How to study languages without studying
Whether you're just starting out and have had bad experiences with textbook learning in the past or are getting burnt out from prepping for the next proficiency test, it's never a bad idea to put the textbooks away for a time and just enjoy your target language. If you're new to the world of immersion, here are a few ways to get you started.
Follow along with the lyrics of a song. Spotify's not-so-new-anymore lyrics feature is great for this, especially since it has timed lyrics, but it doesn't have every song.
Expert mode: Write out the lyrics and underline/highlight/make note of all the words and grammar structures you don't know. Learn these unknowns until you can understand the whole song!
Extra challenge: Translate a song from your target language. I usually tend to stay away from translations in my study, but for those of you who aspire to be translators (or already are!), the poetic nature of song lyrics can be a fun challenge.
Watch a show or movie. Netflix has now introduced a feature where you can sort by language! If there's nothing made in your language that you're interested in, it also gives the option to sort by shows and movies that have the audio or subtitles available. Internet Archive also tends to have lots of foreign films that I'm looking for.
Easy mode: Watch with English or your native language subtitles. When doing this, try to still listen to what's being said and pick up on words and phrases that you know, or match new words with their translation in the subtitles. Note: reading one language and listening to another is a skill in and of itself! Don't be discouraged if you can't do both at the same time yet, you're brain is still making the connections in intonation and cadence of the language.
Hard mode: Watch with captions in your target language. This helps you connect listening and reading, especially in languages where the spelling isn't exactly phonetic, or it uses a different alphabet than what you're used to.
Expert mode: No captions or subtitles! But who knows, maybe you're better at listening comprehension than I am. Make sure you're getting comprehensible input here; some shows and movies are much harder than others. But above all else, watch what keeps your interest. A movie where you can catch half the dialogue but is super engaging is better for you than an "easy" movie that you're going to spend your time ignoring.
Polyglot mode?: Watch something in your target language with subtitles in a different target language. This adds just one too many layers of obfuscation for me, but if you're into the challenge, more power to you.
Watch YouTube. You can change your language preference on YouTube, and with that, the Explore section will give you recommendations in your target language. Going into the trending tab with your target language can give you a good idea about what people are interested in in the countries where your target language is spoken.
Read something. It can be a book, it can be a comic. There are plenty of webcomics out there in a number of languages! There's also probably an English language listicle with recommendations of easier to understand webcomics for learners, too.
If you're just getting started in immersion, you can choose whether you focus on intensive reading or extensive reading (this actually goes for all kinds of immersion, but is easiest to control with reading since it happens at your own pace). Intensive reading is reading with the goal of understanding everything 100%. If you don't understand a word, or a grammar point, or the reading of a character, look it up. Extensive reading is reading just to get the gist of things. Look up words and grammar points only if they stop you from understanding the general meaning of the sentence or section. And of course, the more you immerse, the less you'll have to look things up, but remember that difficulty varies between materials, even within books of the same age range, genre, and medium.
A small digression: If you decide that you never want to open a textbook on your language learning journey, more power to you! It can be done and I know people who have gotten to proficient levels of their target language without textbooks. If you want this to be you, extensive immersion is your best friend. You also might want to get comfortable with the flashcard program anki, because, if this is your goal, all those unknown grammar points and words will probably end up there. But at the end of the day, language learning is an intensely personal journey, and what works for others won't necessarily work for you. Finding what works for you is just part of learning a language.
Play a game. Lots of games are region locked (hint: Pokemon Sun/Moon isn't! If you start a new game, you can choose which language you want to play it in), but there are plenty of free online games still lurking in the corners of the internet. With a bit of googling, you can probably find something in your target language. Just the other day, I went out to find one of those hidden item games in Japanese and ended up finding an entire site dedicated to user made browser games.
If you're learning Japanese or Korean, picrew might be fun to look through as well. I noticed that plenty of picrews have basic anatomy vocabulary. I'm not super familiar with picrew myself, but the ones I've seen tend to be in Korean and Japanese
And lastly, don't fully give up on textbooks before trying them out. Don't be discouraged if textbooks truly aren't your thing, but studying a language on your own time can feel much different than studying for school. Don't put too much pressure on yourself and just have fun with your language. Additionally, if you'd rather learn in a video format, many languages have full courses uploaded to YouTube for you to try. Finding these can be difficult for some languages though, so don't hesitate to reach out to other learners and see what they recommend!
Got your materials ready? Great! Now go forth and immerse!
