Now that I am re-learning Spanish after almost ten years of not using it, I am reflecting on the best strategies to learn a language, which I thought might come in handy to some of you. Here’s my no-nonsense rundown, based on my own experience as a serial language learner.
It seems to me that I have spent most of my life learning languages. Starting of course with my own (French), then moving on to Dutch from kindergarten until the end of secondary school, during which I also added English and a bit of German. When I started my bachelor’s degree in translation and interpreting, I had to pick two languages, and I chose English and Spanish as my main linguistic combination. I later had elective classes in Arabic, Chinese, Swedish and Italian in the course of my master’s degree.
After we graduated, some of my friends and I used to joke that we had no specific abilities whatsoever (which is an exaggeration) but that the one thing we could do better than the general population was learning languages (which is true). This post is based on the lessons I have learnt along my own path as a learner, plus a few elements I have observed in the course of my career as a lecturer in various educational structures ranging from secondary school and evening classes
One thing you need to understand if you want to become fluent in a language is that there is a sequential order to language acquisition. Think of how you learnt your mother tongue. When you were a baby, you first heard people talk around you, then you started to speak, and finally, you learnt how to read and how to write at roughly the same time. I have studied languages using many different methods, but the fastest, most efficient ones definitely were those that replicated the natural language acquisition patterns. In other words, you’ll be more efficient at learning a language if you start with listening to it and then follow the natural order of things, gradually moving to speaking, then reading and writing. In fact, it all boils down to the idea that you have to walk before you can run.
On the importance of cultural awareness (aka “The Real Tea”)
We all know of the four traditional language skills I have just listed (listening, speaking, reading and writing). Unfortunately, most methods tend to downplay a crucial capability, without which the other four will never be enough: cultural awareness. It is, in fact, hardly ever mentioned at all as a competence, but it probably is the most important one of all as you cannot understand or speak a language correctly if you do not master at least its basic cultural references.
Let’s imagine that you’re learning English. You have read grammars, done your exercises conscientiously, and studied your vocabulary lists. You feel ready to participate in a conversation. Alas, at some point, one of the participants points out that something isn’t quite right, and adds “There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.” The reference flies way over your head because, for the sake of this example, you’ve never heard of Hamlet. You’ve understood every word of the sentence, and yet the allusion is lost on you entirely.
Of course, this hypothetical situation may seem a little far-fetched; after all, most people are familiar with at least the most famous works of William Shakespeare. But what if you weren’t learning English but Spanish, and someone made a reference to Gabriel García Márquez’ Cien años de Soledad? Or to Salvador Allende’s last speech? Or to a meme that made the rounds on El Butanero? Or to a character in Alta Mar?
The only way for you to get better at understanding those “insider references” is to place yourself in situations in which you are in contact with native utterances of the language you’re learning as often as possible. Which is always a good idea anyway, as it is the point of the first item of our Top 5 Tips for Learning a New Language.
Top 5 Tips for Learning a New Language
Though there is no magic trick that will help you become fluent in a language overnight, some foolproof strategies can be implemented. In order for them to be easier to remember, I’ll be using analogies to explain what it is exactly that makes the difference between people who are efficient learners and people who fail at picking up languages. Bear in mind that there is no such thing as a being “gifted” when it comes to languages; it’s all about working in a smart and effective way.
1. Be a parrot
And by this, I don’t mean “flaunt your feathers and bite unsuspecting passers-by.” What I mean is “repeat everything you hear.” This is not to be taken literally, but you get the gist. Do you want native speakers to think you’re one of them? Then this tip is for you.
There’s nothing more gratifying than being mistaken for a native speaker of the language you’re learning (I mean, sex is good and all, but have you ever been asked which part of Wales you were from?) and the high that follows is one I could ride forever. But it takes a lot of work to get there. Fortunately, most of that work can be done in a fun way.
As I was telling you at the beginning of this post, natural language acquisition starts with listening and repeating. You may think that repeating the things that you hear will make you sound silly (and trust me, it will), but it is such an efficient strategy that an entire educational current is based on it: the Global Structure Audio-Visual method (GSAV), with which I and hundreds of thousands of others have learnt Spanish.
The principle of the class was that we would all sit in a room and watch slides that represented an everyday situation. To each slide corresponded a line of dialogue that had been pre-recorded by a native speaker. Our teacher would play the line two or three times, then we would repeat what we had heard and the teacher would correct our pronunciation until each and every one of us got it perfectly. Spanish being a language that employs a diacritical mark (´) whose use is based entirely on pronunciation, it is critical to get the oral accentuation before learning anything else, lest your subsequent writing
Sure, it wasn’t fun to spend five hours a week in that dark room doing nothing else than repeating the same basic sentences over and over as if we were future undercover agents preparing to join a sleeper cell in Bogotá in a 90s movie, but it worked. It actually worked so well that I still remember some of the dialogues. In fact, when I am in doubt regarding a sentence I am writing in Spanish, I still fall back on the phrases I learnt some fifteen years ago.
Storytime
Of course, you may not have access to GSAV-based language classes. You may even be learning a new language on your own. But worry not, you can implement the same method at home because the core of it simply consists of repeating stuff. I developed the unconscious habit of repeating the phrases I heard in foreign languages when I was first learning Spanish, and though I have more or less stopped doing it in my main foreign tongues (English and Spanish) I still do it every time I hear a language that I like but in which I am not fluent, such as Danish, Swedish, Greek or Italian. I have learnt to do it discreetly though, in case someone who is not aware that I am a nutjob is watching.
The idea is beautifully simple: you just have to repeat what you hear, whatever it is: news broadcasts, songs, one-liners, TV show dialogues, weather forecasts, political speeches, podcasts, etc. The Internet is a wonderful tool that’s teeming with niche content, so you’re definitely bound to find something that you will enjoy repeating. It doesn’t matter if you repeat whatever your favourite YouTube beauty guru says as long as you practice integrating native speech patterns into your own private collection of linguistic exemplars. Just listen and repeat. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. After a while, those phrases and idiomatic expressions will come to you naturally when you speak because your brain will have assimilated them as its own.
- Skills at work: Listening, speaking
- Side skills acquired: Cultural awareness
- Degree of difficulty: I am not going to lie, it’s going to be challenging at first, but if you commit to the practice of being a parrot (or “speech shadowing,” as professionals call it) regularly, you’ll see exponential results in a matter of weeks.
- Bonus: If you do it for long enough, you’ll be able to distinguish all local accents faster than it takes to say “A’ight, mate?”
2. Be curious
See, it’s not just about speaking like native speakers, it’s also about being able to think like them. And in order to think like them, you need to observe them. What’s their body language like? Is it different from yours? Is their voice louder or softer than yours? What’s the function of silence in their speech patterns? Do they use irony to convey what they mean? Do they look people in the eyes when they speak? Do they use their hands to reinforce their message? Those are analytical questions that are often overlooked because their answers can easily be found intuitively when living among the people whose language you’re learning. But if you’re willing to have a closer look at how people behave when they speak, you’ll learn A LOT.
Besides the non-verbal aspect of communication, you will also need to be comfortable with your foreign language’s cultural reference frame. As I was telling you earlier, culture is of dramatic importance when it comes to learning a language, and unfortunately, it often is the most overlooked aspect of foreign language acquisition. I suspect that this (lack of) treatment of culture by language manuals is due to the fact that unlike grammar, vocabulary or punctuation, it cannot be summed up in neatly organised columns or on flashcards. Nonetheless, if you want to be a credible speaker of any given language, then you have to know the same things as the natives know, which, admittedly, is very difficult.
I have been learning English for the past 25 years, and I will never know everything a native speaker knows — even a not-too-knowledgeable one — because I simply didn’t grow up in Great Britain. I didn’t receive the same education as British kids did, I didn’t watch the same cartoons on Saturday afternoons, and I absolutely never got completely pissed outside The Merchant on Slater Street by 8 pm on a Friday because I had drunk one too many Bulmers.
Trying to acquire as much knowledge of the cultural reference frame as possible is an uphill battle that comes with a Sysiphean sense that the more you learn, the more there is left to learn. But you don’t need to deal with that sort of existential anxiety at this point (though it definitely is a side effect of learning languages) since you don’t have to experience everything to know a little.
The trick simply is to look up the things you don’t know, just like you would when it comes to building your vocabulary: if you come across a word you don’t know, you look it up. The same goes for more elaborate concepts such as artistic movements, historical references, political parties, book titles, culinary specialities, folk songs, etc. They are the building blocks of culture, very much like words are the building blocks of a lexicon. You may fall down the Wikipedia rabbit-hole and spend hours clicking on links, but at least you will have learnt something new, which is the point, really.
- Skills at work: Cultural awareness
- Side skills acquired: Reading, listening, speaking, writing, depending on how you approach it.
- Degree of difficulty: It is easy peasy, but it takes some discipline. It also takes a lifetime.
- Bonus: The unbearable existential dread that you’ll never have enough time to read all the books, listen to all the songs, and see all the films. Welcome to the unavoidable result of being confronted with the givens of human existence, bitch.
3. Read books
A fair number of my former students didn’t like this bit, but it is true: it takes infinitely more time to learn a language if you don’t read books written in it. I don’t know what kind of causality is at play here, but in my own experience, books are your best friends if you are trying to acquire a deeper knowledge of a foreign language.
Disclaimer — It may
Language acquisition through reading follows pretty much the same principle as the first tip which consisted of repeating native utterances: because your brain sees the same patterns again and again, it ends up recognizing and assimilating them. For example, I didn’t fully understand the Spanish subjunctive (which is a bit of a headache) until I read the complete works of Isabel Allende (I am forever grateful to the ULPGC library, and especially to that one librarian who always pretended not to know that my books were ridiculously overdue so I wouldn’t be banned; I guess what I am trying to say here is “kids, befriend a librarian”).
It is extremely difficult for me to sympathise with anyone who says they do not like reading. However, I do understand the theoretical principle that some people may not enjoy books as much as I do, though it makes me very sad and I am sorry to say that I find it a little gross. That being said, I maintain the belief that someone who doesn’t like reading is someone who hasn’t met the right book yet. You may not enjoy literature, but perhaps you’ll like nonfiction. Or you may have a deep-seated disdain for science fiction, but you may enjoy romance novels, philosophical treatises or graphic novels. Don’t see books as a monolithic group; they’re very much like people — some of them are good, some of them are bad, and the vast majority of them are simply mediocre. But when you find the right one, you fall in love (this coming from someone who goes into full mourning each time she finishes Jane Eyre; book love is real love).
And if you’re not able to derive pleasure from any book — which I don’t actually believe is possible, but I’ll play along for the sake of the argument — then at least try to see them as a necessary evil on your journey to the command of a new language, just like I don’t particularly enjoy going to the dentist, but I still go because what I do enjoy is having teeth.
All in all, I have never met anyone who had had their life diminished by reading a book.
- Skills at work: Reading (you don’t say?)
- Side skills acquired: Cultural awareness
- Degree of difficulty: It may be a little difficult at first, so don’t make it extra hard on yourself by looking up every other word you don’t understand. Only look up the vocabulary that really prevents you from understanding what you’re reading.
- Bonus: Have I mentioned that you get to f*cking read books?
4. Take the plunge
Languages, much like swimming, require practice. You could spend a lifetime reading about the mechanics of the human body, the physics of water and the theories related to swimming, if you never dived into a swimming pool, you would never know how to swim. It’s the same with languages. Assuming that you had an infinite amount of time at your disposal and that you had access to an infinite number of theoretical resources including but not limited to grammars, vocabulary lists and philological analyses of a language, it all would be a complete waste of time for you to approach it without putting it into practice.
It would also be extremely stupid to dedicate so many hours of your life to something you don’t mean to use. Languages are not like dead butterflies that you collect and store under a glass; they are evolving creatures with a life of their own, and if you want to love them, then you have to follow them to their natural habitat. Immersion is by far the most efficient way to improve your command of a foreign language and to expand your horizon (which is never a bad thing) because ultimately, living in a language is very different from studying it, and you’ll never know how much you don’t know until you put yourself in a real-life situation of communication.
The main advantage of language immersion programmes (whatever the type) is that they are a completely painless way to learn a language. Hear me out: you won’t have to study anything. You will acquire knowledge without even thinking about it in the course of your everyday life, because nothing makes you learn basic vocabulary as fast as having to explain to your landlord that you need the plumbing fixed or to sort out your paperwork with a city hall clerk in a room full of loud people.
Caution — Many private companies offer language immersion programmes that are crazy expensive. They’ll bill you insane amounts of money for the privilege of having a few hours of classroom-based courses — often taught by non-native speakers despite whatever they claim on their websites — on top of your “immersive experience.” I really cannot overstate how much you do not need those. Not only do they pay their teachers a misery (I was once offered €250 for ten days of 9-5 teaching plus entertaining the kids the rest of the time by a company that billed the parents €1,900 per child), but they often offer very poor immersion as a whole too, since you’ll end up doing cliché activities with other learners instead of meeting native speakers and soaking up local flavour. Avoid those companies at all costs. Instead, try Woofing, the EU’s Erasmus programme or literally anything else.
- Skills at work: Listening, speaking, reading, writing, cultural awareness
- Side skills acquired: Self-reliance, empathy, confidence, time management, openness to experience, etc —
basically every life skill that any adult should master to function in this world. - Degree of difficulty: Oh well. You’ll get to visit a new place, meet new people, taste new food, probably have the time of your life, all the while learning more than you would have imagined in your wildest dreams, so who cares how difficult it is?
- Bonus: People there (wherever that “there” is) will 100% dig your accent (whatever it is), so chances are you’ll get laid significantly more than if you had stayed home (remember to always ask for consent, stay safe, and use a condom; if you fail to do the latter, name the baby after me).
5. Embrace the awkwardness
In the course of your learning, you will definitely be faced with situations in which you will feel stupid. It is completely inevitable, and you can rest assured that every person who’s ever had to learn another language in the entire course of human history has been there before you. There’s no way out of it. The list of awkward things that will happen to you when speaking a foreign language includes (but isn’t limited to):
- Mispronouncing a word in such a way that it means something else entirely
- Mispronouncing a word in such a way that it doesn’t mean anything at all
- Puzzled glances from native speakers
- Repeating the same question three or four times and finally receiving an answer that’s not related to your question at all
- Ending up in a completely different neighbourhood from the one you meant to go to because the cab driver hasn’t understood what you said, still thanking them, exploring the area for three minutes, then hailing another cab in the opposite direction
- Not remembering how you call a specific item in any of the languages you speak, including your mother tongue
- Being corrected by a random person on the Internet because you’ve made a mistake in their language and they didn’t pick up you were a foreigner
- Being corrected by a native speaker in your own mother tongue because you’ve accidentally used a structure that belongs to another language
- Being extremely confused by the subjunctive, what it is, how to use it, and whether it actually exists at all
- Looking like an idiot who doesn’t know stuff a five-year-old would know
- Eating a dish you’re 99% sure contains an ingredient that you really dislike/you’ve never heard of before/might kill you because you had no clue what you were ordering
- Being talked at by a random blabbermouth who does not realise you only grasp one word out of five of whatever it is that they’re saying
And it’s all perfectly fine. I’ve been there, and it all makes for good memories in the end. Just don’t take yourself too seriously and you’ll be fine, since apart from you, no one will remember it, and shame is temporary. Trust me, I know.
Storytime (again)! — When I was about fourteen, my English teacher, who also happened to teach evening classes, once told us the story of how he had mentioned to his (adult) students that if they didn’t know how to say a word in English, they could always try saying the French word with an English accent. Given the historical proximity of the two languages, it made a lot of sense, right? Right. A few weeks after he told his class about that trick, a student of his went to London for the first time. He saw the sights and had a grand old time, but at some point, he noticed that he needed batteries for his camera (bear in mind that it was the nineties), so he entered a shop to buy some. When the shop assistant asked him how he could help him, he realised that he didn’t remember the word “battery.” He did, however, remember what his teacher had taught him. “Batteries are piles (/
Another awkward side effect that may arise when learning a new language is the development of something that I can only describe as a “new persona,” for lack of a better expression. For example, my students are always extremely surprised (or “shook”, in their own words) when they hear me speak French for the first time because my voice isn’t the same in English and as it is in my mother tongue. It’s a phenomenon I have observed in many other people too, and it’s always a bit of a game to guess what a person sounds like in their own language when you’ve only ever known them in a lingua franca or another.
But it’s not limited to the voice either. I know that English Ms Unexpected is much funnier and more carefree than French Ms Unexpected, who is a bit shy and low-spirited. I’m excited when I have to present a paper at a conference if the working language is English, and terrified if it is French. All in all, I have come to imagine that English Ms Unexpected is a bit of an extrovert, the kind of girl who speaks to strangers and makes puns on the fly, while my mother-tongue self would rather sit in a corner and not attend any event at all.
My friend Romain, who’s a serial linguist too, describes that behaviour as the shiny armour of languages, a sort of shield you put up between your more vulnerable self and the world, and I think there’s some truth in it, though I also believe that both personalities, the extrovert and the introvert versions of myself, do coexist within me and that together, they make me the person that I am. Maybe learning English has simply helped me get in touch with that side of me I would never have known otherwise, but I suspect it’s a question that a psycholinguist will answer much better than I ever could. And as to Spanish Ms Unexpected, you don’t want to meet her; that bitch is wild.
I guess what I am saying here is that people do not care about social interactions enough for them to be traumatized by an exchange with someone who does not speak their language properly; most people will even be impressed with the fact that you’re trying at all and they’ll do their best to help you, unless they’re assholes, in which case you probably shouldn’t feel compelled to talk to them at all. And when it comes to your inner awkwardness regarding a possible foreign language-induced split personality, well, admit it — you’ve always known you were a bit of an oddball.
In conclusion, don’t be scared to look stupid or to feel awkward; no one really cares if you’ve butchered the pronunciation of a word or if you’ve misused a tense. It’s ok to make mistakes — we’re all going to die anyway.
- Skills at work: Adulting
- Side skills acquired: self-control, perspective taking, awareness, flexibility
- Degree of difficulty: It’s only hard until you learn how not to give a f*ck
Extra tips (because who’s counting anyway?)
6. Learn the 100 core words of the language you’re learning (type “[language] 100 core words” in your favourite search engine).
7. Learn how to ask “How do you say [something]?” and “How do call this?” in your target language. It’s by far the one sentence that you’ll need the most.
8. Date a native speaker. It works! Who knows, you may even fall in love with them and embark on a whole new adventure (again, should any offspring come from your union, I do insist you name them after me).
9. Write and memorize a short paragraph that contains all the difficult grammatical points you need to remember, so you’ll have an example to fall back to in case of doubt. It’s like using a mathematical formula in which you just need to adjust the terms of the equation.
10. Talk to yourself. If you sing in the shower, there is no reason why you shouldn’t speak in tongues in there too. Alternatively, you can also force yourself to think in the language you’re learning. And before you know it, you’ll be dreaming in it too.
11. Set small, achievable goals. For example, decide to learn 100 words this week, to listen to five podcasts, to talk to three people, or to master a specific grammatical rule. It doesn’t matter how small your goal is, what matters is that you build confidence in your ability to learn and that you see your progress for yourself.
12. Find a mock citizenship test of a country whose official language you’re studying. Take notes of the questions and research their answers. The test will give you a clearer idea of the basic knowledge you should have when it comes to the cultural frame of that language.
13. Last but not least, PUT SOME WORK INTO IT, MOTHERF*CKERS!
Do you have more tips that are super duper useful, completely foolproof and definitely efficient when it comes to learning languages? Share them in the comments and I’ll add them to the list!
