Hello dear readers! Today I’ve put together 10 short principles that I use as a guide to help me learn languages effectively. It’s a short and easy read, and I think the advice given here can be of great use to many of you. Read and re-read these principles as often as you need; I’d even encourage you to copy and past them in a Word document and print them out and have them near your desk as a reference.
In fact, I’d love to extend this list with some of your best suggestions. So if you have any additional principles that you think would make a nice addition to this list and that you use as a guide in your language learning journey, I’d love to hear from you! Enjoy~
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- Anybody can be successful at learning a language with the right mindset, the right attitude, and the right method.
- In order to learn a language, you need to be calm and relaxed. Stress hinders the brain from efficiently absorbing and retaining information.
- You can speak the language you are learning. You are confident when you talk and you know you are making progress. Tracking the progress you make gives you additional confidence and satisfaction.
- Mistakes are fantastic opportunities to learn. The greatest mistake we make when learning a language is living in constant fear that we will make one.
- Learning a language needs to be a pleasant experience. By enjoying learning, your brain (and therefore your memory) works much better and is able to retain more information, more efficiently.
- Reaching fluency in a language is 50% confidence, 50% attitude (including your motivation). Lack of confidence is one of the major reasons why people struggle so much in speaking a foreign language.
- If you want to become a fluent speaker, you need to let yourself go and not think when you speak. The more you think about grammar and rules when speaking a language, the less fluent you will be. You have to learn to forget about rules once you learn them.
- Anything you really enjoy doing in your native tongue, you can also enjoy doing it in the language you are learning. This can be reading a book, reading blogs, playing computer games, meeting friends, listening to music, etc. Learning a language should not be seen as “homework,” but rather as an enjoyable process to reach a personal goal.But keep in mind that reaching a goal requires a lot of time and effort!
- It is of crucial importance to enjoy learning a language with material suitable with your level. If what you are using is too hard for your level, you will lose confidence and interest. If something is too hard for you, you should look for something you can more easily manage.
- If you wish to speak a foreign language well, then you need to SPEAK IT!! Speak, speak, speak. Repetition and practice will inevitably bear fruit and you will see your speaking dramatically improve as long as you make the effort of speaking as much as possible. You can speak to yourself anytime of the day! By using the language and having a desire to communicate a message, words will also stick in your memory incredibly better.
That’s it for today folks! Let me know what you think, it’s always a great pleasure to hear from your experiences and to see what works and what doesn’t work for you. We can all learn from each other!
By Sam Gendreau
