#tips for learning

So right now we all have a lot of time for personal projects and other pursuits. I usually study german every day anyway, but with the recent events, I have had more time to dedicate to it. Here are some tips I think could be useful if you are trying to master a new language as well:

1. It takes time.

It took me a couple of years to understand that learning a new language actually takes a lot of time. I am bilingual. I spent all of my schooling period learning English and Spanish. It was until that fact dawned on me that I realized why I was good at both languages. I got exasperated when I tried to learn German but felt like I was not making any progress. Then, I came to the realization that I had spent around twelve years with the other two languages. 

2. Be dedicated.

Learning a new language will not happen on its own. Make it happen. Work hard every day. I started using Duolingo last year. What I like about that app is that it teaches discipline. It forces you to study every single day and that is the only true key to improve your skills.

3. Write down what you learn.

I got this idea a couple of months into Duolingo. Just doing the exercises was not enough to improve the language and it was difficult for me to remember everything I had learned. Then, I got the idea to write down the exercises I did in the app. My vocabulary extended and my retention improved.

4. Use different and complementary methods.

Just downloading an app will not automatically make you learn a new language. It is a good complementary tool, but you need more than that. Take a language course. Use the app to make yourself study every day, but share in a classroom with other students and with a teacher so you can practice speaking the language. 

As well, find a way to practice the grammar so you can improve not only the vocabulary. Make your notes interactive and helpful, so that in your free time you can browse through what you have written and practice easily. Make it colorful and easy to navigate, add notes on the side that will help you better understand the sentences.

5. Listen

It doesn’t matter if it is french, italian, spanish or russian, if you like a language, LEARN IT!

• READ OUT LOUD. Reading out loud can really help you improve your pronunciation, and you can definitely have more vocabulary after reading a good book or article you’re interested in. Do not feel insecure about the speed, just focus on the right pronunciation, even if it takes you an hour to read just one sentence, it is definitely worth it.

• STUDY VOCAB! Having a good vocabulary is key, try to have a word of the day, or maybe weekly new words. I recommend flashcards, they are AMAZING for new vocabulary.

• PRACTICE. Practicing is the most important part of learning a new language, no language is easy, but practice definitely makes everything easier! Just try new ways of practicing, get extra help, talk to yourself, join a club or simply put some of your daily effort into it.

• FIND MOTIVATION. Maybe you want to travel to another country, move somewhere else, understand a tv show, or be able to sing a song in another language. Why are you learning this new language?

A lot of people ask me “What’s so bad about Rosetta Stone? Why do you advise people to stay far away from it if they want to learn a language successfully? I hear about Rosetta Stone all the time – so it must work well for learning a language, right?”

Well... not so much.

The main thing to realize is this: yes, everyone's heard about them. But ask yourself: why? Because they pour most of their money into advertising, rather than developing a good product – that’s why. Rosetta Stone is basically picture flash cards with audio, and there are three fundamental problems with it.

1) Flash cards with audio is NOT a very effective way to learn for most people. Language does not function as individual lumps – in most cases it changes drastically, depending on context (surrounding words and phrases, as well as cultural context). However...

2) If you are one of the very few people for whom the flashcard method actually works well, you can do it – yes, even with audio! – for absolutely FREE, by using a combination of Anki (or one of the many other free flashcard apps out there) and forvo.com (google “how to add audio files to anki”). And finally...

3) Most important, in my opinion, is the sunk-costs fallacy. Once someone has spent several hundred dollars on RS, they're naturally inclined to think that something so expensive must be the MOST effective way to learn, rather than the least, and so they devote all their time and energy to working exclusively with it, instead of working with other products that would take them much further and achieve more results in less time, with less effort and more fun.

I know a lot of successful language-learners. I know people who learned to speak a language primarily using Assimil (one guy even moved to Germany and started working as an engineer right after completing the Assimil course). I know people who learned to speak a language primarily using Teach Yourself, or Colloquial, or Linguaphone, or what-have-you. But I have never once heard of someone who learned to speak a language while focusing their energy primarily on RS. And I strongly suspect this is because… those people don’t exist.

Case in point: I know two people who recently started learning German from absolute scratch. One of them bought RS, bought an iPad to use it on (investing a total of about eight hundred dollars into kicking off his language-learning process), and studied intensely using only RS for a month before I met him at a German-language meet-up. What did he do there? Talk a lot in English about how excited he was to be studying German, and say at one point out of the blue, with terrible pronunciation and grammar: “Three… bikes… are… red!” Because it was the only sentence he knew how to say. I asked him in German at one point “How are you?” and he literally started wiping sweat off his forehead because he was so nervous about not being able to answer.

The second person got herself a Teach Yourself book and worked through the first few chapters in a couple of weeks. I met her at the same meet-up, and she spent about half the time talking in German, saying things such as “My name is X, I live in X, I come from X, I speak English, I like learning German, I want to be a teacher, how are you? what is your name? where do you come from?” etc. All in German, with good pronunciation and no stress or nervousness. I wish I could say this were an exception, but unfortunately it epitomizes the language-learners I’ve met who used RS and those who used other materials.