- Are you struggling to learn a foreign language? - Do you want to be really good at it? - So this video is for you!
- We are now going to list the best tips for language learning. I am Marcão. - And I am Valentina.
And this is the Polyglot Road. - Hey there folks! We were always in love with learning languages.
This is one of the reasnos that made us create this channel, the Polyglot Road. - We always get questions from our subscribers or even from friends about what you can do in order to learn a new language. So we decided to start answering this in this video.
there go the 12 most important tips that we have gathered in these years of learning! 1. UNDERSTAND YOUR REASONS - The first thing about learning a language is understanding why you want to learn that language.
Is yours a short-, medium- or long-term goal? Do you want to do fine in a tourism or business trip? Do you want to go into university abroad and need to pass an exam?
Do you want to be fluent to have more job opportunities? Do you want to act in a Bollywood movie next month? The reason for your learning will influence, for example, your study plan, the rhythm you will use in this process, the necessity of classroom lessons, immersion programs or simulated training.
That is, knowing what you want to reach will determine your planning. 2. FIND THE TIME TO STUDY - How long will it take you to learn a language?
There is no easy answer for this question. And there is also no immediate way of learning. We believe that you always need to find time in your daily routine to learn a new language, but it doesn't necessarily need to be a lot of time.
- Hey brother! What is up? Everything OK?
I'm doing nothing here. . .
what about that one? That is my boy! Really?
Way to go! So that's it. See you around.
Hey! What's that? Ah!
Good idea! - One of the keys is to use your available time in an efficient way and plan well your learning process. Half an hour daily can be enough to reach your goals.
3. EXPERIMENT AND FIND YOUR METHODS - You have to start somewhere. How is it going to be?
It can be studying alone, enrolling in a course, buying a book, studying with YouTube videos, downloading an app or doing all that at the same time. The plan you establish to learn has to bear relation to what works best for you. Many of you have already had the experience of trying to learn a foreign language and have an idea of what will work or, at least, of what will not.
There are people who cannot learn with private classes, only in group, or the opposite. After looking into other cases and also ours, we think that there is no single answer nor a single way of doing it even for the same person. It can work to listen to songs in the language that you want to learn and follow them with lyrics and translation, to watch movies in that language, with or without subtitles, to read foreign press, to study alone at home, to enroll in traditional courses, to interact with native speakers or advanced users of the language, be it live or using apps, and so on.
There are relatively new methods that we recommend that you at least try, like the combination between frequency lists and spaced repetition systems. What are frequency lists? Well, usually, if you know around 3 thousand words in a language, you can say that you already know much of it.
Frequency lists are lists about a language which enlist the most common words in that tongue. There are many available on the internet, which can enlist the 100, 500 or 1000 most used words of a given language. With this list in your hands, how can you insert in your head the most used words?
Well, for that there are spaced repetition systems. These are methods y which you review, in calculated intervals of time, new words you have learned, until you no longer forget them. This is one of the best methods for learning big quantities of items and keeping them in your memory.
There are several apps with spaced repetition, based in algorithms tailored to pull from your memory a word enough times until you never forget again. 4. BE CONSISTENT - Now that you found the time, something else you are going to need is consistency.
In order to succeed in learning a language, two things are essential: not giving up and not having long time breaks between learning sessions. To study often is better than to study a lot. Make a rule stating that you will study on a daily basis or even once a week, but follow that rule!
It is more important than you may think. DISCIPLINE! !
Remember that the most important part is to want to learn. If you don't really want it, you will not learn not even with the best teachers and schools, nor with trips or expensive programs. 5.
AVOID FRUSTRATION AND DO NOT FEAR MAKING MISTAKES - Maybe the biggest hurdle in learning foreign languages is frustration. Learning a new language is not easy and something essential is to be ready to make a fool of yourself for a while. Patience is very important and it always is rewarded.
It is acceptable, I say even more, it is even desirable to make mistakes! No one who learns a foreign language knows it all since the beginning. It is natural that we are afraid or uncomfortable to say something stupid, but, from our experience at the Polyglot Road, many times the people we meet are very happy just to see that we are trying to speak their language.
Usually these tries bring smiles and positive vibrations that are very welcome. And also in our experience, you remember much better words in which you made mistakes than words you never used. Speaking a language that is not our native one will always embarrass us at some point.
- Hello! How are you? DO you know where the best restaurant is?
- I don't know. - Do you know where there is good food? - I don't understand.
- Around. . .
here. . .
good food! Good food. - Ok, ok.
There. - Where? - There, behind the Royal Palace, there is good food.
- . . .
? ! ?
! - You don't understand? Come with me.
I'll show you. - Ah, ok! Goodbye, guys!
- That is why it is worth it to leave behind the shame barrier and to start making sentences, even if they are short or not entirely correct. Going beyond your comfort zone is a mandatory step in language learning. So don't be afraid of mistakes and do not get frustrated by them.
Look at mistakes as a tool of learning instead of looking at them as a sign that you left something behind. 6. ADAPT LANGUAGE STUDY TO YOUR INTERESTS - Learning is tough, but it must be a pleasure, because it will become easier if you not only need to, but like to learn.
So go after subjects in that language that are already interests of yours. If you like a specific music genre, look for lyrics of the songs you like in that language, and sing along. If you like cooking, try cooking videos in the target language and prepare something tasty!
Do you like football? - Let's go, Corinthians! Go, go!
Let's go, Corinthians! Go forward! Go, go go!
Goal! ! There it is!
! ! Goal!
Surprising! ! Suddenly a goall!
Look for a streaming website and follow the game in the language of your interest. Try to listen to podcasts about subjects you like. Do you like celebrity gossip, comics, fashion, cars?
How about reading about those things in your target language? This tip maybe would be difficult to follow in other times, but in the era of internet you have an infinity of available themes in almost any language. Think about that: use these tools to transform learning in something that is light to you.
7. LISTEN TO THE LANGUAGE AND GET USED TO IT - It makes a big difference in learning if you get used to the pronunciation, the intonation and the alphabet of a language. So try to listen a lot to the sounds and to feel the posture of the language, even if you don't understand anything.
Our nervous system filters the sounds we are used to listening to, barring other sounds that we often cannot even recognize, so this process is critical. There is,for example, an advanced learning technique known as "shadowing", in which you listen to a text in the target language and then repeat it out loud, mimicking the native speaker. Focusing in audio, you develop more confidence in speaking and hearing, whereas only reading and writing can leave problems in oral communication.
If you watch videos, it is worth to coordinate the muscles of your face with the ones of the speaker of the video, so that your face gets used to making similar sounds to the ones you hear. - Alright! Uuhhh!
8. LEARN WHOLE SENTENCES - If you don't have a large vocabulary yet, it is ok to learn individual words, but a better way of progressing is to learn whole sentences. so that whatever you learn can already have context.
Reading texts instead of learning words individually will make your knowledge grow about how these words are used, and a lot will be learned passively. A nice way of learning whole sentences is to buy a guide of useful phrases, lie those ones for traveling, where you can find basic expressions you might need. - Where can you go in the evening?
Go in the evening? What is there to do tonight? Where can one go tonight?
Are there nightclubs here? Is there any nightclub? And then you already can speak and interact with native speakers.
Even if you don't understand the answer yet! 9. CREATE LANGUAGE SPACES There are many moments when discipline fails or we end up putting language learning on the back burner.
Creating language spaces helps us to meet with the language when we are not thinking of it. This space to have the language more in sight can be real or virtual. Changing the language of your phone or the home page of your internet to a foreign website, for example, can be an encouragement to meet incidentally with the language.
The same thing regarding watching foreign TV channels. - I want to learn Thai. How about setting my phone to Thai language?
So cute, people! Everything is in Thai! Some very weird letters, I cannot read anything, but it will help me getting used to the language, isn't it?
What a. . .
beautiful script. That's it, right? Let me set it back to Portuguese.
How is it? I don't know. .
. how to do it. Everything is written in their language!
How do I do it? So? It is also possible to create real spaces.
Putting on your work desk or in your bathroom post-its or stickers with word you don want to forget, or making a table with grammar rules that you will hang close to your bed, for example. 10. ACCEPT GRAMMAR Well guys, I, unlike Marcão, am not a big fan or grammar.
But I have to acknowledge that, if you want to indeed master a language at a good level, it is almost impossible to ignore grammar. Even if you managed to escape from it, it will come to a certain level in a language, in which it is worth it to be patient and face grammar in a little more depth. Studying it you will certainly realize an increase in the quality of the language you are learning and using.
- Grammar is not traumatic! In orders and interdictions it is often used the infinitive instead of the imperative. French!
The article is not used after the preposition "of" in the construction "noun + of + noun". A ticket of train. A bouquet of flowers.
A course of English. - Even in Portuguese this is true. Have you ever thought of understanding better the grammar of your own language?
That can also help with foreign languages. The truth is you will never speak correctly if you don't understand a little bit of grammar. 11.
DO NOT SETTLE ONLY WITH PASSIVE KNOWLEDGE - Any language learning process builds in our mind active and passive knowledge, and both are important. Passive knowledge is what we understand of the language, be it spoken or written. Active knowledge is what we use when we have to write or speak the language.
Our passive knowledge is usually larger than our active one, that is, there are words whose meaning we know, but that we don't remember when it comes to using. With good passive knowledge, we can read texts or watch movies, for example. This knowledge is transformative, empowers us and makes us feel great.
But then the time comer to speaking and these words are stuck somewhere inside your brain. - Good afternoon. - Your name, please?
- My name. . .
my name is Valentina. - Valentina, pleased to meet you. - Pleased to meet you too.
- Do you speak Spanish? - Oh yes, of course, I, Spanish, very good. My Spanish.
. . perfect.
- We need someone who speaks Spanish very well. - I studied in school. .
. had the best grades. - I would like you to talk about your work experience.
- Oh, my experience is. . .
valuable, ample. . .
I am a hard worker. - Thank you. If you will be the chosen person, we will call you.
- Chosen? - I don't think I should comment. .
. not to us, no. I don't think so.
- So. . .
goodbye. - The person who succeeds in speaking a language is one who has not settled only with passive knowledge. That's a person who tries to use the things she learns, not only wait to understand things when they appear.
This is a precious tip. Seeking for active knowledge, using always new words you have learned, it can even help you fixating words in your passive knowledge. When a word is a part of your active knowledge i is because its concept was thoroughly mastered.
12. REVIEW AND USE WHAT YOU KNOW - Well, now that you spent the necessary time and dedicated it to learn the language you wanted, do not make the mistake of not reviewing and especially of not using what you know. It is essential to practice on any available occasion.
There is a theory which says that once you reach B2 language level, equivalent to upper intermediate, that is, when you have necessary fluency to maintain communication without effort with native speakers, it is going to be very difficult for you to forget completely the language, even if you haven't spoken it for a time. - Hey there! Have you studied Chinese?
- Yes! A year and a half! - Wow!
Nice! - Oh yeah! - Tell me something in Chinese!
- Hello. . .
how are you? - What do you work in? - Aaaahhhh.
. . Goodbye.
But you don'y have to test this theory. Maintaining what you have learned demands certain effort, but way smaller than the one you need in order to learn. You will never fully end learning a language, this is a neverending process.
But a good tip is only to stop learning once you overcome communicational fluency. - What remains from all of this? Well, what can motivate you to follow these tips, that is, having discipline, time and organizational skills, not settling and reviewing what you know can one be one thing: liking to learn.
That's why you should be able to transform this process in a pleasurable journey. - To each one of you, learning a new language will open an infinity of new opportunities. - Tell us what is you favorite method for learning languages.
- And leave us a comment saying what you thought about the video. See you around!
