If you’re getting ready to learn a second language, no doubt you’ve heard horror stories of sleep-inducing grammar drills and hours spent poring over vocabulary lists, repeating words aloud again and again. While you can learn this way, it’s not exactly fun. More importantly, though, it’s not the most efficient way if your goal is to be able to communicate.
Get communicative Fast
One of the reason so many learners quit their foreign language studies after just a few months is that they don’t see any practical, real-life results. When you learn a second language, the feeling of progress is critical to staying motivated.
To make sure you feel like you’re really getting somewhere as soon as possible, identify the essential words and whole phrases you personally are most likely to need given your own lifestyle and interests. Then focus on completely mastering those words and phrases. Practice them in dialogues until you can rattle them of without hesitation, so they’re second nature.
When you realize you can already use your new language have complete conversations—however short or awkward—you’ll be hooked.
Focus on Getting Meaningful Input
As soon as you’re able to understand a little of the language, start interacting in it as much as you can. Listening to TV and music in the language, working through lessons on CD, and reading magazines helps, but it’s rarely as effective or confidence-building as live human interaction.
The ideal is having a native speaker to talk to and do things with in person. Next best is an online conversation partner. If you’re really shy, though, a keypal can get you started.
Worry Less about Grammar
Not doing grammar drills or memorizing tables and charts doesn’t mean you’re not learning grammar. Provided the phrases you’re learning are grammatically correct, you are, in fact, building a very strong foundation in grammar. With grammar, though, striving for perfection every time you open your mouth just isn’t practical. You can’t wait until you know all there is to know about the basic verb tenses before you start using them.
At some point, though, you will need to focus on specif grammar feature. Once you know enough phrases to start communicating, you can use those phrases as a starting point for learning grammar.
Say you know how to say “I like…” You can use that example as a starting point for learning verbs in the present tense. “I like…,” “He likes…” and so on. Instead of trying to memorize the facts out of context, you’ll already have examples of how to apply those facts.
Related posts:
- Learning a Foreign Language Online: Cheap and Convenient or a Waste of Time?
- How to Fix “I’m Not Good with Languages.”
- Facts About Easy to Learn Languages That May Surprise You
- Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning: Which Words to Learn First
- What if You Only Have Eight Weeks? Can You Learn a Language That Fast?
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