Amelia on September 26 2009 08:04 am 0

What if You Only Have Eight Weeks? Can You Learn a Language That Fast?

When people say the want to “learn a language fast,” their ideas on what “learn” means and what “fast” means range widely.

Some people mean they want to reach a translator’s or interpreter’s level of fluency in less than two years. On the other end of the spectrum, some people just want to get the basics in a couple of weeks so they can enjoy a vacation knowing they can at least get take care of the necessities in the local language.

What a lot of people are looking for, though, is a way to learn a language fast enough that they don’t get bored with it before they make any real progress. How many times have you heard someone say they took a year or two of some foreign language in school or college and never really became conversant? A year or two! There’s no reason you have to wait that long.

Over at a site called Hubpages, someone asked how they might go about learning a language in eight weeks. If you just want to get the basics of a language, you’re willing to put in a solid amount of work for those eight weeks, and you have a plan, that goal is very reasonable. I wrote out a plan for accomplishing this at Hubpages: “How to Get Conversant in a Foreign Language in Eight Weeks. Notice I said “get conversant,” not “learn.” There’s a big difference.

This step-by-step plan is just a fraction of what I’ve covered in the Faster Foreign Language Learning book, but it will get you started. This little eight-week plan gives you some ideas on what to do (which type of words to learn, what kind of grammar to study), but the book gives you techniques on how to get it done quickly.

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Related posts:

  1. How to Learn a Foreign Language Faster
  2. Three Things You Need to Learn a Language Fast
  3. A Real Answer to “How Fast Can I Learn a Language?”
  4. Learn a Language Fast with Audio Courses
  5. Make and Keep your Language Learning New Year’s Resolutions

Filed under Getting Organized, Learning Faster, Strategy Planning

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