Do you want to hear about all the tricks to make your learning more efficient? Are you hoping there is a secret technique ordinary people are missing that can make you learn a lot very quickly? Or do you want to reach a practical goal as soon as possible, without worrying about any other aspects of the language?
1) If you want to hear all the tricks to make learning more efficient:
There are inefficient methods that a lot of people still engage in. The best thing you can do is to teach yourself a language via a platform, such as LinguaLift. There are lots of memory techniques and study methods that can help you learn faster that we utilize in our courses. However, language learning takes a lot of time and effort regardless of how good your method is.
2) If you were hoping for a secret technique:
Unfortunately, other than what was mentioned in all of our other posts and tips, there really is no magic bullet. As long as you are following the fundamentals, specific methods or techniques are all just tinkering around the edges. The best idea is to stick to these fundamentals:
– The principal determinant of how fast you learn is how much quality time you spend with the language.
– Don’t just study grammar in isolation. Seek out things to read and listen to that are both interesting to you and just above your level.
– If you’re going to focus on forcing more of anything, try to increase your vocabulary.
– Practice conversation as much as you possibly can.
– Use good quality resources if you can. Find out what other learners of your language recommend.
3) And if you want to reach a practical goal as soon as possible:
You can skip parts of a language to make your learning “faster” if you want to. This entails making some sacrifices to your ability elsewhere. What you strip depends on your goals.
The most common form of this is people who were inspired by some YouTube videos of people having natural conversations in lots of languages and want to reach that level as fast as possible. With any highly-focused goal you can strip a lot of things off a language.
But how can I be like those people on YouTube who have conversations in lots of languages?
There are usually three things going on when you see people who seem to be proficient in lots of languages.
They learn and focus on the aspects of language most useful for conversation and have mastered skills that make them sound fluent to native speakers. They learn faster by shaving off many of the aspects of language learning not applicable to these goals. They will focus on pronunciation, be well practised at speaking and also have a confident manner of delivery.
They may not be as proficient as they seem to you as a non-speaker of a language. It is very difficult for non-natives to judge someone’s skill with a language. Simply speaking confidently and with a good accent will make you sound fluent to non-speakers.
They have a life/job situation that enables or has enabled them to get a lot of practice in a language or languages. Some people are lucky and grow up with three native languages. Others are immersed in an immigrant community. Some make sacrifices and move around the world a lot to work and learn languages, and others work in tourism and have plenty of chance to practice in their home country.
Everyone is different.
Reaching a conversational level in a lot of languages is surprisingly doable. The fastest appreciable change in skill occurs at the late beginning and early intermediate stages of language learning, so going until just past this point can get you the most bang for your buck in conversation skill.
The problem with this is that this level is nothing close to fluent or native-level, and getting better begins to take significantly more time. Regardless, instead of learning one language to a very high level, you can instead be something like conversational in four. It still takes a lot of time to do, so be prepared to dedicate some serious hours.
