Home | Community | Message Board

Kratom Eye
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Bridgetown Botanicals CBD Concentrates   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
OfflineDarwin23
INFJ
Male User Gallery


Registered: 10/08/10
Posts: 3,277
Loc: United States Flag
Last seen: 1 day, 7 hours
How to Learn a New Language Quickly & Easily
    #26562823 - 03/28/20 09:45 AM (3 years, 9 months ago)

HOW TO LEARN A LANGUAGE QUICKLY & EASILY

INDEX:
Background on me
Where to Start
First Steps
  Babble & Experiment
  Friends & Acquaintances
  Opposite, Like & Alternate Words
Book Learning
A Final Word


Background on me:

    I'm a native speaker of English who has studied a variety of languages. I'm fluent in English and Spanish. I'm also conversational in Portuguese and Italian. I have a base in Mandarin and Korean as well. I ultimately dropped the Asian languages as I don't wish to spend long amounts of time in any Chinese or Korean-speaking countries. I took Spanish in high school before revisiting it year's later and jumping fairly quickly to fluency. I also have experience in teaching language in Colombia and these classes have actually taught me a lot about how to learn languages most effectively.

      Before I start, I would also like to freely admit that I'm not a grammar expert in English. I don't feel that it is very important, honestly. Nobody likes a grammar Nazi so why work to appease them? As long as you can be understood, that's really what matters.

WHERE TO START:
      If you've decided to learn a language, the first question is "why?" In language-teaching circles, that answer is called "motivation". The word is used a bit differently here (the reason for the quotations) and there are multiple forms of motivation. The key difference is that the "motivation" we're referring to is solid and unchanging. It doesn't refer to your desire to work at this exact moment, rather it refers to the key drive that pushes you.

      Common motivations you may hear are: It will give me an edge in business. I need to for a job. I want to learn before I travel abroad. I like the culture associated with the language. I just want to be bilingual. I just want to better myself. All of these can be powerful motivations and there is nothing wrong with using one of those examples to drive you. Of those motivations, one in particular is the strongest motivation. "I just want to be bilingual" and "I just want to better myself" both use a specific motivation called "joy of learning". Studies have repeatedly proven that the joy of learning motivation leads to the fastest and healthiest results. What drives you?

      For many of those motivations, the language is chosen for the student but frequently, the student has a choice in what language they wish to learn. While the decision is up to you, allow me to share some information that might help you in deciding. English is a grammatically simple language. If you're not already bilingual, choosing a grammatically simple or moderate language may be a smart choice. The more practice you can get, the faster you'll learn. For this reason, picking a commonly spoken language will grant you an advantage. Choosing Spanish (450 million speakers and over 20 countries) will allow you to practice far more than Afrikaans (6.9 million speakers in small percentages across 7 countries). Next, consider the difference in reading an writing. Staying within the alphabet you already know can streamline the process. Jumps to German or Greek will be far easier than to Arabic or Japanese. Even further, some languages like Mandarin don't even have an alphabet. Finally, take into account the sounds of the target language. Portuguese only has around 5 sounds that are new to an English-speaker. French, by comparison has a catalogue of sounds that don't exist in English. With all of that, in mind, do you have a target language chosen yet?

FIRST STEPS:
      When I was going through the hiring process, I heard an interesting an valuable story about the company's teaching method. The school was started by a polyglot in the US before the Civil War. One day, the owner of the school was coming down with a nasty illness and put an ad in the paper for a substitute French teacher. To the owner's dismay, when the substitute arrived, he spoke no English and only French. The owner considered canceling the class but decided to let the French man try to teach the English-speaking students by pointing and saying words.

      Two months later, the owner returned with little confidence in the effectiveness of the lessons. To his utter shock, when he entered the classroom, the students were speaking French as if they had been studying for over a year! He had no idea how it happened but decided to study it an experiment. Over 100 years later, they're still teaching based on the methods he learned then.

      Before you start practicing, allow me to explain some of the things that happened. When we learn a language, we only truly store information through successful use. What this means is, if I give you a list of vocab words and ask you to memorize them, you will likely only truly retain the words that you've used. When you say "baño" and someone shows you to the bathroom, you fully take in and integrate that word into your head. Because the students were not memorizing translations and were instead, using 100% of the words the teacher did, they were integrating ALL of the vocab into their minds.

      "Podrías traerme un bolígrafo rojo, por favor?" If you have no background in Spanish, you probably only recognize "por favor". There is no shame in that but it's important to understand. If I said that to you, you'd learn almost nothing. Even if you watched the action, you still wouldn't understand. It's just a garbled mess. Now, imagine if I had taught you that a "bolígrafo" is a pen? You know your black and blue pens are "negro" and "azul". "Rojo" must mean something other than "black" or "blue". If I were in the classroom with you and said "Podrías traerme un bolígrafo rojo, por favor?" while motioning towards red, blue and black pens, could you guess what I'm saying then?

      If you guessed that I was asking you for a red pen, then you're absolutely correct! You see, integrating words is super important. Without enough vocab integrated, you can't possibly hope to get information out of more complex sentences. The key to rapidly learning is to always add vocab that is juuuust outside of your comprehension. It's like a ladder. If the rungs are too close, you're barely moving. If they're too far apart, you're struggling to move ahead.

Babble and Experiment:
      When I first took Spanish in high school, I was so self-conscious about making a mistake. I'd only speak if the professor volunteered me and even then, I'd stumble over words because of my own nervousness. This really hindered me and I essentially had to build from the ground up when I finally returned to Spanish. Now, jump ahead to me going to Brazil. I walked across the border from Guyana and hopped in a taxi. I tried my best to communicate in Portuguese-sounding Spanish and we talked the whole two hour ride. Two days later, my Portuguese pronunciation was so good that people would frequently assume I was Brazilian.

      It is absolutely essential to let go of your self-criticism and fear. In an ideal classroom scenario, the teacher would seek to foster that environment but you will have to do it on your own. Awkward silences aren't a bad thing. When you let go and just try, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how much people will go out of their way to try to understand you. The reason this is so important goes back to integration. If you're afraid to test out words or structures, you'll never get a positive or negative response and you'll struggle to integrate anything new. In a perfect scenario, you'll constantly make mistakes but in between those mistakes you'll find successful ways to communicate.

Friends and Acquaintances
      I understand how hard it can be to make friends, I used to be painfully shy. In the age of the internet, though, there's no excuse not to. I strongly recommend a site called Interpals.net. This site is specifically for learning languages with people who want to learn languages as well. If you're shy or nervous at all, here are some tips: message a LOT of people. Many (and especially girls) are too busy or have too many messages already. Don't take it personally if you don't get a response right away. Messaging a lot of people also raises the chance that you'll find someone you click with. Conversations can feel forced and awkward if there is no friendly chemistry but you'll eventually find someone on the same page. Finally, ask a lot of questions. People love to talk about themselves and the easiest way to get someone to open up is to simply learn who they are.

      When I first returned to Spanish, I messaged dozens of Venezuelans. I really struggled through the first Spanish conversations but within 6 months I was hanging out with these people in South America and communicating fairly easily. Having friends you enjoy talking to can really motivate you to power through the language barrier and get outside of your comfort zone. Having friends is also super useful for encountering less formal ways of communicating and adding them on social media can help you see extremely informal language in memes. To be truly fluent, you must be able to understand the informal as much as the formal.

Opposite, Like & Alternate Words:
      Gorgeous, pretty, beautiful, stunning, sexy, hot, fine, attractive, cute. There are many ways to communicate things with similar meanings. These synonyms can make things much more difficult when learning a language. "Ella es tan ardiente, dios mio!". "She is so ..., my god!" What does "ardiente" mean? The sentence would work with mean, ugly, pretty, hot etc. There are tons of options. That's why it's essential to really practice opposite, like and alternate words. Especially when you're early in your learning, a single blank spot can serve to make the whole sentence (or later sentences) blank as you divert your brain to try to conjure up the meaning from memory or context clues.

      We typically do this in the classroom and drill it like crazy, but since you won't have a proper teacher, you will have to explore yourself. After you make your lists, you can then test them with the friends you've made and then get their feedback.


BOOK LEARNING:
      I hope, at this point, I've made it clear what the ideal way to learn is. While what we have discussed is absolutely superior, there may be times when you want or need to do some book learning. The romance languages, in general are quite grammatically complex. In English, "run" becomes "runs", "ran", "running". The Spanish equivalent verb "correr" becomes corro, corres, corre, corremos, corréis, corren, corrí, corriste, corrió, corrimos, corristeis, corrieron, corría, corrías, corríamos, corríais, corrían, correría, correrías, correríamos, correríais, correrían, correré, correrás, correrá, correremos, correreis, correrán, corra, corras, corramos, corráis, corran, corriera, corrieras, corriéramos, corrieras, corrieran, corriese, corrieses, corriésemos, corrieseis, corriesen, corriere, corrieres, corriéremos, corriereis, corrieren, corred, corriendo, corrido. You'll only hear maybe half of those regularly, 1/4th rarely, and the other 1/4th almost never. In this instance, studying some may be helpful.

      Studying conjugations can be helpful but the key is practicing them. If you simply study but don't practice, remember, there is little integration. Looking at that whole list now, I recognize that it can appear very intimidating, but remember, with regular practice it'll be second nature for you.

      I've also found through personal experience that learning some of the things by book that aren't in English can be very helpful. In the case of Spanish, there are reflexive verbs (he to himself wakes up) which are "se" when referring to a third person. However, you can encounter impersonal "se" in sentences like "In America THEY make a lot of money". Instead of using the "ellos" which means "they" it converts into an impersonal "se". Additionally, in Spanish, we have indirect and direct object pronouns (le/les, lo/la/los/las). Whenever a "le" is directly behind a "lo/la" we change the "le" to "se". In other words, there are three separate versions of "se" which can lead to tons of confusion for a non-native speaker. The moral I'm trying to get across is, if you're ever finding yourself confused with your target language, don't feel bad about opening up the book.

A FINAL WORD
      Learning a new language can seem overwhelming but by breaking it down into more digestible segments, allowing yourself to fail and to integrate new language and practicing in real life situations with friends and acquaintances, you'll find yourself learning without even realizing. The benefits of learning a new language are many and I suggest it to anyone looking to broaden their worldview or simply to better themselves. Thank you for reading.


--------------------

Take a look at my journal


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineAz88
Stranger
Registered: 05/04/20
Posts: 88
Loc: Texas Flag
Last seen: 3 years, 1 month
Re: How to Learn a New Language Quickly & Easily [Re: Darwin23]
    #26647914 - 05/04/20 09:51 AM (3 years, 8 months ago)

Thank you for posting. I’ve tried German but always struggles with the commitment of learning a ne language. Complacency kills...


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: Bridgetown Botanicals CBD Concentrates   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom


Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Middleman
733 topic views. 0 members, 0 guests and 1 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.021 seconds spending 0.006 seconds on 15 queries.