a journey to fluency

have contact with this language by hearing it on movies, tv shows and music. this will help you with your pronunciation skills and with your vocabulary

learn vocabulary and grammar at the same time

read kids books and translate what you don’t know. it might be hard at the beginning, but keep trying 

speak to yourself will help you like crazy. I like to pretend that I’m acting or that someone is interviewing me hahah see the magic happens 

READ AND WRITE. this is as important as speaking. It used to be so hard for me to write in English and I felt awful because I could actually speak very well. But my writing skills were just a lower level than my speaking level. Thankfully it’s getting better with practice. 

try to study a little everyday. if you don’t have time to do so, watch a movie or something, but have this contact with the new language at least once a day

spaced repetition systems in general

SRSs are helpful tools to prevent memory loss for specific facts. there's some criticism behind the specifics, but it's pretty safe to say that it's good to have a huge flashcard deck with relevant flashcards where you review the new-to-you stuff with relative immediacy and your already-reviewed stuff with relative distance.

flashcard model recommendations

go for a monolingual deck!!! if you absolutely can't, edit the flashcard to monolingual after you're vaguely familiar with the word!!! (i use wordreference - it's good but imperfect)

i use a picture for the front unless the vocab word is too high concept, and using a picture would just be misleading/ineffectual.

i use soundclips about half the time - i pull clips from wiktionary, forvo, & the collins dictionary.

i use the fill-in-the-blank feature (cloze) pretty heavily with antonyms, and if i'm trying to remember specific usages of common words/phrases

i also use the fill-in-the-blank feature for chunking, altho i use this fairly rarely

i recommend 25 new words daily, or anything that'll set you for your regular pomodoro time for studying vocab (which is 25 mins for me).

i'm not at an advanced level yet for language learning, but this format is recommended for higher levels!

i lowkey recommend including example sentences on the backside, re chunking, but the utility really can depend on the vocab word

limitations

some limitations are a bit obvious - the quality of your study is 100% down to the quality of the flashcard (e.g. accuracy, relevancy, does it need more explanation for you to understand it)

it's also a hell of a time-suck to create these decks. i study 25 new cards a day, which means i have to create about two hundred flashcards every week. i make this quicker by having an ongoing list of words to add to my deck, instead of trying to look up vocab lists or whatever in the moment. i also do the whole week at once because i do get into the rhythm of dictionary-picture-audio searching while watching tv or whatever.

there are some fun add-ons (like for deadlines), and some complicated customization within anki itself. i usually just google if i have a question - a ton of people use anki, so there are tutorials for almost anything you want to do.

fluent forever

if you're unfamiliar, the fluent forever guy wrote a book about language learning which really hinges on a specific model of flashcard. he has tons of tutorial videos on his website, but basically he incorporates the phonetic alphabet, Google Images, and other relevant info for a vocab word (and grammar) in a flash card.

i think his flashcards take an unrealistic/unproductive amount of time, with a bunch of useless filler. however, i do recommend doing a quick read-through of his model and reasoning, as he might speak to something that you're struggling with. (for example, i've never struggled significantly with pronunciation so i think the IPA stuff is 100% useless.)

here's an integration to create the fluent forever flashcards much much faster. i don't use it but i've seen it recommended before.

outside of language learning!

Sometimes it can be tricky to know what to learn if you are teaching yourself a language. Here are some ideas for what you can focus on learning each day for the first two months of learning a new language! I formatted it so there is the general topic for the day and then in parentheses are some ideas to get you started but you can definitely learn a lot more than what I’ve written down! These are just to help generate some ideas!

This definitely would move pretty quickly if you covered all this material in 2 months so you could definitely spend more time on each topic if you need! This would require quite a bit of time each day in order to learn it all. This could totally work for a 4 or 6-month challenge where you spend 2 or 3 days on each of the topics I listed if you don’t have enough time to cover each topic in just one day!

Polite phrases (thank you, please, yes/no, you’re welcome, I’m sorry)

Introductory phrases (hi, my name is, I’m from, I speak, how are you?)

Pronouns (I, you, he, she, they, we)

Basic people vocab (girl, boy, man, woman, person, child)

Basic verbs in present tense (to eat, to drink, to walk, to read, to write, to say)

Sentence structure (how to form some basic sentences)

Negative sentences (I do not __)

Question words (who, what, where, when, why, how, how to form questions)

Numbers (0-20, 30, 40, 50, 100, 1,000, 1,000,000)

Time (hour, minute, half hour, reading the time)

Meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, dessert, appetizer)

Basic foods (apple, banana, rice, bread, pasta, carrot, soup, water)

More foods (beef, pork, fruit, vegetable, juice, coffee, tea, chocolate, cake)

Kitchen (stove, oven, kitchen, fridge, table, chair, bake, boil)

Eating supplies (knife, spoon, fork, plate, bowl, cup, glass)

More verbs (to make, to have, to see, to like, to go, to be able to, to want, to need)

Family (father, mother, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, cousin, grandmother, grandfather, parents, grandparents)

Transportation (car, train, plane, bus, bicycle, airport, train station)

City locations (apartment, building, restaurant, movie theater, market, hotel, bank)

Directions (north, south, east, west, right, left)

Adjectives (good, bad, smart, delicious, nice, fun)

More verbs (to give, to send, to wake up, to cry, to love, to hate, to laugh)

Colors (red, yellow, blue, green, purple, black, white, brown)

Emotions (happy, sad, calm, angry)

Physical descriptions (tall, short, blonde, brunette, redhead, eye color)

Body parts (arm, leg, hand, finger, foot, toe, face, eye, mouth, nose, ears)

Descriptors (rich, poor, beautiful, ugly, expensive, inexpensive)

Basic clothing (shirt, pants, dress, skirt, jacket, sweater, skirt, shorts)

Accessories (belt, hat, wallet, gloves, sunglasses, purse, watch)

More verbs (to keep, to smile, to run, to drive, to wear, to remember)

Animals (cat, dog, horse, cow, bear, pig, chicken, duck, fish)

More animals (turtle, sheep, fox, mouse, lion, deer)

Months (January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December)

Seasons (fall, winter, spring, summer)

Weather (sunny, cloudy, hot, cold, snowing, raining)

States of being (I’m hungry, I’m tired, I’m thirsty)

House (bedroom, living room, bathroom, stairs)

Furniture (bed, lamp, couch, door, window)

Electronics (phone, TV, computer, camera, radio, headphones)

Nature (tree, flower, plant, animal, grass, animal, outside, sky, sun, moon, clouds)

More verbs (to teach, to learn, to understand, to know, to listen, to hear)

School (classroom, elementary school, high school, college, student, class, grade, homework, test)

School subjects (math, science, English, art, music, chemistry, biology, physics)

School supplies (book, pencil, pen, paper, notebook, folder, backpack, calculator)

Classroom features (student desk, teacher desk, whiteboard, chalk, clock, bell)

Jobs (teacher, scientist, doctor, artist, dancer, musician)

More jobs (surgeon, manager, engineer, architect, lawyer, dentist, writer)

More verbs (to buy, to sell, to work, to ask, to answer, to dance, to leave, to come)

Comparisons (less than, more than, same, __er than)

Languages (French, German, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, English, Japanese)

Countries (France, Germany, China, Russia, Spain, Mexico, United States, Japan)

Religion (church, temple, mosque, to pray, Judaism, Christianity, Islam)

Past tense (I was, he ran, she wrote)

Hobbies (shopping, sports, soccer, chess, fishing, gardening, photography)

More verbs (to describe, to sleep, to find, to wish, to enter, to feel, to think)

Art (paint, draw, painting, gallery, frame, brush)

Morning routine (to wake up, to brush teeth, toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, soap)

Future tense (I will run, he will write)

TV + internet (online, internet, to watch TV, TV show, movie, documentary, cartoon)