If you're anything like me you've been thinking about learning a certain language for a long time. I started learning Spanish when I was in eighth grade. I was fascinated by the idea of being able to speak a new language, but I found out it's hard and my progress was really slow.
If you're in a similar situation you're in luck. This free video series is called finally learn that language and I'm going to guide you step by step through all the lessons I've learned about how people learn languages best. Despite my slow progress I stuck with Spanish through all four years of high school, improving at a snails pace.
I even went on a mission trip to central America when I was 17 years old and I was excited to use the Spanish I had learned in school but then I realized I couldn't understand anything. I graduated from high school with five years of Spanish under my belt and I could barely string together a coherent sentence in the language. Many of you can probably relate.
I never forgot my dream of learning Spanish but after high school I joined the united states marine corps and life just got busy. For six years the idea of practicing Spanish lingered in the back of my mind. I tried using Duolingo and rosetta stone but that didn't help at all.
And then in the first half of 2015, I became fluent in Spanish. I found out that the secret to learning a new language has nothing to do with how much you study or how many grammar drills you do. For a long time I thought the key to learning Spanish was moving to a foreign country where they speak Spanish but I pretty quickly realized that's not it either.
When I was in the marine corps I lived in Djibouti Africa for six months in 2012 and even though this is a french-speaking country I learned no french while I was there. Not one word! Instead I learned french four years later from the comfort of my own home in Wisconsin, because I had cracked the code of how to learn language.
I no longer use textbooks to learn languages. Instead I make friends with native speakers either while I'm traveling or online, which is pretty easy to do nowadays. I also learned how to effectively utilize music games and stories for language learning.
There's three main principles I learned along the way that radically changed how I learn languages. Number one: Don't study grammar. Practice using the language.
You can't learn to swim by reading a book and you can't learn languages that way either. You have to actively practice using the skills that you're trying to acquire. For languages that usually means speaking listening reading and writing.
Not exercises in a workbook. Number two: Practice with confidence and don't stress about the mistakes you make. You have to learn to be bold and start speaking to people in your target language before you think you're ready.
Go out of your comfort zone and make lots of mistakes. Mistakes are your friends. Learn to embrace them and they'll teach you.
And number three: Take in lots of input. The two methods of receiving input are reading and listening to content in your target language. If you read and listen to things that fascinate you in your target language, learning will be fun, not a chore.
And there's lots of ways to implement listening practice into your daily life without taking out any extra time from out of your day. The next videos in this series will give you more detailed instructions about specifically what you should be doing if you want to make language learning a reality in your life so click the video beneath me to get started. Now go into the world and learn that language!
