Faster Foreign Language Learning

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 [...]

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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 [...]

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If you’re female and stay long-term in another country, I can almost guarantee you that at some point, someone is going to leave you in charge of one or more toddlers.

I once had the pleasure of spending several hours looking after four little ones all under age four when I spoke about ten words of [...]

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Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you to move to another country and just “pick up” the language. This method will work even if you rarely get the chance to hear or read the language you’re learning.

This is largely for developing the basic vocabulary you need to get by, but can help no [...]

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One of the biggest stumbling blocks on the road to fluency is the continual interruptions. Interruptions do more than slow your progress than just take time away from your studies; they also erode the progress you’ve already made.
Just like kids forget what they’ve learned over the academic year while they’re on summer vacation, you [...]

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Live interaction is essential if you want to be able to really communicate orally in your target language. You can learn a useful amount of a language just from tapes, books, software and the like, but that’s just the beginning. Unless you have real-time conversations, your speech will always be faltering, slow, and broken.

Unfortunately, one [...]

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