My Guide to Accelerated Language Learning (Learning a Foreign Language)

Member Name: Praskipark

Product:	Learning a Foreign Language
Date:	04/10/09 (62 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun and much quicker than the traditional way

Disadvantages: Less appealing to people with logical dominance

Learning a foreign language can be a very long haul. If you are young or have plenty time, it's not so bad but for all hopeful language learners, it's well worth finding some shortcuts and an accelerated learning approach can provide the answer. There are a range of books on accelerated learning and I've used some of these techniques combined with my own ideas to fast track language acquisition without spending hours on grammar drills.

My suggested approach makes language learning more fun and a lot quicker. Here's what to do.

Perhaps the most important point is to set out with a positive outlook and expectation. If you start from the point of view that learning a language is difficult and you'll never succeed, all that negative reinforcement will probably defeat you. Tell yourself that you love the language, enjoy learning it and find it easy.

Don't be black and white in your thinking. People tend to classify themselves as speaking or not speaking a language with anything short of fluency, being classed as not speaking. Even learning your own language is a lifelong task, so think of another language as a continuous road that you are walking on. The minute you say your first, 'Ola,' you have started on that journey.

There is obviously a big difference regarding the level of language exposure you can achieve depending whether you are living in the country of the target language or learning from your own country. Either way, overloading is recommended by bombarding yourself with the language. Try to do this during every spare minute. Even if you are an absolute beginner, listen to the radio in the language, watch TV, online video clips or play an MP3 player. You might not understand a word of it but you will start to absorb the sounds and rhythm of the language. When you start to speak it, your pronunciation will be more accurate and you will find that reading makes more sense. After doing this for some time, you will start to notice that the language is not one, incomprehensible stream of sound but real words and meaning that you can pick out.

If you are able to, it's worth buying newspapers, magazines and watching the news in the target language. It's really good when you already know what the news story is about as this will aid your understanding.

Build up your vocabulary by labelling the house. Write the words for mirror, cupboard, wardrobe, etc. on a piece of paper and stick it to the item. Once you have learnt the words, remove the labels. Use your journey to work or school to develop more vocabulary by asking yourself, 'what's this in ...?' You can also use such time on inner dialogue to practice simple phrases.

When you find words tricky, break them into pieces, look for sounds that are familiar in your own language and create an associate. Use association as much as possible, particularly for vocabulary. For example, dog in Portuguese is cao, pronounced, cow. That's an easy image; cat is gato; think of a cat eating a great big gateau! Make your images as colourful, big and weird as possible. You will find that you will remember words straight away. Generally people limit themselves to the idea that you can only learn a few new words each day; with this approach, you can learn fifty or more.

When learning a language with genders, always learn the gender when you learn a new word. Do this by colour coding it or putting it in a different place in your mind. For examples female words in the bedroom, male words in the garage, neutral words in the hall - anywhere that makes sense to you. To remember the gender, all you have to do, is remember where you put the word.

As for grammar, working your way through endless grammar drills of conjugations can be tiring and tiresome. Instead, learn some key phrases that use different tenses. If you only learn one per day, this will give you 365 grammar templates in a year; enough to construct the language and replicate other sentences using the same form. This will happen by imprinting the shape of the sentence on your mind rather than through conscious processing which will always take longer and be less natural.

Two final things that are very helpful are, firstly, to read a wide variety of material from advertising leaflets to zoology books and everything in between. Don't keep stopping to look up words all the time as after a while many of them will be picked up naturally. Secondly, don't forget to speak! From day one, use the language, even if all you know is hello, goodbye, please and thank you. This will avoid fear of speaking. Jump in, straight way and you will find that the water isn't as cold as you expected. Learning a language this way can be great fun and rewarding too. It's just a matter of technique.

* Also posted on Helium*

Summary: A Faster way to Learn a Language