how to teach yourself a language

minimaliststudy:

1. Set yourself a daily study goal. When learning languages you are always either improving or getting worse. To maintain a level of fluency you need to work on it almost every day

2. Set a clear long-term goal too. Whether that is to be conversational within 6 months, or just know how to ask for directions, set yourself a goal and make sure you stick to it

3. Make use of the internet. These days there are hundreds of websites or apps that offer you very basic language lessons that will let you establish a foundation before you can start building a more complex vocabulary. If you want to spend money you can easily find school textbooks on amazon which are immensely useful as they often include vocab lists, grammar and online listening resources and are usually under £15

4. Learn through doing things you already enjoy. Follow blogs/watch films/read the news in your target language and slowly but surely you will absorb new vocabulary and a more natural, less classroom, style of speech

5. If you are stuck in a rut figure out the specific problem and then overcome it. If you find yourself using the same word over and over again to describe things, look up some synonyms. If you don’t know the grammar structures to express yourself, specifically aim to learn them

6. If you have the opportunity to talk to a native speaker embrace it and tell them to correct you if and when you make mistakes

7. It is ok to make mistakes. As with anything you are bound to make mistakes and with languages, these can be embarassing, but learn to laugh at yourself nad allow people to correct you and you will improve quickly

8. Avoid google translate. Google translate can be useful to translate something but it is not a good learning tool. It can be wildly incorrect and unless you already speak the language you will never know. If you want to find out how to say a set phrase try wordreference.com or linguee.com

(via queenofglitchesstudies)