The four skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Don’t be discouraged by slow progress!
Practice listening! Infants “listen” for more than a year before they can say anything close to “mom” or “dad”.
Watch videos and listen to music in your language.
Try to recognize words, even sounds.
Don’t bother trying to understand, just get used to the sound of the language.
When others in class speak, listen for what they say and mentally build images of their answers—in the language itself.
Read aloud: think of it as training your mouth to make the new sounds.
Learn a short standard sentence, then substitute vocabulary/
Subject and verbs can change (I am going; you are going; etc.)
Objects can change (I buy a car; I buy a CD; etc.)
In class, if your “answer” does not come to mind, repeat the question in the language.
Stay in the mind set of the language, giving your brain time to work in the new language.
Do not read word-by-word, or translate word-by-word.
Prepare yourself for a reading:
study its vocabulary first;
review the advance questions.
Then put aside everything and just read, even twice.
Do not look up vocabulary while reading.
Do not write in your text book - separately develop a vocabulary list
Children’s books are illustrated and easy to read!
Websites are rich opportunities to explore your hobbies in other languages,
Read/sing song lyrics of the language!
As you advance, read novels- but read for the story, not vocabulary.
Some languages have unfamiliar alphabets, so practice!
Write out sentences you have practiced orally.
Carefully construct patterns and then write out the sentences with substitute words–multiple times.
If you have spell check and the “autocorrect” grammar feature in your word processing, use it!
When you get corrections, re-write them.
Correct what you got wrong, even repeating in order to embed it in your mind.
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