If youâve had a negative experience learning a new language at one point and time, donât let that discourage you from trying again.
The truth is that learning any language is never easy, but itâs definitely possible. Sometimes the difference between success and failure has less to do with your abilities or talents, and a lot more to do with the way you look at things.
Afrikaans    Arabic    Bulgarian    Cantonese
Chinese    Czech    Danish    Dutch    English
Filipino    Finnish    French    German    Greek
Hebrew    Hindi    Hungarian    Indonesian    Italian
Japanese    Korean    Norwegian    Persian    Polish
Portuguese    Romanian    Russian    Spanish    Swahili
Swedish    Thai    Turkish    Urdu    Vietnamese
1. Listen before you speak
Being slow to speak and quick to listen is good life advice whether or not youâre learning a foreign language. Effective listening is essential to communication. As a beginner there is a tendency to concentrate so much on what youâre going to say and how youâre going to say it, that you can completely miss the meaning or heart of what the other person is trying to communicate.
Not only will this impair your ability to listen in your target language, but it will also stall what little conversation you had going. Remember that conversations are a two-way street. If youâre speaking more than listening then you actually have more of a monologue on your hands rather than a dialogue.
The inputs of language learning, listening, and reading, are just as important as the outputs, speaking and writing. For beginners, inputs are even more crucial, as they are the main way you acquire new vocabulary. Iâll even go so far to say that for new students the best method for learning involves more listening than it does speaking. Though that may change with higher proficiency levels.
2. Donât be embarrassed when you do speak
Peoples' next mistake usually comes from the other side of the spectrum, where new learners are too scared or embarrassed to contribute to a conversation. The fear of making mistakes and embarrassing yourself can paralyze your language learning.
Itâs vital to remember that everyone makes mistakes. Even native speakers had to find their way through the language when they were children.
Making mistakes while learning a new language is inevitable, but itâs also a good thing. The faster you make mistakes, the quicker you can correct them and move on with your learning. So instead of being afraid to make mistakes, try looking at them as steps toward progress. In reality thatâs what they really are.
3. Donât major on minors
If taken in all at once a new language can feel overwhelming to learn. Itâs so easy to get discouraged by all your little mistakes and conversational mishaps that you lose sight of the progress youâre making. In addition to mistakes youâll also come across plateaus, where you study and practice consistently but donât see any results for a significant amount of time. But whether you face errors or plateaus remember that these things are minor obstacles on the road to fluency.Â
Your biggest obstacle always is not to give up and stick with it.
If you stay persistent your mistakes will be corrected and your abilities will improve, but if you slow down or throw in the towel completely; then you will either subvert your progress or nix it altogether. So remember that as long as youâre still studying and learning the language you canât lose.
It might feel like youâre losing the battle for language learning for a little while but hang in there.
A practical way to help you stay motivated is to make small weekly goals. Research shows that goal-setting has a significant impact on learning. Try picking one aspect of grammar or a collection of new words or phrases to study for the next 7 days. At the end of the week check your progress and measure your success. Setting little benchmarks like this will give you a rightful sense of accomplishment.
4. Remember that immersion isnât magical
A lot of people think that by moving to a foreign country they will learn the language by osmosis.
But whether you learn abroad or at home you still need to study and practice the language. Living in a new country gives you way more opportunities to do this than staying at home, but if you donât consciously take advantage of these opportunities while living abroad it wonât benefit your language learning.
If youâre an expat living in a foreign country there is a natural inclination to hang around other expats. Learning a language and living in a foreign culture is hard and uncomfortable.
For better or worse weâre often drawn to the easier road. If you made the decision to study abroad then you want to hang out with native speaking people as much as possible. You have the rest of your life to be with people who speak your language. This doesnât mean ignoring your expat friends. Just be sure that youâre giving proper attention to your language learning.
5. Be open-minded
Languages are better lived than they are learned.
When learning Turkish your English speaking brain will want to confirm the new grammar and vocabulary to your native language norms and grammar rules. Ignore your brain on this one. At first you might feel completely wrong saying a sentence that is in fact correct. After a certain point in language learning there is a switch that goes off, when your brain finally realizes that youâre not speaking your native language but a new one altogether. This could take a while though, especially if this is your first time learning a new language. Until then do what you know is correct even if it feels a bit weird when you say it.
The same goes for culture. Just as you want to open to the differences in the language, donât forget to be open to the differences in the culture too.
I hope this post helped you shift your thinking and approach learning language in a way that will help you become fluent faster. And that youâll learn to enjoy the journey toward fluency and savor the language for its own sake, thatâs probably the biggest language learning secret there is!
And for even more ways to get started learning a new language the right way check out our complete language learning program. Sign up for your free lifetime account by clicking on the link in the description. Get tons of resources to have you speaking in your target language.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
Students and lecturers from Bastrasia FSB-UNG conducted a language crime counseling at SMAN 6 Gorontalo.
#LanguageCrime #LanguageEducation
Students and lecturers from Bastrasia FSB-UNG conducted a language crime counseling at SMAN 6 Gorontalo.
Hargo.co.id, GORONTALO â The Department of Indonesian Language and Literature, FSB UNG, held a lecture on Crime Avoidance Language on Tuesday (12/12/2023).
The event, which took place at SMAN 6 Gorontalo City, was conducted by students and lecturers from the department.
Herman Didipu, the Chair of the Department of Indonesian Language and Literature, explained the language-related crimes in hisâŚ
People such as John McWhorter believe that the internet, email, and even texting have changed the way we talk and communicate. There have been great debates as to whether this new âonline languageâ is harming or improving how we communicate with one another. This weeks reading discusses both sides of the argument. Irrespective of the point of view, it is clear that we can't compare the way people previously spoke to how they do now online because rather then altering the language, they have in some ways created a new dialect. Rather than focus on either the negative or positive side of this new language, in this blogpost I will discuss some of the factors that are involved with its structure and the sheer complexity of a whole new language.
In the TED talk above by McWhorter, he discusses what he calls the âlinguistic miracleâ that is occurring amongst the younger generations. In the talk he suggests that these new technologies have been tools for change, allowing people to âwrite like we speakâ as opposed to history, where they would âspeak like they writeâ. This new âfingered speechâ as he puts it, is a new and different way of writing being developed by young people which, he believes, is an emergent complexity.
In the reading, Baym continues this idea of new dialects and words being formed (2010, p62). Furthermore, she develops McWhorterâs idea of fingered speech, suggesting that the online language is a blend of elements from both the written and oral language (2010, p63). The development of language online is shown through the informality of it with âdeletions, casual and slang vocabulary, greeting and signoffs, and other linguistic markersâ (2010, p61). As Baron said in the reading, a possible effect on language is that we perhaps value quantity over quality and no longer care about the language rules that earlier generations set and followed (2008, p5-7).
The complexity of this new emerging online language is obvious throughout the internet. Many online dictionaries and YouTube videos have been created in order to help others with varying levels of computer literacy to define online slang or abbreviated words so as to understand them in context. Urban dictionary, No Slang, Internet Slang and Net Lingo are all web-dictionaries that define slang terms. This new online language can be especially difficult for older people as they have not grown up with the internet and may not be up to date with what is going on online and how people are communicating virtually. An example of this distinction between the young and old and their opposing language perspectives is this video where a grandson attempts to teach and test his grandmother on internet slang terms. It clearly shows how oblivious some people can be to the new language that is developing as well as how far it has already come in the last few generations.
In conclusion, online language is ever evolving. Young people have used these new technologies as a tool to form entirely new dialects that at times can be quite complex. Whilst some argue that this new language is deteriorating the way we communicate, others believe it is a linguistic miracle that is neither good nor bad, just new and different.
Reference List
â˘Â      Baron, Naomi. 2008. âCh 1: Email to Your Brain: Language in an Online and Mobile World.â In Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, 3-10. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
â˘Â      Baym, Nancy. 2010. âCh 3: Communication in Digital Spaces.â In Personal Connections in the Digital Age, 50-70. Cambridge MA: Polity Press.Â
â˘Â      Droniak, Kevin (thiskidneedsmedicine). 2014. âTeaching My Grandma Internet Slangâ. Youtube video, posted February 11. Accessed April 5, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1dfCP1mThM
â˘Â      Internet Slang. 2014. Accessed April 5, 2014. http://www.internetslang.com/
â˘Â      McWhorter, John (TED Talks). 2013. âTxtng is killing language. JK!!!â. Youtube video, posted April 22. Accessed, April 5, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmvOgW6iV2s
â˘Â      Net Lingo. 2014. Accessed April 5, 2014. http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php
â˘Â      No Slang. 2014. Accessed April 5, 2014. http://www.noslang.com/
â˘Â      Urban Dictionary. 2014. Accessed April 5, 2014. http://www.urbandictionary.com/Â
