Five Tips for Quicker Language Learning

Are you an avid language student?  Do you thrill to the thought of becoming fluent in your chosen language – German, Spanish, perhaps something exotic like Farsi or Cantonese?  Or perhaps you're learning for professional reasons – a new overseas account, or a transfer to a foreign branch of your company, or just to improve your c.v. and employment prospects?

Either way, you're more than likely frustrated with your current progress and yearning to make leaps ahead in pursuit of the goal of true fluency.  Don't worry or stress any further – just check out my five tips for accelerated language learning!

1 MAKE THE FULLEST USE OF YOUR MP3 PLAYER.
If you have one and you're not using it for language acquisition, you're losing an opportunity for gaining in fluency.  You can record snippets of vocabulary or grammar instruction whenever you have a few moments of free time, or pages and pages worth when you're at your leisure.  Then, during times that would otherwise be wasted – washing up, lying dozing in bed, going for a walk - you can play it back and simultaneously be improving your language skills.

2 DUAL TEXT BOOKS
What a wonderful thing dual text books are.  Often novels or short stories, these books have one facing page in, say, Spanish, and the other in English.  This speeds progress through the book and aids idiomatic comprehension enormously.

Sadly the stock of dual texts is limited.  However the same effect can be achieved by obtaining two copies of the same book, one in your chosen language and the other in English.  It takes a little more juggling this way, but can still have a very beneficial effect on reading comprehension.

3  GET YOURSELF A NATIVE SPEAKER PENPAL
In the age of the internet this is something that's increasingly easy to do.  Check out Livemocha.com or one of numerous alternatives currently available.  Your French/German/etc. improves, your penpal's English improves, everybody wins.  

4 SIMULATE LANGUAGE IMMERSION AS CLOSELY AS POSSIBLE
'Immersion' is the catchphrase, the most popular concept amongst language course providers and teachers at the moment.  And it's a good one: the trouble is we don't all have the money, time or resources to dump everything and go  live in our country of choice for six or eighteen months.  Sadly!  

However, what you can do is to simulate the effects of such an 'immersion' as closely as possible.  This will involve surrounding yourself as much as possible with the spoken and written word of your chosen language.  Newspapers, novels, audiobooks, DVDs with French language audio, podcasts, foreign language newspaper websites/blogs/forums – there are a vast range of options.  It's a good idea to take advantage of as many of them as possible.

(When it comes to DVDs, many which are filmed in English may also have soundtracks or subtitles in your favoured language.  Region 2 'Friends' DVDs, for example, often have a French language dubbed soundtrack!  Just imagine, French 'Friends' 24/7 – 'Les Amies', in fact.)

5  USE YOUR HOLIDAYS TO THE MAX
This is another point related to the ideal of immersion.  Often when learning a language we will book a holiday in the relevant country, and think hopefully of all we will achieve in terms of language acquisition as a result.  As you may know, this does not  always pan out!

If you holiday with companions, and always have another English speaker close to hand, it can be difficult to really get 'into' conversation with a native speaker in a way that stimulates your knowledge and comprehension.  

One suggestion I have is to make a practice of taking a bus ride alone every day of your holiday, perhaps in the early morning.  Take a mobile phone with you (in case of emergency e.g. forgetting  your wallet), but otherwise it's just you, an unknown public transportation system, a whole bunch of native speakers and a list of 'tasks' you set yourself.  You might assign yourself one 'task' a day, e.g. to buy a copy of a particular newspaper, or to go into a bakery and ask what flavours of fruit pastry they have.  The exposure to full-speed-ahead, no-allowances-made native speech could do wonders for your fluency.

So, there you have my five tips for improved language learning – I hope you benefit from and enjoy them.  Now, ciao, au revoir, and Tschuss!

Copyright Ollie Hicks, 2009.