Rec | VOCAB, GRAMMAR, MEDIA INPUT

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Love this! I agree re: the above recommendation; you should start with Anki and use it to learn the 1000 most frequent words in whatever language you’re learning. While you’re learning those words, it’s also helpful to start studying some basic grammar. Doesn’t have to be anything too intense. You could buy a grammar book and do one lesson a day, watch grammar lesson videos on YouTube, or use an online program like Kwiziq (depending on what language you want to learn). Once you’re done learning the 1000 vocab words, I’d start consuming media! There are so many resources online depending on what your target language is—podcasts, children’s TV shows, newspapers, novels, etc. You can continue to make Anki vocab cards when you come across a word you don’t know, but it really depends on how you best learn. I meet with my French tutor once a week and it’s helped me immensely with my speaking skills. You can find online tutors on Italki for pretty reasonable prices. I also changed my phone and laptop language to French — it was frustrating at first but you get used to it pretty quickly and it helps with the learning process. There’s also so many language learning resources online like r/languagelearning on Reddit. Good luck!

@amakwarteng

Feb 19, 2024

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Immersion & learning like a kid

1. Learn the basic building blocks for your language of choice (i.e. pronouns, action verbs, common objects– literally the essential words you’d need to formulate the most basic sentences to communicate simple ideas). That can be done by googling things like “essential verbs in (insert language of choice here)” or “100 essential words to learn in _______.” Pair that up with any beginners grammar language book that you can take out from your local library. At this point, you don’t need to know how to speak the language, just have a general idea of how different elements come together to form coherent sentences. 2. Once you’ve acquainted yourself with those principles, the fun and most critical part comes into play: immersion. Since you’re not at the talking stage just yet, you need to treat yourself like you’re a baby hearing words for the first time and trying to associate meaning to them via their context. The best way I’ve found to do this is by watching kids tv shows in the language you want to learn and also finding YouTubers who are native speakers of that language. Turn on the subtitles and also keep them in the same language. This will allow you to start matching visuals with words and understand how sentences are composed in more organic ways. It will also force you to make language connections the way children do when learning their native tongue. You want to remove the buffer of thinking in your mother tongue and then translating the word in the new language. Instead, you want to start making immediate semiotic connections to the things you’re seeing. Like 🍎 is manzana in Spanish, but you wanna avoid thinking “oh that means apple in English which translates to manzana in Spanish.” It’s an extra loop you have to jump through that makes the language learning process less natural and more arduous imo. 3. In tandem to immersing yourself by listening to the language being used, here’s where you can start applying it bit by bit. This can be by either repeating the sentences you see in the tv shows you’re watching and start challenging yourself to write & say very basic sentences with your knowledge from step 1. In an ideal situation, having a friend or acquaintance who speaks the native language and can start talking with you is also incredibly useful since they can actively correct you while you practice. Though very beneficial, I know that that may not be an option for many people, so practicing on your own with the aid of the media you’re watching in the native language still works very well! This is a very long response, but I hope that these suggestions can help create a more structured approach to learning your new language. Good luck!! ✨

@verygoodvalentina

Feb 19, 2024

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On learning: languages

It’s very frequent that I recommend learning languages through YouTube videos on this account. I’ve already recommended some content creators, both in French and Italian, which are the languages I’m currently learning. In case none of the suggestions I’ve made are of your liking, or you simply are learning some other language, I still want to leave a generic list of the type of people you could look for in the hopes of achieving fluency. This is intended for people who are self-taught and are just starting. It’s important you look them up on YouTube. In my experience, short-form content is not very good for attention retention. besides, it's better when you stick to a limited group of people you could get familiarized with. The first type of people you should look for, are vloggers. The advantage of said type of content is the fact that it tends to be repetitive, as the routines displayed go on loop video after video. Plus, you could get used to their personality, voice and accent, which could lead you to internalize aspects of the language better. It could also help you to amplify your views on cultural factors. Similarly, you could also go for podcasts. The other type of content you should look for, is the one of magazines and journals. I suggest magazines because they are much more simplistic in their tone as their reach is generally more massive. For instance, you could look up Vogue (i.e. Vogue Italia, Vogue España, Vogue France, etc.), ELLE, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, etc. These are aware of the international platform they hold, as well as how varied their audience tends to be, so they typically do simple content surrounding stuff like fashion, makeup, house-tours, among other things that are relatively basic to any language in order to hold a conversation. It goes without saying, that you should also read their articles to improve and expand your vocabulary. The third type of content creator I'm about to suggest is a bit screwed up. That is, people who locate themselves in the true crime genre. The reason I suggest this, is because they touch upon the routines of people frequently. I know not everyone feels comfortable interacting with that kind of content, but not everything is about bloody murder. Don't knock it until you try it.

@mariamaria

Sep 23, 2024

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immerse yourself in the language

i'm a native portuguese speaker, currently fluent in English and studying mandarin for two years. I'm going to admit, i still feel like a begginer, mandarin is known for having a complicated learning curve, but taking in consideration my experince with english, it really is about surrounding yourself with the language. I guess it's the most common advice, but it does work! To past time go on 小红书, look for films and series in Mandarin, and if you are watching on netflix you can use language reactor extension on browser that offers double subtitles. Make a spotify playlist with songs in the language, and once in a while print the lyrics with a few missing words and try to complete them when listening to the song. Another think that helped was to play games of forming words by combing hanzi flashcards. Doing it with a few friends forces you to think fast and expose youself, especially if you still feel insecure with your skills. I wish you the best and good luck with your learning process!