One of the biggest challenges for many of us when we move abroad is learning the local language. I was chatting with a new friend yesterday, who is working hard to improve her Spanish while she’s living here in Mexico City. Here are a few tips that have helped me to pick up new languages.
The most important: believe you can, or at least forget you can’t
Learning a new language means creating new neural pathways in your brain. I suspect that if you believe you can’t do it, your brain will self-sabotage and struggle to create those new pathways. I studied French in high school for two years, plus a semester in college and still couldn’t really use it for much besides “Bonjour”, “Comment allez-vous?” and “S’il vouz plait.” Two of those phrases I learned from my French-speaking ballet teacher when I was five. I think my underlying belief that I wasn’t going to become fluent held me back.
When I started studying Spanish as a junior in college, I approached it with single minded focus; I had decided I wanted to write my undergraduate thesis on a Spanish poet and had to learn to read his poems in the original. There was no option for failure. I gave myself a year, and while my Spanish was far from perfect, it was good enough to read the work in the original Spanish and I even wrote part of my thesis in Spanish during my senior year.
Practice
You need to repeat a new word about 30 times to learn it. Imagine that the first time you hear a word, the new neural pathway is a footpath; by the 30th it is much more like a road. There are so many tools available for practicing your new language, especially if you’re living in a place where you hear it daily, but I always think it is best to pick the ones you enjoy.
Read
Magazines focused on a topic you enjoy, with beautiful pictures, provide short articles and fewer opportunities to become frustrated. Amazon’s Kindle gives you access to books from all over the world and includes a dictionary, which makes it ridiculously quick and easy to look up new words. I found it to be invaluable when I returned to studying French in my thirties.
Watch
Find a show you enjoy in your new language on Netflix or another platform. Watch it in the original language with subtitles in the original language, too. Pause, make a note and look up the meaning of any new words. It is slow going at first, but it will get easier as you become familiar with the words they use all the time. Lingopie is an online platform designed just for this kind of practice.
Listen
Find songs you enjoy in your new language, look up the lyrics online, make sure you understand them and then sing along.
Speak
Even if it’s just to the dog. The point is to reinforce the new pathways in your brain.
Write
If you keep a journal, write in your new language sometimes. Make a game of it and see how much you can say using the vocabulary and grammar you already have.
Get to a point where your new language is a “closed system”
I mean, get to a point in your new language where you don’t need to rely on an outside language (say, English) to understand something in your new language. We all learned our first language (English in my case) by looking up new words in a dictionary, where we found a definition in the same language (i.e. English). Try to get to that point in your new language. The dictionary in Kindle is amazing for this, since you can even look up new words within a definition by highlighting the text the same way you would from the book you’re reading. This becomes more important as you advance because many words and concepts can’t be translated on a one-to-one basis. Basing your understanding on a different language can become a handicap.
I learn better when I am relaxed – not everyone is like me, so if you thrive in a high-pressure learning environment please disregard this. Otherwise, when you sit down to study, relax! You’re doing this for yourself and there is no timeline, unless you’ve chosen one. Pick activities you enjoy and make it fun, that way you’re more likely to keep practicing.