mercoledì 10 settembre 2014

How to: learn a new language

If you have read my last blog post, you would know that I want to try something different: a lifestyle topic where I give you advices on every day things.
This is going to be my first post ever of this new topic, I hope you like it.

How to: learn a new language — tips and advices





As you may know, I’m Italian so English isn’t my mother tongue, but I can understand it and I can make others understand me.
 So I thought about giving you some tips on how to learn a new language.
Obviously I suggest you to learn a base by online lessons or taking them by people who teach the language you want to learn.
For example I started learning English at school where my New Yorker teacher taught me the grammar, the culture in England, United States and Australia and I also did some listening & comprehension, conversation and reading.
It could help you to reach at least a low level (and not start from zero).
But if you don’t want to take lessons or right after you took them, there are a few self-making options:

1 – READING: books, newspaper’s and magazines are really helpful if you read them in the language you want to learn. Especially newspaper’s because journalists use an update version of the vocabulary.
For books I suggest you to start from those you have read in your own language, so you can easily understand what’s going on in the story.When you feel confident enough to read a book that you’ve never read then do it.
I personally started by reading the first Harry Potter book, which I read in Italian when I was eleven years old. The Fault In Our Stars was the first book that I read in English (and I didn’t know the story).

2 – LISTENING: you can enjoy a song, sing along or dance to it but they can help you to learn new words or whole sentences too.
Folk songs can give you informations about the culture, the traditions and the customs of the places where the language is spoken.
I still listen to English radio or try to guess the lyrics of an unknown song or go and look for the lyrics online and try to translate it by myself.

3 – LISTENING &WATCHING: This is personally my favorite step, because it involves tv series, movies and the news which are great to improve yourselves in that language.
You can watch movies that you know well in the selected language or just watch never-seen movies/tv series with subtitles underneath.
From my experience I can tell you that a thing that helped me a lot to learn English is youtube. If you read one of my previous posts you’ll know that I love youtube and youtube videos, because they’re cheering and full of any kind of tutorials.
I watch far too many British youtubers and also a bunch of American and Australian, they really helped me to improve my English. I would say that they did half of the job of all the other step summed up together, and I’m not exaggerating.
Youtube is full of youtubers from every country so when you feel confident enough to watch something that can also cheer you up, go and watch some videos.
At the beginning it won’t be easy, I’m going to be honest I had to see videos many times before understanding every single word. Sometimes I still don’t get everything they say.
But the most important thing is that you keep practicing and you don’t give up. Give time to time and slowly you’ll understand almost perfectly the language you decided to learn.


I hope this will help you some way or at least gave you the inspiration for other kind of steps that I haven’t mentioned. (If you want to share with others your tips on how to learn a new language feel free to do it in the comments, so we can all try to improve ourselves)

26 commenti:

  1. I found the duolingo app to be very helpful in language learning. I agree with your tips as well though - immersion is important.

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  2. For me it would be more visual and listening then anything else..

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  3. Thanks for the tips! I tried to learn German in high school. I need a lot of help from a teacher in order to fully understand it!

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  4. Listening a new language is all about memorization, you've got to go over phrases over and over again until it sticks. Like learning the lyrics to a song you like.

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  5. As I was growing up my gramma spoke 1/2 Sicilian 1/2 English on my mother's side, and my gram on my dad's side spoke German, and my Grandfather was from London so many of his words were different then what we use. So many people learn a language and can speak it, but can't read it. Can read it and not speak it or understand it, and not speak it. It's really kind of weird I think. I'd love to know another language, but as my grandmother told me she actually forgot much of her language when they came over here to America because if you don't speak it every day you forget.

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  6. The best way to learn a language is to talk in the new language a lot. A neighbour of mine is learning English and is going to ESL classes. But all her classmates continuously speak Korean and she barely gets to practice at school.

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  7. These are some great tips. Would love to learn another language.

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  8. Very neat, I've always wanted to learn a new language!

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  9. YouTube is my best friend when I want to learn basic languages that are foreign. There are very good tutorials to follow. Commitment and practice are key for success.

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  10. Also, if you want to teach your kids ASL, do it ASAP. They learn much faster and retain it far better at earlier ages.

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  11. Thanks for the great tips on learning a new language. I would like to learn German.

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  12. I would like to do some immersion to brush back up on my French skills. I've lost so much of it since college.

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  13. This is great. I knew a mormon missionary who went to mexico and he knew spanish from classes he took, but he said the best thing for him was total emersion into the language speaking reading, hearing. It helped him to really comprehend a new language.

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  14. The watching television really helps a lot. I actually have learned quite a bit of Korean and Japanese from watching anime and Korean dramas. I do speak, read, and write Spanish fluently, but it isn't my first language. I picked it up because I got passionate about it early on.

    It's all about what you want to do and if you really want to learn a new language. :)

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  15. Listening & watching is very important for me. I live in Sweden now, so trying to learn that- I always read the Swedish subtitles!

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  16. So cool! I'm currently taking up Latin.

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  17. good luck! I wish I had learned another language!

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  18. I know a little Spanish, but not much as I want to, though! I also wouldn't mind learning French.

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  19. These are great tips to learning a new language. My son had started to learn Spanish from watching videos on the computer.

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  20. Using YouTube is a good suggestion. I find SO many things on youtube helpful when it comes to learning, so I'm sure it's the same for language!

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  21. Thanks for the tips. The one I have always wanted to learn was French.

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  22. These are good tips! My sister and I both started leaning to speak Korean back in 2007. It started just us being in love with Korean Dramas and next thing you knew my sister was already taking a class. Due to my busy schedule I was content to simply watch a few dramas and listen to Korean songs. It helps that may of the sites that we watch our dramas on, have subtitles.

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  23. For a period of time I was teaching myself Ukrainian. A friend of the family had a little brother that actually had an old book that taught the Cyrillic alphabet & Ukrainian. I used that thing all the time!

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  24. I've been wanting to learn French for so long, I'm looking into this!

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  25. Great tips! I took three years of spanish in high school and barely remember any of it, sadly. I'd love to brush up on it again.

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  26. i like programs that are visual, auditory and verbal. those really work for me.

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