Seven Tips for Becoming a More Successful Language Learner
- Get motivated to learn the language. This includes internal motivation (you want to learn it), and external motivation (you must complete two years of foreign language to graduate).
- Work hard at it. Give it your best effort. Commit lots of time to learning, both active (studying a workbook, memorizing vocab) and inactive learning (listening to music in your target language).
- Shed your fears. If you are not outgoing, do what it takes to get over the fear of making mistakes and the fear of striking up a conversation. You’ll see how it makes a difference in your progress.
- Wrap your mind around the task. Simplify all the rules, grammar and vocab you are learning and organize it logically. The task of working through all the information you are acquiring will help you consolidate the knowledge and make it useable in a conversation. It will be at your fingertips instead of having to rummage around for three minutes to produce a grammatical sentence. When I used to study for a final exam, I would try to get all the most important information onto one single sheet of paper. The very act of consolidating and simplifying the information started the learning process and then the well-organized and limited information on the sheet of paper was a piece of cake.
- Don’t box yourself into your own culture. Imagine yourself living/working/studying in your target language’s culture. If you feel comfortable with that, you will be more comfortable imitating native speakers of the language, giving you a big learning advantage.
- Stop asking why. Asking why isn’t always bad, and at some point you’ll want to know all the intricacies of Spanish, but for now if there is something you can’t understand, don’t lose sleep over it. Simply accept the fact that the language works that way, imitate it, and go on. In due time all things will be revealed to you.
- Keep moving forward. Remember the Tortoise and the Hare? The Tortoise won the race by continuing on and not giving up, even though the faster Hare should have won. If you keep plodding on you will eventually prevail. Even if you only have a few minutes every day, keep advancing.
Do you have any tips to add?
1. Never ever stop. Not even for one day, or else you’ll create a habit of being able to stop, which will destroy your progress.
2. Find audio lessons that you can repeat over and over in an MP3 player. Something like SpanishSense or Pimsleur.
tomisimo
Good tips John, #1 is similar to my last tip, but you make a good point about making it a habit. That’s something I didn’t mention. If you make something a habit, then it’s a lot harder to stop doing it. And you can successfully form a habit in 30 to 40 days according to current research.
Getting some audio conversations or podcasts or any other form of natural input is important.
I took a look at your site, and although I don’t have time to sign up just now, it looks interesting and I’ll take a look at it when I get a chance. Hopefully it’ll have lots of free stuff.