Mastery of a foreign language is something that many people regard as something akin to a superpower. In truth, learning to speak a second language isn’t that hard – after all, we all learned to speak one, and the principles are the same. However, it is often a task that seems intimidating. Catching just a few minutes of a subtitled TV broadcast can leave you wondering how people manage to get to a stage where they speak with that fluency, and you may believe you’ll never get there.
Nonetheless, if you want to learn another language – because you’re moving, because it’s beneficial for your job, or just for fun – there are ways to make it simpler.
Use Apps
App-based language learning is frowned upon by some people, and it is true that it does not offer a classroom-style, immersive approach to learning. It doesn’t teach grammar, in general, basing itself more around individual words and sentences. Also, you may never need to know the Norwegian for “I am eating bread and crying on the floor”. However, apps, including free ones, do have a definite impact on getting you to hear a language and replicate the sounds it makes, and are a way of “soft launching” your language learning.
Seek Immersion
The way we learn our native language is hard to replicate in any meaningful way because since childhood we have been living among the language: hearing it in conversations; reading it on signs; watching it on TV. Unless you have the time and the money to plant yourself in another country and rely on others to speak for you until you’re conversational, you can’t do that with a foreign language.
You can however gain a modicum of immersion by doing as many “native” things as possible. Read newspapers online, download vpn for pc and watch Netflix from another country, and as you gain in fluency you can up the difficulty level, joining conversations on social media in your target language and other ways of using the language. Bit by bit, it becomes more natural to use the language.
Hire a Tutor
It’s more or less impossible to really learn a language without some element of a didactic approach – that is, with teaching as a specific goal of the process. If you want to be confident in another language, you’ll need the assistance of a tutor and probably at least one good textbook. Everything else – the apps, the TV shows and newspapers – give you the materials to learn. A tutor will give you the structure. Once you have that nailed down, it’s possible to think in your intended language. It’s also easier to create sentences of your own, which is the end goal of learning.
Go to Places Where It is Spoken
In many ways, learning a language is like building a house. You can say you have done it, but until you put it to the test you don’t know if you’ve really done it. Stress-testing your learning is hard without actually going to places where people speak it day-to-day. This will mean either going there on holiday or finding a community nearby to you where it is spoken. You’d be surprised how many community centres there are near you for nationals of other countries.
Wherever it is you end up going, the truth is that you’re going to have some doubts about whether you’re making yourself understood. This is an essential part of learning. You’re almost certain to make mistakes; people who study languages to degree level make mistakes. It is only by making them and being corrected that you’ll get to a point where you’re speaking like a native. Yes, you’ll probably get embarrassed, but keep in mind that the people you are speaking to will like you a lot more than they do the tourists who turn up without a word of the language and expect locals to understand their own mother tongue.
Learning a language isn’t easy, and it is definitely harder to learn a second one than it was to learn your own. It will take time to be able to think of a pen as un stylo, a house as una casa, and crying as gråter. But it is exceptionally rewarding to find yourself speaking to a native speaker and having them understand you – and then speak back, and you understand them – and this makes it all worthwhile. Put the work in and follow the advice above and you will be surprised how quickly you gain a real sense for the language you’re learning, and then you’re going to want to show it off.