going to work firstly that's only like 900 hours anyway but also your brain is not just a
giant piece of paper that you can slowly color in one square at a time to truly assimilate itself to the target language there will need to be periods not necessarily 5 years or anything but at least days or weeks at a time where it gets more of the target language than anything else a huge leap forward in my Swedish genuinely a watershed moment for my language ability was in mid 2020 when I spent 57 hours of one week fully immersed in Swedish obviously not many people are going to be able to do this every week
but if you do like 35 hours in one week you'll see what I mean number 15 and this is a good thing to do alongside the last one and that is to create a target language YouTube account because YouTube serves you content that it thinks you will like in addition to the ever increasing flood of videos about some bull crap crypto thing or the best techniques for harvesting canola or literally any topic that I have never shown any interest in in my entire life from creators with two subscribers and multiple 40 minute long videos none
of which have titles and thumbnails that make any sense whatsoever but sure let's keep giving all the impression space to them hey maybe one of them is just an Undiscovered James Johnny no they're not but sometimes it shows you things that you're actually interested in and long story short there are numerous advantages to having an entire account that YouTube deems to be that of a French speaker or a Russian speaker or whatever so you create a new account and you search something anything doesn't matter what it is in the target language and you just never
click on videos that are not in that language and you don't need to do this part but you can also see whatever is culturally relevant to that country by checking the trending tab whilst using a VPN number 16 watch read or listen to things multiple times oh a video where Lamont mentions repetition how original it's very difficult to reach near native comprehension of an entire language without first reaching that level of comprehension of a single piece of the language if every time you watch a movie you then just go and watch another movie there's probably
a lot of language that was sitting right on the edge of being acquired that will move further away from that edge with every day that you don't hear it again so before you just go and look for another movie consider that the one you've just watched may be the best option and I mention this right after the YouTube Tip because YouTube videos are perfect for this number 17 the same but with TV series so the repetition is on a longer timeline to me it still feels kind of Rec that I watched a Swedish TV series
that I can't name because YouTube filters don't like the name of the series because they think you're trying to get people to join the name of the series but it wasn't actually very recent at all my Swedish is on a whole different level now meaning that the Swedish that I can extract from that series is also going to be different now if I watch it again now it will be like a different series and therefore the language I can get from it will be very different so even if the TV series is really long rewatching
is always a good option number 18 and this can go with honestly any of the others change what it is you pay attention to particularly when you're listening to something that you've listened to before there's often much to be gained from changing what it is you're focusing on so I got this from Benjamin ke whom I know some of you watch I'll link the video in the description but the very quick summary is that you can improve specific components of even very highly interconnected skills like speaking a language by simply changing what it is that
you're focusing on while you spend time with that language so if you're having trouble with for example the D sound in your target language you might just spend some time trying to notice every time you hear that sound and noticing the different ways that it plays out as it is heard in different contexts and you may find that your own pronunciation of that sound improves just by doing that because you'd be amazed by how much detail there is to hear in anything when you just start trying to number 19 buy a physical dictionary a used
one obviously because they're like $5 instead of $390 I'm not going to pretend that this is easy to explain but if you're a language nerd there's a good chance that you'll get it if you just spend some time perusing the entries it makes spending time with the language a calming experience an online dictionary doesn't really do that it's kind of like buying a car and then asking why would anyone ever ride a horse this is just better that may have been a comparison that was once fair to make but these days riding a horse is
is just not an alternative to driving it provides a different experience just like reading a physical dictionary so buy a dictionary number 20 and the dictionary will come in handy for this one but if you struggle to get going on reading a full book in your target language I get it I've been able to read in Swedish for quite some time now but I haven't read a full Swedish book in a while so if you are just struggling to get started what I might recommend instead is to just open a book and try to find
five words that you don't know or 10 or two it doesn't really matter and the beauty of this is that the more advanced you are the more you'll have to read to do it it's more fun than it sounds number 21 and we're moving well into the advice that I need to take myself now and that is when there is something whether it's something from this list or anything else that you really want to do and you feel like you should do but you just can't quite get going on it set a reward for yourself
for doing less of that thing than you would imagine is a fair amount to get the reward does that make sense I'm saying make it easy to get the reward for example I would like to buy a new desk this desk isn't really right for what I do and it's a desk it's not going to bankrupt me but somehow I feel like buying a desk just because I can is cheating I don't know why it doesn't feel earned also there are a lot of things in Swedish that I haven't done that I should do like
the sentence of the day thing or reading book lately so I'm thinking one sentence a day for say 3 weeks 21 days and if I do it I can buy a desk better language skills better desk win-win number 22 record yourself speaking I know you've heard it before but have you done it probably not I record myself speaking all the time in English and yeah it can be pretty intimidating but it doesn't have to be impromptu speaking I understand that at a very high level that's probably quite beneficial but for me just reading a passage
of text out loud in Swedish or Spanish oh it's bad I sound like a 5-year-old who's already gone through puberty it's not natural but imagine that I took an appropriate passage of which I had a recording of a native speaker reading already and recorded myself reading that every day for a month and I can already hear all the aads saying actually that's not optimal but optimal is not the name of the game despite some people thinking that I may language learning gatekeeper I'm not helpful is what we're going for if you're already pretty fluent but
you feel you could be a lot better record yourself speaking it hurts but it's good for you number 23 work together with a teacher to set yourself an assignment that they check you on I know that we can't afford teachers all the time but I used to waste all my lessons on just nothing I used to just book them and then we would just talk and I would not get any better these days days I'm thinking it would be really good to pair this with number six which was for those playing at home doing really
detailed research on something booking a number of lessons with the same teacher and updating the teacher on my research as I go with the view to spending the whole last lesson putting all the research in some kind of coherent say presentation if to you that sounds a lot like high school or university it is remember that is one of the reasons that adult native speakers are often so good at their native language it's that they were good when they were about 12 but then from there they were forced outside of their comfort zone in that
language for another 6 to 12 years School works sometimes for some things we can take the bits that work and use them to our advantage number 24 we made it and I know it sounds obvious but listen to your target language when you're on a bus or a train or in a taxi or doing the dishes I get it you've heard it before but the thing is it's hard it was easy to ignore everything else on your phone when all you had was YouTube in 360p because mobile data was so crappy but now everything's amazing
you're probably watching this video on your phone in 4k I know right it looks amazing but it's still just my face I'm not getting any prettier and all the while you could be listening to Italian Italiano see it's not the same coming from me but anyway subscribe l
