Faster Foreign Language Learning

I recently came across and interesting article at Antimoon’s learn English online site discussing problems with the Communicative Approach to language learning. This approach encourages you to communicate very early in your learning, often from the first lesson.

Now, I do understand what the author is saying—you should get input and lots of it before you produce output. While I agree that that’s the ideal, there are a few problems with that and some reasons why the Communicative Approach is better in certain cases.

Language in the Real World

I’m very utilitarian about language learning. Most of us don’t learn under ideal conditions, not all of us can reasonably stick to one language until we “master” it, and we don’t always have the luxury of waiting until we’re comfortable with a language to begin speaking or writing.

Often, life throws us into situations where we have to sputter out whatever words we can and hope they work. And we certainly can’t wait until we’ve had 18 months of exposure to native speakers before we venture the word “Mamma.”

Language Class is not for Input

Presuming you’re a reasonably motivated adult learner, you have the foresight and wherewithal to get your own input. You can listen to audio lessons and music, watch movies, or read the newspaper. You have the Internet, the library, and the bookstore for that. You don’t need a professional native speaking teacher or even a partner.

But unless you’re studying in-country, your language class is probably the only time you have to speak and write and get useful feedback. That is why so many teachers make speaking the focus of class (speaking, because it’s like pulling teeth to get students to write).

Most students would get thoroughly annoyed with us if we just handed out newspaper articles to read or put on a video and told them to watch. “We can do this at home!” they’d protest, and they’d be right.

The jump-in-the-deep-end Communicative Approach isn’t perfect, but it is practical for today’s world. Imagine a nurse looking for Spanish lessons so she can talk with Spanish-speaking patients. She’s not going to choose a course in which she’d have to wait a month to begin speaking. She needs it yesterday.

Be Greedy with Input

Personally, I see no reason to hold back on input. You don’t have to understand everything you hear or read to benefit from it. Early on, if you listen to a song and understand one word, hey, that’s great!

The author of Antimoon is certainly correct that you won’t build your vocabulary or learn new grammar by repeating what you already know. This is why so many “conversation classes” improve fluency (speed and ease of speaking), but fail to move the student up a level (from beginner to intermediate, for example). Unless new words and grammar a systematically introduced and practiced, you won’t improve.

Being deeply immersed in real life is the only substitute. Of course, you can learn from only conversation in something like a homestay situation where the sheer volume of input outweighs the lack of lesson planning. But we’re talking 6+ hours of active conversation day in, day out for months.

What Really Counts

So if you’re trying to learn a language fast, it’s worth it to start communicating as soon as you can. If, however, you’re an academic or hobbyist with years to dedicate to attaining perfection, you have other options.

One of the biggest problems that hold many people back from being able to learn a language fast is lack of organization.

Sure, some people may say it’s because they don’t have time to study, but what that usually means is that they haven’t organized their learning plan well enough to take advantage of the time they do have.

That’s where audio courses come in.

Use Every Free Minute

Audio courses help you make use of the little scraps of free time you have through out the day. Put the course on your MP3 player or Walkman and it’s ready to go

It also lets you keep your hands free, so can go for a walk, make coffee, clean the house, or just about anything else while you’re studying. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend getting too deeply involved in something else because it will distract you from what you’re trying to learn and reduce your retention of the material.

The up side, though, is hands-free study will take away the feeling that there’s “something more important” you should be doing instead of sitting on the sofa with a textbook in your lap.

The Best Audio Courses

If you’ve read a few articles at FasterForeignLanguageLearning.com, you’ve probably noticed that I’m a huge fan of Pimsleur. The reason I like them so much is the course is very well organized to help you actually remember what you hear. It’s not just someone reading a list of words followed by a few dialogues.

The only downside, however, is that Pimsleur is rather expensive. If you’re not ready to splash out $200 or more, give Living Languages from Random House a try. These courses do come with books that include vocab lists, example phrases, and quizzes, but the audio alone is still useful.

Make you Own “Course”

Not having a professionally designed audio course available doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage audio to improve your language skills. The internet gives you access to a huge variety of audio in the more common languages, but you’ll probably be able to find something in all but the rarest languages. This includes talk radio, interviews, music clips, movies, and even ads.

While it’s true this audio material won’t be neatly organized for language study purposes, you’ll find that just listening—daily—will help your listening comprehension enormously. Keep adding your seven (or however many) words a day and you’ll find yourself able to understand more and more of what you hear. The repetition will also help get the words into your long-term memory.

One caveat, though: if you’re the type of learner who needs to see new words in writing or write them out yourself before you can remember them, an audio-only course may actually be slower for you than a traditional textbook-based course.

No matter how much you love the language you’re learning, if you’re learning at reasonably brisk pace, burnout is always a risk. Fortunately, language learning burnout is relatively easy to get over.

Put Away the Books

Foreign language learning burnout often happens when you’re concentrating on book learning. When you’re spending most of your study time reading about grammar rules, doing repetitive drills, and reviewing vocabulary lists, it’s easy to get disconnected from the reason you’re learning. That reason, for most learners, is communication with other human beings.

Take a break from book learning for a while and concentrate on conversation practice. If you don’t have much opportunity for conversation, pick up a low-cost audio course and just listen without doing any accompanying exercise.

Don’t worry about learning anything new. This kind of relaxed practice may not build your vocab or introduce you to new grammar rules, but it will consolidate your knowledge and skills. You’ll become more adept at using the words and grammar you do already know.

Do What You Enjoy

One of the great things about language is that it’s used in so many different ways. If you’re not enjoying the ways you use the language you’re learning, try something different. Instead of relying on workbook exercises for your language input, use your language to do things you also enjoy in native language.

Watch movies, listen to music, read magazines, hang out at online forums, or anything else you like doing in your native language. Consider it a working holiday. Take a few days off just to experience the language and immerse yourself in it without formally studying it. If you’re really burned out, don’t even write down new words. Just experience.

Consider Slowing Down

When you can’t wait to be able to communicate in your target language, it’s easy to set overly optimistic communication goals for a relatively short period of time and them push yourself to reach them. In some cases—like when you’re very highly motivated (read: desperate) and surrounded by native speakers—this can work well. In most cases, particularly when you’re self-taught and don’t have much material, it won’t do much besides wear you down.

If you think you might have underestimated the time it will take you to reach your goals, go back and adjust them to something that’s a little more realistic.

If you don’t think pace is the problem, then look for ways to make your study time more efficient. Test out mnemonic devices for remember vocabulary and new practice techniques for absorbing grammar rules. Faster Foreign Language Learning provides a wide variety of these “learning shortcuts” to make your study time more efficient.

Language Burnout and Culture Shock

If you’re living in another country and speaking another language most of the time, both language burnout and culture shock are perfectly normal and all but unavoidable. This is especially true your first time living in another culture.

The best way to deal with them is to learn what’s coming (culture shock follows a distinct pattern) and realize that what you’re feeling is due to a natural period of adjustment and not your fault orthe fault of the people around you. Go easy on yourself for a while, but don’t break off constant with the language completely and both the burnout and culture shock will pass.

Because foreign language learning is a long-term project, setting specific, achievable goals is critical if you want to stay on track and make continual progress at a good rate. You first time planning your own course of study, though, it hard to know where to start. Here are some tactics to help you set good goals whether this is your first foreign language for fifth.

Set Your Time Frame and Study Time

Even if you hope to develop near-native fluency in the language some day, you’ll still need short-term goals to keep you on track. If you’re planning on reaching anything close to working fluency, one year out is a good time frame to start with. Then break the year down into four three-month quarters and set specific goals for each (check the next section on communication goals for examples).

Also consider how much time you have to invest in studying and practicing this language. Taking an eight-hour-a-day intensive course for three months will move you along a lot faster than spending half an hour a day.

Even half an hour a day of “serious study” is usually enough to make steady progress, though. You can easily sneak in a little extra study time by carrying vocab notes around so you can study while waiting in line or using an audio course you can listen to in the car.

Start with Communication Goals

Communication goals focus on what you want to be able to do with the language you’re studying. They’re goals like “order a meal in a restaurant,” “get the gist of a radio news broadcast” and “write a note explaining where I went and when I’ll be back.” Setting this type of goals ensures that you make progress on the things that matter most. It also helps motivate you because you’ll really feel like you’re making progress.

As much as possible, avoid goals like “get to chapter 5” or “learn the dative case.” These are too abstract to ensure that they’ll really help you (what if chapter 4 is full of stuff you don’t really need?) or motivate you with the promise of new communication skills.

Set your three month communication goals for speaking, listening, reading and writing. Then break those down into what you need to learn week by week in order to reach those goals.

Stay Flexible

Surprises are all part of the fun of foreign language learning. Because you can never quite be sure what any given language is going to throw at you, your goals don’t have to be set in stone.

Maybe one of your one-month goals was to be able to relate a story in the past tense, but you discover that the language you’re studying has several past tenses and it’s going to take you a while to learn to use each one. Just adjust your goals to reflect that and concentrate on learning to use one past tense at a time.

For specific strategies that will help you reach your language learning goals faster, check out Faster Foreign Language Learning.

If you can read this, you absolutely do have what it takes to learn another language. Learning a foreign language as an adult does not take “above average” intelligence or any particular “aptitude” for languages.

Unfortunately, though, a lot of would-be multilinguals get thrown off track by stumbling blocks that have nothing to do with their skills or innate abilities. Here are some ideas for how you can overcome three main problems that may have misled you into thinking you’re not good with languages.

Try a Different Language

I know this isn’t always possible. Sometimes you don’t have much choice about the language you need to learn. When you do, though, pick one that interests you. Motivation is a huge part of being able to learn a language.

Don’t assume that just because you had a hard time with French or Spanish—so called “easy languages” for English speakers—that you’ll have an even harder time with Arabic or Chinese—so called “hard languages.”

In fact, Barry Farber talks about this in his book How to Learn Any Language: Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and on Your Own. He almost failed despite having regular classroom instruction, but learned Chinese through simple conversation because he was far more motivated with the latter.

So if you’ve being studying a language because you think it’s “useful” or because you assume you need to learn an “easy one” first, stop! Pick something that draws you in and inspires to at least browse your phrase book every day.

Try a Different Method

There are dozens of foreign language learning methods out there and they’re all right for some people and totally wrong for others. There is no best way to learn a foreign language. If you’re self-taught, you might have started out with Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, the Teach Yourself series, the Living Languages series or some other popular course.

If one—or two or three—highly praised courses don’t do much for you, don’t assume it’s wholly due to some failing on your part. Browse the local library or download trial versions online to test a variety of language learning course until you find one that suits your learning style.

The same goes with language schools and private tutors. Each has their own preferred methods and approach. Although they can tailor these to the students need to some extent, you’ll do better with a teacher who naturally teaches the way you learn.

Learn Mnemonics

Have been trying to learn foreign language vocabulary by simply reading through a list of words again and again? Have you been trying to learn grammar by reviewing explanations of the rules or memorizing tables of verb conjugations and case endings? If so, it’s no wonder you’re struggling.

There are ways you can “hook” new foreign words you already know well (in your native language or another you’re fluent in) and make those new words nearly unforgettable within minutes.

It’s also possible to get a fully functional knowledge of grammar without ever having read about grammar rules that don’t already make sense or memorize tables or charts of abstract word-endings. I’ll admit drills do help perfect your grammar skills once you’re already conversational, but those drills don’t all have to be boring gap-fills and the like.

If you’re interested in gaining the skills that will let you get fully conversational in a language in just three months, look into the Faster Foreign Language Learning book.

As you probably already realize, the question “How fast can I learn a language?” has no single answer. It depends on what you mean by “learn,” how motivated you are, the amount of time you have for practice, the study material and practice partners available to you, your target language, and of course, you’re language learning skills.

To give you a general answer, though, if you’re strongly motivated, can time for daily study, and have basic study material available, you can probably reach a basic “survival fluency” in three to six months.

What Level do You Want to Reach?

If you’re self-taught or taking an average-speed (not intensive) language course, you’ll probably be able to reach Intermediate Mid or Elementary Proficiency in three months.

At this level you’ll be able to hold simple discussions on basic, everyday topics and get the gist of printed material meant for a wide audience. Buying something in a shop, ordering a meal in restaurant, checking into a hotel room will pose minimal problems.

The reality is, though, that if you have plenty of opportunity for interactive practice (ideally daily, face-to-face conversations), you can get a lot farther in that time.

There’s something about the way the human mind learns language that requires live interaction to really absorb a language quickly. We hear words repeated in context and hear examples of how to use various grammar features all while paying close attention to the person we’re talking to because we need to exchange information.

How You Can Get There in Three Months

Language teachers will tell you the average person can learn seven words a day without getting overwhelmed. You may be able to learn 20 words in one day, but try 20 words a day for a week and you probably won’t remember much of what you studied.

So, learn seven words a day for three months (minus one day a week for review) and you’ll have a vocabulary of around 550 words. In most situations, that will be around 90% of what you need to communicate comfortably.

Of course, it’s not all about vocabulary. You’ll also need a good grasp on the most common verb tenses, cases, prepositions, possessives and other grammar essentials. In three months, you probably won’t be able to get in enough practice to be able to use them flawlessly, but you can get comfortable enough with them that native speakers can understand with little trouble.

The trick to getting a good foundation in grammar relatively quickly is knowing when you move on to something new. For the most part, when you feel like you can use a particular grammar feature well enough to communicate (you make mistakes, but few that interfere with communication).

So, the answer to “How fast can I learn a language?” is that it depends a lot on your foreign language learning skills. If you have your tricks for getting vocab words to stick and learning to use grammar without having to stop and think about it, then you’ll learn significantly faster than average. The book Faster Foreign Language Learning provides just that. In contains all the “tricks” and “shortcuts” I’ve learned in the past 15 years of language learning and teaching.

The Whole Answer

No matter what your learning style, these tools can not only halve the time it takes you to reach conversation level (or fluency, if that’s your goal), but also make getting there more fun and less stressful.

When you’re just starting to learn a foreign language, the thought of trying to build the kind of vocabulary you need for real fluency can be overwhelming. It’s hard to know where to start. The good news is that when you’re learning for first few hundred words, there’s nothing wrong with starting slowing.

Be Picky

Linguist Erik V. Gunnemark believes 90% of the everyday spoken vocabulary of most “common” languages is made up of around 400 words. I’ve never made a count myself, but that number feels about right for essential communication.

Until you reach that level, try to study only the most essential words. If you can’t imagine needing a word every day, don’t add it to your vocabulary list. Imagine any day now you’ll have to go to the country where the language is spoken and speak only that language. What kinds of things might you need to say? Based on that, what words do you want to give priority in your “communication tool chest.”

Avoid the mistake of learning assuming you need the “kindergarten basic” words that “everyone” knows. These are words like “horse,” “mitten,” and “rainbow”—words that little kids’ books are full of, but that the adult learner could go months without needing. Those are basic words, but they’re not necessary for essential communication. That’s true of most words you can point to, draw, or mime somehow. You can save those for a little later.

Use Your Phrasebook as a Guide

A good place to find the words and phrases you’re likely to need on a daily basis is with the “basics” or “essential phrases” section of a concise tourist’s phase book. This is where you’ll learn “Good morning,” “How are you?,” “My name is…” and all that good stuff.

Remember that you aren’t just learning words alone. In fact, it might be better to think of what you’re adding to your list as “vocabulary units,” which might be single words or short phrases.

Don’t shy away from adding a whole phrase to your vocab list just because you don’t know the exact translation or understand all the grammar. In the beginning, learning phrase by phrase is more efficient than trying to pick apart the grammar to get at the dictionary forms of conjugated verbs and declined nouns and adjectives.

Choose by Parts of Speech

A good way to make sure you don’t miss any of the real basics is to organize your vocabulary by part of speech. Some of the most important are:

• Pronouns (I, he, we, etc.),
• Prepositions (in, at, on),
• Very common verbs (be, go, like),
• Adverbs of time (sometimes, often, never),
• Common adverbs of manner (well, quickly),
• and a few essential adjectives (big, difficult, cold).

Notice nouns are missing. That’s not because they’re not important, but because they tend to take care of themselves. They’re easy to remember because they’re easy to visualize. Add relevant basic nouns as you come across them, but don’t worry too much about them.

Cognates and Other Easy Words

Depending on how closely related your target language is to your native language, there may be dozens of cognates (words with similar sounds and meanings, like the English “dance” and the German “tanzen”) that you could pick up with minimal effort. Try to get a list of these and at least browse it for easy pickin’s.

Also browse through your phrasebook and bilingual dictionary for words that are just so catchy you can’t help but remember them. Keep these in a separate file from your main vocabulary words and review them when you have time.

In the book Faster Foreign Language Learning, I’ve included a thorough list of the essential phrases you’ll need to get by comfortably in an immersion situation. This is the list I collected through eight years’ experience in four countries, so it’s tried and tested.

Grammar is important, but until you have a decent-sized vocabulary, it’s all but useless. After all, grammar only works when you have words to apply it to. That means when you’re just starting to learn a foreign language, vocabulary building is the thing to focus on. Of course, those first few hundred words are also the hardest to learn. If you want to build your foundation vocabulary faster and more easily, here are a few things to keep in mind.

Choose Wisely

When you’re deeply interested in a language or you urgently need be able to communicate, it’s tempting to collect any and all words that seem like they might be useful. Unfortunately, it’s easy to overwhelm yourself this way because you’re spreading your time and attention so thin. It’s better to choose seven words a day and get them down pat than choose 20 and only really remember five.

Try to focus on the words that are absolutely essential to communication until you have a vocabulary of around 400 words or so. Included in the book Faster Foreign Language Learning is a “Phrasebook Starter” that consists of the most common phrases you’ll need to communicate and this is a great place to start building your vocab.

Mnemonics

No matter what your learning style, there are dozens of “memory tricks” you can apply to make sure the words you want to learn stick in your memory. An example would be the “method of loci” or “journey method.” With this technique you envision a path you know well, such as from your house to the grocery store, and attach vocabulary words to objects along that path.

Keep in mind that you won’t need these “tricks” for the long term. You’ll only need them to retain new words in your short term memory so that you can use them enough times to shift them into your long-term memory. That’s a good thing, too, because these techniques can usually only help with around 100 words at a time.

To reach the point where you no long need mnemonics you need…

Lots of Varied Practice

To keep your momentum going, you’ll need daily practice and review. But to avoid boredom and get more “true to life” practice, you’ll need as wide a variety of ways to practice as possible. Pick up some crossword puzzles in your target language. Write words on scraps of paper and scatter them over the table. Pick out two at random and try to make a sentence using both. Create mind maps to review thematically related vocabulary. And don’t forget modern study tools like interactive language learning software and audio flashcards.

Faster Foreign Language Learning includes dozens of ways to practice not only vocab, but also grammar, as well as improve your speaking fluency and listening skills.

Lots of people—even those who love learning foreign languages—claim they hate studying grammar. They associate grammar study with tedious gap-fill exercises, boring rote memorization and the frustration of getting it “wrong” again and again.

While you will, at some point need focused work on grammar, there’s no reason grammar drills should take up the bulk of your study time. To get communicative fast and save your sanity, focus on what you need for communication and then learn the rules of why you’re supposed to say something a certain way.

Work Backwards

All too many foreign language learning courses present learners with grammar rules before they’ve really had a chance to hear and see those rules in action. This is the exact opposite of the way we learn grammar in our native language. First we learn to say something like, “I want some cake!” and much later we learn that there’s a thing called the “first person present tense” (I want, I like, etc.).

When you’re first starting a new language, learn whole phrases that will be useful in your every day life and add words that can be used which those phrases. For example, “I’d like some…” and “water,” “tissues” and “more time.” Do this instead of just memorizing lists of words and facts about the grammar.

Which brings us to…

Memorize Examples

Instead of trying to memorize charts of verb conjugations and case endings, learn each one in the context of a phrase. If you’re having trouble understanding how to use a particular grammar feature, collect examples of the grammar in use until you get the hang of it.

Quality phrasebooks and text books (those that aren’t filled with grammar errors) are great resources for this, but don’t over look authentic (native) sources, either.

One way to collect grammar examples that works well with common grammar features is to open up a book or newspaper and scan the pages looking for examples.

For less common ones, choose part of the grammar feature you want to use, plug that into your favorite online search engine, and see what examples you come up with. For instance, if you’re trying to learn how to use the Russian preposition “k,” (to/for) type just that letter into google.ru and you can pick up examples like “k prazdniku” (for the holiday). [Apologies for the Latin letters. Wordpress would take the Cyrillic.]

Songs are another great way to collect example phrases in general. We tend to listen to songs we live over and over and eventually memorize the words with no effort at all. In fact, it’s fun! Take advantage to free online resources like youtube.com and live365.com to find singers and bands you like to help build your vocab and grammar skills.

If you struggle with foreign language grammar and can’t stand tedious grammar drills, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing something wrong or you’re “just not good at languages.” In Faster Foreign Language Learning, I outline specific ways to reach working fluency in another language without memorizing charts or spending hours on grammar drills.

If you’re interested in foreign language learning, at some point you’ve probably wondered how to learn a foreign language faster. We all know high school classes and even some professional language courses can drag on for several years and still leave just barely able to communicate in your chosen language.

And yet, with the right techniques, it is possible to get the strikingly fast results of intensive and immersion-style language courses even if you never set foot in a classroom. Here’s a little more about how you can do that.

Focus on the Essentials

Lack of focus is one of the main reasons many people aren’t able to learn a foreign language faster than average. When you’re deeply interested in a language, every word and every aspect of grammar seems interesting and useful. It’s easy to overwhelm yourself with long vocab lists and copious grammar notes. In attempt to get the basics of everything in general, you end up learning very little thoroughly enough to actually use it in a conversation.

In a Hubpages Hub on learning a foreign language in eight weeks I laid out a plan for getting conversant in any language in just a month and a half.

It will help you with two things: 1) choosing exactly the vocabulary you need and 2) choosing exactly what grammar features you need. By tightly restricting your focus to the absolute essentials and mastering those, you’ll get conversant (or reach the next level in your studies) much faster than if you browse around for “interesting” words and grammar features.

Choose Learning Material That’s Right for You

There is no one best language learning method. No matter how many people out there love Pimsleur or the Teach Yourself series or any other given language learning method or program, that doesn’t mean that method or program is the best one for you.

If you’re an auditory learner and need to hear the foreign language in order to learn it, you’ll do great with Pimsleur. If you the kind who wants everything laid out in need tables and charts, the Living Languages, is probably a good bet for you.

It’s equally important not to limit the amount of study material you collect, especially when it comes to workbooks and authentic material (newspapers, songs, etc.). While you want to choose a good course for you main learning resource, any extra practice and input you can get will both build your knowledge and skills and prevent boredom.

Use Memory Techniques

Memory “tricks” are the ultimate in what sets fast language learners apart from average learners. To some extent, this is also a matter of knowing your own learning style. Another thing holding a lot of people back from learning a foreign language faster is that. Unfortunately, language classes rarely teach you how to learn a language. They just give you the material and expect you to learn it somehow.

That means beginning language learners are left to discover what works and what doesn’t through trial and error, wasting years trying out ineffective techniques before they (with luck) stumble across the effective ones. For instance, beginning language learners often try to learn vocabulary by listing the foreign words alongside their translations and “reviewing” this list several times a day. It’s hard to think of a less effective way to learn vocab.

One better way to get vocab words to stick is the link-word technique. If you want to remember the Spanish tijeras (scissors), you might link it to the English words “tea” and “hair.” Make up a story like, “My sister was using scissors to cut her hair at the the kitchen table while I was making tea, and now there’s a hair in my tea.” Now that is far from a perfect example, but check with yourself tomorrow and see if you don’t remember how to say “scissors” in Spanish.

Often all you need is just a slight push to jog your short term memory enough times to get the words in your long term so you no longer need a trick to remember it.

Another good practice technique is the diglot weave—mixing two languages in one sentence. This helps you practice words you know even before you know much grammar. If you’re learning Arabic, you might look at a crowd and think, “There are a lot of nas [people] on the shari [street] today.”

“Tricks” list this exist for grammar, too. And there are literally dozens of these so you won’t have any problem finding ones that are effective for you.

All three of these elements—focus, study material, and memory techniques—are vital to being able to learn a foreign language fast. In the Faster Foreign Language Learning book, I’ve covered each in depth so you can skip the years of trial and error and become one of the “fast learners” now.