Finding Motivation to Learn a New Language

Learning a language is a HUGE job and let’s face it, procrastinator or not, huge projects scare us. Learning a new language is also a long term deal, so there’s really no easy way out of this: you’ll have to buckle up and roll with the punches. There are however a couple of tips and tricks that a lot of people use in order to find that motivational spark to language learning and I’m going to try and share them with you in the next few minutes.

Taking Things One Step at a Time

Whenever we take up on a huge job, it seems a little bit easier to do if it’s broken down into several parts. It might just be an illusion, because after all, the time and effort invested in the smaller parts will probably be equal to what you would invest if you would run the project heels to head, but it’s how our mind works and it’s how motivation gets pumped up. Imagine a language as a…sandwich. You have your bread, your mustard and ketchup, your baloney layer and of course, the tomatoes. In terms of a language, that’s vocabulary, grammar, spelling and speaking. Take your time to prepare each of these ingredients before even daring to drool about the sandwich itself.

Picking up Words from Your Environment

Chances are the language you’re learning is a somewhat popular one on the international stage and there’s plenty of opportunities to pick up new words and expressions from around you. Movies of course, are a great inspiration for French, Spanish, German and Italian. Wanna learn some Italian? Pop in The Godfather and try to repeat what the characters are saying (granted, you’re probably going to utter some nasty words). How about German? Well, pretty much any World War 2 movie will feature some native Germans speaking (Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan come to mind). And the examples could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. Yes, TV can dumb up people at times, but it can also help you turn into an efficient polyglot.

Motivational Posters!

Some people trying to lose weight will place motivational posters in or around their fridge with stuff like “No Cake for You Today!” or “Taste lasts for an instance, fat lasts FOREVER!”, etc. Well, although it’s an extreme method, it works. Maybe make a couple of posters saying “Have your learned your 5 new words today?” or whatever you find motivational. Trust me, as stupid as it sounds, it’s an effective way to make yourself feel guilty about not learning the language you’re aiming for :). Good luck!

Learning German Through Traveling

Let's be honest: German is not the easiest language to learn, in fact, despite the similar roots to the English language, German won't be a walk in the park even for the most experienced polyglots. But this doesn’t mean that you cannot do your best to improve your conversational skills at least. Even if you are not able to write very good, because it’s indeed complicated, we will try to give you some hints on how to be able to have a conversation in German.

I strongly believe that the easiest way to improve your German language is to plan a trip over there! Germany is a great place to visit, there are some wonderful things to see: castles, gothic churches and domes, historical sites and so on. Once there, don’t be afraid to use your conversational guide and start pumping up your vocabulary.

Germans will honestly appreciate your effort to talk in their own language (even if you may mess up every now and then) and they will help you so that you get the right pronunciation or will teach you new words to improve your vocabulary. One of my funnies days spent in Germany was when we visited The Village Titisee, in the Black Forrest Mountains. There was a group o students singing around the fire, when they understood I was really doing my best to learn German, they wrote me the lyrics of the song so that I could sing along. It was not only funny but a good lesson of reading and pronunciation. And you know what they say, when you have fun learning something, it sticks!

Also, traveling in Germany will give you the opportunity to converse with a native speaker. The advantages for this are multiple: not only they tell you the proper way to pronounce words, but they give you immediate feedback, so that you don’t perseverate in your mistakes. Plus, it’s a known fact: learning along with people is a far better way then learning by yourself, while reading a book. The social aspect of learning is important for it relaxes you and creates the proper climate to assimilate new language. Besides, you won’t find the slang and the colloquial usage of German inside the conversational guide, will you?

In order to improve your reading skills, I strongly advise you to read and type the text that you encounter. Since you’re traveling and visiting all sorts of locations, take the opportunity to read directions, info panels, brochures on all the sites. I remember I was so willing to learn German, that I ever read the door signs. I still remember the “druken” for push and the “zien” for pull on the door of each shop. Never let any detail slip by you, it's the only way you can truly increase your German vocabulary.

Last, but not least, remember that your trip is not just a study tour, but also a holiday, so try to relax as much as you can, don’t ever be embarrassed to talk in German and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Each one of us needs to make mistakes in order to learn by correcting them. Always remember how easy it is, for a prescholar, to learn a foreign language! Because he is not ashamed to mispronounce, because he repeats words exactly as the teacher says them (your teacher for the trip is any native speaker you meet) and because he has a lot of fun during the whole learning process.

In order to make the whole lesson fun, don’t forget to sing the world renowned preschool song and do your best to understand them:
“Ich bin Schnappi, das kleine Krokodil.
Komm aus Ägypten, das liegt direkt am Nil.
Zuerst das ich in einem Ei,
dann schni-,schna-,schnappte ich mich frei”

The Best Language Learning Practices - Divide and Conquer

The Roman Empire’s battle philosophy was that no war should be fought heads-on, but rather the territories that were about to be conquered, or the forces that were about to be taken on should be divided and conquered separately. Well, language learning might not necessarily be a war, but it’s definitely a battle with a force to be reckoned with. Many people quit after the first months, or even weeks after starting a language course, because they’re overwhelmed by the complexity of this task. Obviously, it can and WILL get overwhelming if you take a language heads-on, that’s why the Roman tactic of divide et impera is a great way to get a hold of it.

First off, you should break down the language you’re trying to learn in components. Not all languages will have the same components and not all components will have the same difficutly. For example, learning Japanese will obviously have more elements than learning French, because you’ll have to learn the alphabet, gender structure and writing style in addition.

Some common language components include:

Grammar – the glue that keeps a language together. Learning grammar is a structured process and leaves less room for natural assimilation.

Common Nouns – A good part of a language’s alphabet is made of common nouns. People only use around 10% of a language’s vocabulary and most of these are nouns: common nouns.

Common Phrases – this part of the vocabulary is something that could really get you started in a new language. Oftentimes, we start our learning process by memorizing simple phrases like “hi, how are you”, “thank you”, “what’s the time?” and the likes.

Numbers – numbers are another good way to start off and they have the advantage of being memorized in a particular order, making them easier to remember, through association.

Alphabet – even sister languages might have alphabet differences and it’s important to learn of these small variations right off the bat. Obviously, trying to learn german and it’s few new letters won’t be nearly as tough as learning Russian, or Chinese; languages with a completely different alphabet, with completely different sets of rules.

So, take each of these components one step at a time and handle them individually and you’ll notice it makes a world of difference. The trick is that while learning one individual component, you’ll also be practicing several others, so you’re attacking your objective on several levels. Good luck, soldier!

Best Languages to Learn as an English Speaker

I’ve read some authors that bragged about how they can learn any language they set their minds to, regardless of cultural background, in a matter of months. While this seems unreasonable solely on the fact that it’s impossible to actually KNOW a language in that short a time span, the most outrageous fact that they claim is that they can learn languages at the same pace, regardless of what they’re actually learning. This means that in a few months, you could learn French and in that amount of time you could also learn Chinese. This is a rather silly thing to say come to think of it, since any language that isn’t at least related to English, not to mention having its own alphabet, scripts and specific grammar rules, will be tough as hell.

Ok, so we’ve established that languages like Chinese, Japanese, Russian or Arabic are hard to learn because they don’t use many of the values that Western languages abide by. But which languages are easiest for an English speaker to learn, in contrast? Let’s take a looksie…

German

German is by far the easiest language to learn if you’re already familiar with English, since the two are closely related, having the same Anglo Saxon ancestry. Many German words are very similar to English ones (haus – house, maus – mouse, etc) which makes it a lot easier to understand the German vocabulary and also pick things up from the context they’re placed in. However, one of the biggest problems with learning German (actually this is probably the ONLY problem) is the word combinations that are usually formed in conversational German. To give you an example of what I’m talking about, here’s one of the longest words in German and its meaning:

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz means “Beef labeling oversight transfer law”. Admittedly, it will be hard to spot the actual words in there (beef = rind, fleisch = meat, etikettier = label, etc) but believe it or not, for a German that actually makes sense. I could hurt your eyes even further with worse examples, but I’ll just keep it at that.

French

Well French is considered a language that’s easy to digest by many cultures, not just by English speakers. French has a lot of influences from English but in turn, it influences it back. The numerous wars between France and England throughout history sparked this cultural exchange. Although English has an Anglo-Saxon background and French is mainly a Latin language, there’s still a lot of resemblance in the two, as they share the same language layer created by nomadic tribes like the Celts or Gaels.

Spanish

Spanish might not have that much in common with English as the above mentioned languages, but it’s easy to learn because it’s an international language that can be picked up from the TV, music and newspapers. In addition, if you’re an American, you’ll have a lot of Spanish-speaking neighbors that you can engage in conversations with and that will help you out when learning this new language.

How to Learn French the Easy Way

French is one of the easiest languages to learn as an English speaker. Is it? At least that’s what all the experts are saying, but on the other hand, not everything that applies in general is bound to apply to you. Some have it easier learning Japanese than French, simply because they can’t stand the language’s “softness”. If that’s not your cup of tea, then I suggest that you step off the French course and hop on to a Russian or German one, as those languages are definitely tougher and more rigid.

One of the first things you need to do in order to learn French properly is immerse yourself in the language. By spending more and more time reading in French and listening to French words, your brain will automatically try to mimic the informational input that it’s getting. Just like a baby, you’ll need to adapt to the new language, memorize the words and try to reproduce them. Can you say Ma-Ma? Don’t worry, you’ve been through this process before when you were a child and although adults lose their ability to learn languages as they grow older, you’ll still have the advantage of being there before.

From a grammatical point of view, French is not all that much different from English or any Western culture language (Latin or Anglo Saxon). Just like with German, French and English have several look-alike and sound-alike words, called cognates. Admittedly, the number of cognates in French is not as big as in German, when relating to the English language, but still, the few that are there make for a good building point.

One of the biggest problems that English speakers stumble upon when learning French is word pronunciation. Like I said earlier, French is a “smooth” language, words are pronounced in a much softer way than in English. It’s usually rather difficult for an English native to adapt to these pronunciation rules, so you’ll require a lot of practice. And don’t be content with the fact that you’re listening to French words being pronounced; you should also voice them out yourself. Don’t worry; no one will think you’re crazy if you talk back to your TV, if it’s for the purpose of learning French.

My suggestion is this: find a great online French course to work with, try it out for a couple of weeks and see where your starting point is. Are you a complete French newb that needs to take things slow in order to understand things? Or are you the type of learner that can skip a few chapters and still learn the language properly. Once you’ve settled this out, you can start with increasing your vocabulary (you can find several methods to do so at www.internetpolyglot.com ) . Good luck!

The CUTE Way of Learning Languages

In a guide written by Greg Thompson and his family, they talk about 4 main principles that make learning languages a lot cuter. The CUTE technique is called so because the acronym stands for 4 of the most important elements that come into play when learning a new language:

- Communing
- Understanding
- Talking
- Evolving

Let’s see what Greg was talking about and how you can benefit from these CUTE principles.

Communing

Communing refers to working with others towards learning a specific foreign language. This principle is based upon the belief that a language is not something that can be studied scientifically, but something that can be grown organically and only in collaboration with other flesh and blood people.

I agree that a foreign language cannot always be learnt by reading textbooks. However, while learning organically does have certain advantages, you can easily go overboard and get used to a lot of common mistakes that people usually slide by in conversations.

Understanding

This might seem like a no-brainer (and it is!). Of course understanding what people say will help you learn a language faster. The trick is to “understand” words that you don’t actually understand. Confused yet? What I’m talking about is picking up new words from sentences that you understand and deducing them from their context. For example, if someone says “words are harder to remember because they are long” you will have learnt a new word, by deducing what adjective means from the context. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Just make sure the context processing mechanics are well in place for when it does work.

Talking

This third principle is actually a third step in language learning. After understanding and being able to “think” in a foreign language, it’s time to start talking. You’ll be surprised to find out that it’s actually harder than it sounds in your head. Many times, when you’re faced with the need to speak in a foreign language without prior practice, you’ll think that it won’t be a problem, because in your head, you can “talk” perfectly. Your mouth and your brain will think otherwise when you’re actually going to start talking.

Evolving

This is not necessarily a requirement in learning a language, but rather a requirement if you want to keep up with that language and where it’s heading. A language is organic in nature, it changes, it adapts to current social standards, and it metamorphoses along with its speakers. Knowing how to evolve at the same pace with the foreign language you’ve studied is important, although not as CUTE as the other three factors I mentioned above.

Obviously, these principles need to be backed up by months, if not years of practice, exercises and studies. A language can’t be learnt in 10 days, despite what all those crappy language guides say. At least not if you’re serious about it and want to have control over that language, not just learn the basic vocabulary and be off to something else.

5 Ways NOT to Learn a Foreign Language

Yes, I know it’s a weird title to use, but bear with me, I’m trying to make a point. I often talk to people trying to learn a new language and they complain that they’re using some popular methods and are not getting the results they paid for. They got the “Learn Russian in a week” book and, oh my God, after a week, they’re still at basic vocabulary (if at all). This sparked the idea to create this article, where I’ll talk about 5 very “popular” ways of NOT learning a foreign language and messing up your language assimilation process:

1. Playing by the rules with a blindfold – I’m not at all against popular learning methods, in fact we promote quite a few of the tried and tested ones on www.internetpolyglot.com . However, I do believe that not all learning programs are suitable for everyone. A lot of people will just buy a book, or get an online language course and wait for the cherry to drop right in their mouth. Truth is, you’re better off thinking for yourself than letting someone else do the thinking in terms of what’s good and what’s bad for you. Did you try some word games and they were fun and you felt like you learnt something in the process? Then continue to try them, despite the experts saying that they’re useless. Did all the language gurus tell you to study after a stepwise plan but it’s not working for you? Then simply take off the blindfold and study with the help of the methods that you feel are right.

2. Grammar obsession – This is so common it’s becoming tragically funny. People are perfectionists and they’re trying to get everything right from day one. I agree that works with many fields in life, but language learning is not one of them. Learning a language is something organic, something that can only be grown through experience. Being obsessed with getting the grammar perfectly from day one is a serious time waster, since you’re going to assimilate all the grammar rules naturally, while reading, listening or talking to someone. I’m not saying it’s not ok to learn the basic rules and think them through, just don’t overdo it.

3. The “I Must!” Theory – Setting yourself up with a learning plan from day one is definitely great: “1 hour per day, from 8 to 10 PM, I will study” is a solid statement. However, this doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to skip a day or two, or you need to use those specific hours. If you study just because “you must” do it, you’ll probably not have explosive results. Studying when you’re not tired, when your attention span is maximized and when there aren’t any distractions is the way to go. Being too obsessive about your language learning schedule is definitely a great way NOT to learn that foreign language.

4. Lack of Reviewing – Every now and then, you should test what you’ve learnt so far, or you might end up having more lose strings than you can handle. Learning for a whole year without reviewing what you studied every now and then is awful. You’ll think you know a particular subject, because, after all, you studied it, but when you’re faced to use it in “real life” you’ll notice that there’s no shortcut on the desktop for it. Constantly reviewing and testing what you learned is the key here.

5. Lack of Diversification – This is also related to point 1. If you find a method that works for you, great! But don’t focus strictly on that one. Try to diversify your language learning, make your exercises fun, try reading, listening, talking, writing or a combination of the above. You can very well learn a language without diversifying your techniques, but when you’re faced to do something that you didn’t study for, you’ll be in trouble. For example, you can definitely learn a language just by reading and writing it down, but when you’ll be faced with actually talking it, you’ll have wished you diversified early on.

Hopefully you’ll be able to avoid these mistakes if you start up on learning a new foreign language. Although there are other traps and mistakes you should worry about, I feel it’s the above 5 that have the greatest negative impact on one’s learning process.

Finding the Time to Learn a New Language

I can’t stop smiling every time I browse the Internet or visit a local book shop and see those “Learn Chinese in 10 days” types of guides. It’s just silly, but people still fall for it, because learning a new language is a rather time consuming project and we’re all looking for ways to make it shorter. But seriously, 10 days? Anyway, if you’re looking for methods to cut down your learning to a couple of weeks, simply don’t. There are none. Your best bet is to try and structure your time so that you can learn over a longer period of time.

I’m a strong believer in online learning (obviously, otherwise we wouldn’t have started www.internetpolyglot.com ) and from the perspective of time consumption, it’s probably the best you’ll get. Sure, face to face language courses can be very useful, but they require you to relocate and for the most part, you can’t set your own time schedule. It’s difficult if you have to go all the way to a course when you’re feeling down and you’re not in the right move to learn. With online learning, you can simply put down the mouse and pick up from where you left earlier when you’re in the right mood again.

My suggestion is to break down your learning session in short chunks, over a longer period of time. Instead of hauling all that new information in your head 6 hours each day for a month, you’re better off taking smaller bites, say 1 hour each day, for 4-5 months. If taken in smaller chunks, information can be stored more easily and you won’t have to worry about learning saturation, tiredness or information overload. Don’t subestimate this aspect, having fun (or at least not feeling stressed out) during the learning process can do wonders.

At Internet Polyglot, we also focus on the fun aspect of language learning as a means to get information across and stored. Anything that’s fun in learning can be done in 10-15 minutes, such as playing a short word game, vocabulary quizzes, using some flash cards or playing language related puzzles. If you don’t have a lot of time at hand or if you’re just not feeling in the mood to start with an online course, those 15 minutes of playing during your lunch break will still be helpful. Obviously, the learning frame will be longer, but then again, it’s not like you put a lot of work into it :).

The only disadvantage of Internet language learning from a time-wise perspective is the many distractions that can appear on a computer. Instant messaging, online flash games, social networking sites and whatnot. They can all be very time consuming and they can easily redirect you from learning to wasting time. My suggestion is that whenever you start learning, regardless if you plan on doing it for 15 minutes or 1 hour, you turn off everything that can be a distraction. Close all tabs of addicting websites and try to fight to urge to “just check up on them” for the next hour. Close MSN, Yahoo Messenger or AOL so that no one bothers you. Myspace, Facebook and hi5 won’t miss you if you’re gone for an hour either :)