I’ve gotten some asks about learning languages and any tips I might have, so here’s a post with some advice that I hope will be useful to some of you. All of this is based on my own journey in language learning and I don’t claim that this is universally applicable, but maybe it gives you some inspiration for your own techniques? :)
A small introduction: I’m a German native speaker and I speak fluent English (also majoring in it at uni). I know Spanish and Latin very well, and I have basic knowledge of French and Italian.
I would never have reached level C2 in English without the permanent exposure I gained once I started reading English books and spending time on Twitter and Youtube. A couple hours of lessons a week are far too little to achieve a high level of skill in your target language - and even if you do homework and study every day, your practice will be heavily focused on purely artificial language use. Try to consume as much authentic material in your target language as you can - it doesn’t matter a lot if you watch movies or vloggers, or if you read the news or fanfiction (extensive reading is amazing!). All of that will make you see your target language in actual usage and will help you develop a certain gut feeling about your language and its properties (and irregularities!). (It will also teach you slang and stuff, which is always useful.)
Suggested by psychologist Lev Vygotsky, the concept of Scaffolding describes a technique in which students are faced with tasks slightly above their skill level (=in the Zone of Proximal Development) that they master with only some “guidance and encouragement” by their instructor. If you don’t have an instructor, you can still tweak this and do it! If you’re sick of filling out the same verb tables and reading your textbook, challenge yourself. Pick a slightly harder text, try not to use a dictionary, make up an improvised monologue, read a text or watch a show of a different genre that uses different vocabulary… Do something that would not normally be in your curriculum, or something that is a little ahead of your curriculum. Not only will it give your learning a little boost and more variety, it can also be really motivating because it breaks your routine.
My advice would be to always learn a language that you really want to learn (for which you are intrinsically motivated). All reasons are valid - you heard a song that you liked, you’re interested in the culture, you just think it sounds cool… As long as your reason persists, you won’t lose interest and you’ll be willing to invest time and effort. Tweak your language learning so it caters to your reason - if you like the food, try out recipes in your target language, if you like the history, read books about it or watch documentaries etc etc.
Of course, some of you reading this might be forced to learn a specific language in school without having any choice. In that case, forget about how boring your classes and your teachers are, and go and find a reason! Find out more about the countries where it’s spoken, befriend someone from there (you’ll probably find native speakers on tumblr), try out some recipes or listen to songs, watch tv shows and google actors or scientists from those countries. As soon as you have a personal link to your target language instead of just going from test grade to test grade, things get a lot easier. This also works for ancient languages - I’d recommend reading up on cool mythology for Latin and Ancient Greek, or giving translations of Virgil and Homer a try. If that’s too dry in the original, Rick Riordan probably wrote something fun about it - and Harry Potter has been translated into both Latin and Ancient Greek.
These would be my main tips - I hope some of you found them useful! Let me know if you have further questions. :)
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