John Assaraf said, “The interested person will do what is convenient. The committed person will do whatever it takes.” If you’re like me, at first glance this quote can be a bit discouraging. After all, few of us are really committed to language learning, at least not committed enough to do whatever it takes. But there is hope and it is found in doing convenient, simple things everyday. If we can do this, our commitment will grow and we will one day find ourselves at the end of a successful language learning journey.
My goal with this post is to give you ideas. I want to help you find the convenient things you can do every day that will help you begin to make real headway in the language you are learning. None of these ideas are the be all and end all for learning another language but rather are supplemental activities that can help you build a robust personal language learning program.
With all of these, the idea is the same. They should be fun, easy to implement and simple to use. Some of course are more so than others. Some require five minutes of your time while others require twenty. Some are purely entertainment and some are more focused in nature. Some of the ideas below will feel like a perfect match for your learning and life style. A few will seem like total nonsense. And that’s okay. All of these ideas can be used to create a rich learning environment that will lead to more interaction with the language you are learning. Here are 40 simple ways to maximize your life as a language learner:
- Place stacks of flashcards in high use regions of your home – near the kitchen sink, on the back of the toilet in the bathroom, on your desk or night stand, next to the TV remote in the living room.
- Label and super label things around your home. Read More.
- Place high interest reading material on the back of the toilet, on the nightstand, in the drawer at the office.
- Begin to acquire music in the language you wish to learn.
- Create a folder on your ipod called “ [language] file” so that you can easily listen to target language music.
- Sign up for the Ten Week Journey to get started with language learning. Learn More.
- Make your shopping list in the target language and don’t bring a dictionary. This idea comes from Randy The Yearlyglot.
- Change your ipod, cell phone and computer interface language settings to your target language.
- Join a local club or association that will put you in contact with native speakers.
- Shop at ethnic grocery stores.
- Use Google Translate to find Youtube videos in the target language on topics you are interested in. An Example.
- Find podcasts in the language to listen to anytime.
- Purchase coffee table picture books filled with glossy photos of the target language country and keep it on the end table to help sustain motivation.
- Find audio books in the language that you can listen to anytime.
- Sign up for Livemocha, Busuu, or purchase Rosetta Stone so that you have a simple program for learning at your computer to use 20 minutes at a time.
- If you are a gamer, find computer games in the target language.
- Go online to stream major sporting events (Super Bowl, NBA finals, etc) with target language announcers.
- If you like board games, find board or card games in the target language.
- Subscribe to a major news magazine’s target language edition.
- Read the Free Everyday Language Learner’s Guide to Sustaining to help you maintain and even improve your motivation, commitment and attitude. READ NOW.
- Sign up and begin using LingQ. Learn More.
- Keep a stack of note cards with you. On these write example sentences of the newest grammar structures you have been learning, write expressions and proverbs you would like to learn and write other important words and phrases that you want to learn. Keep these cards with you everywhere. Read More.
- Watch foreign films in your target language.
- Print off ten Wikipedia articles in the target language about topics or people that you are extremely interested in and knowledgeable of. Keep these in on the end table or nightstand for easy reading.
- Write in the target language at Lang-8 and get free feedback and corrections. Read More.
- Change Wikipedia to the target language and bookmark it on your computer.
- Read or watch your daily dose of “world news” from a target language news outlet.
- Print out a list of 50 new words you are learning and tape that to the bathroom mirror.
- Place another copy of this list near your bed, above your desk and on the car dashboard.
- Find a TV series from the country of the Target language that you can watch. These can easily be streamed online.
- Place a target language dictionary on the navigation bar of your computer.
- Sign up for a word of the day email auto responder so that you get something in your inbox everyday.
- Download Anki or a similar computer based flashcard program.
- Subscribe to a target language online news feed.
- Keep a children’s book in the target language near every chair in your home and office.
- Buy a target language pocket dictionary and keep it with you.
- Hang a map of the country you most wish to visit on a prominent wall in your home to help sustain motivation and begin to learn the names of places (if you can get a map in the target language – all the better).
- Download a target language dictionary to your iphone.
- Buy a small phrase book and keep it around the house or office.
- Subscribe to The Everyday Language Learner so that you can get each new blog post delivered into your inbox. Subscribe Now.
So there you have it. 40 ideas to get you started. The idea isn’t to find the one perfect method or system that will be your silver bullet, but rather to fill your day and your environment with the language as much as possible. You may want to print this list and keep it with your language learning materials for reference when you are wondering what you should be doing. I think it especially important that you have a number of easy to access activities that you can do in the five minutes of free time that come up here and there throughout our days. Capitalize on these brief windows of time as much as you can. Lots of little chunks of time throughout each day are vastly better than one four to five hour push once a week.
I am quite certain that this list could easily be doubled. Would you help all of us out by adding your ideas below? Let’s make this the “80 Simple Ways” post. Together we can become better language learners.
What is one simple activity or idea you have for maximizing your life as a language learner?
Ready to get serious about learning another language?
"Aaron consistenly pumps out top quality language learning advice and motivational posts,
and is probably one of the best sources of encouragement you'll come across."
-Donovan Nagel, The Mezzofanti Guild
These suggestion are all excellent! Here’s the simple activity (which is really just a combination of some of your suggestions above) that helped me learn Italian: I watch Un Posto al Sole, an Italian soap opera, 5 days a week. Each episode is less than 25 minutes. If I don’t have time to sit down and watch, I can download the episode to my iPhone and watch while I’m working out or just listen to the audio when I’m walking the dog. But I don’t stop with just watching the program. As time allows, I also:
-read on-line summaries of the episode that give me the language to think about what I just watched
-gather new vocabulary words from the program and summaries, adding them, always in context, to my weekly new vocabulary list
-look for examples of the grammatical structure that I’m currently focusing on
-pause the video periodically and repeat what I just heard or try to mirror the dialogue aloud
-to focus on pronunciation, I chose a character whose pronunciation and way of speaking I like, and when I read aloud or speak, I try to model my speech with her in mind. This has really helped my intonation.
-I’ve made a friend on Livemocha who also watches the same soap. We often make silly comments about the show in our messages. It makes writing fun.
-there’s a forum for the soap, which I read sometimes and add my comments
So, yes, you’re right, there are tons of ways to improve your target language with a little imagination and commitment.
Gail,
Hey. What a great list of ideas for really tapping into the potential of a soap opera. Thanks so much for sharing them and your experience.
Aaron
wow super comprehensive list. Do you have any good recommendations on time management to learn a new language if you only have an hour or so to spare a day?
Paul,
Thanks for the great comment. And great question. Time is so valuable and if we have just an hour a day, we can still make a lot of great headway in any language we are wanting to learn. I think the key is to find and spend our time on high impact activities. If you have an hour though, I am going to bet you have an hour and a half. The key is to fill the gaps, the five minutes here and there with impactful interaction with the language. Some of the ideas on the list are like this. We all brush our teeth (I hope we all do anyway). Can we not tack on 2-3 minutes of vocabulary review to this daily activity. The key is to have the “stuff” on hand and ready to go when those five minute gaps open up. Even if we only filled the gaps during a typical day, we could probably get an hour of interaction with the language. Then if we have an extra chunk of time, 30 – 60 minutes, then we can sit down and really dive into bigger projects. In it all, keep it interesting, fun and purposeful.
Aaron
Selam Paul,
Yararlı oldu. Bir kısmını zaten uyguluyordum ama düğerlerini de deneyeceğim.
Teşekkürler.
Aaron,
pardon dalgınlıkla Paul yazmışım.
Tekrar teşekkürler.
Hasan,
Bu listde yardımcı oldu memnunum. Hangi dilleri öğrenirsiniz? Bloguma ziyarettiniz için çok teşekkür ederim. Lütfen sitem meşlektaşınıza paylaşın.
-Harun (Türkiye’de ‘Harun’ kullanırım)
Hi, what amazing ideas! I especially like the one with the shopping list – just imagine a person running around a shop trying to remember what he is supposed to buy: “Well, what’s next? Zanahorias.. Hmmm.. What’s this?? OMG, what does it mean???” Then goes a severe battle with your memory and brain and whatever, and pabaaam – oh, this means carrots, and you are sure to remember this word for the rest of your life, haha:))) I do like this tip!
As for me, I’ve found the following way of learning English and Spanish, which seems to be also helpful in learning languages especially when combined with the tips you’ve kindly presented here. I read novels, not short stories or essays, but real hundred-pages novels. And I try to read it without dictionaries. This helps me to penetrate into the “structure of a language”, to understand it, to feel it. As every individual has his own vocabulary, which is rather limited in books mostly because of the author’s preferences for words, you meet one and the same word for hundred times while reading, and you gradually come to understand what it means from the context. So, reading in this way allows to widen your voc and intuitively understand how to make phrases in the language you learn. The most important thing here is to read books that are really interesting to you. I usually read some fantasy, adventures and, khm, love-stories with lots of dialogues in them.
I am sure that this is no news for you, but still I am happy to share.
Many thanks for attention:)
Evgenia,
Thanks for your comment and for sharing what works for you. As the shopping list goes, I need to again say everyone should stop over and visit Randy’s site, The Yearlyglot, because he is filled with great ideas like that. Reading novels is a proven way to get into a language and learn it. I am glad it is really working for you too.
Have a great day!
Aaron
Fantastic, and I love that you made it clear at the beginning that people should just pick the ones they like and mix and match however they want, too many people are looking for a hard system with steps 1, 2, 3, etc. and EVERYTHING is already laid out for them to do. The problem with this is that everyone is different and the best system for someone else may not be the best one for you, thereby making it impossible to create a system like that which will work well, or even acceptably, for most people.
Just do what seems like fun to you.
Cheers,
Andrew
Andrew,
I think it is so important that learners be empowered to make the choices necessary for them to learn the language. Hopefully sites like yours and mine will help people do just that.
Aaron
Great list of suggestions!
I myself have replaced LingQ (step 21) with LWT, a free and open-source alternative. Its website it’s http://lwt.sf.net, if you want to check it out.
Lang8 is a godsend! I had thought of offering this service years ago to correct people’s English. I’m glad that such a site is live!
[...] few weeks back I had a great comment from Gail Brown on my 40 Simple Ways to Learn Another Language post. I enjoyed her comment so much I thought she should share with all of us her insight into [...]
Very nice list. Regarding #11, you don’t have to translate yourself and then paste to google. Use this site; it googles 2 languages of your choice: http://www.2lingual.com/
#41 write a blog in the language you are mastering! #42 Tweet in the language you are learning and follow Tweeters who speak your target language! Great way to interact on a daily basis and use your language! p.s. Gail and I are avid fans of Un posto al sole. Walk the dog and listen to an Italian soap…perfect way to reinforce idioms and increase vocab. A presto! Melissa
@italiamelissa Thanks so much for stopping by Melissa. Great extra tips on #41 and #42 and after stopping by your site above, you look to be doing a great job implementing those ideas as well. I’ll add your blog to my Italian Resource page! Thanks for sharing it here.
p.s. you can visit the blog I write in Italian (and in English) at http://www.studentessamatta.com. Lots of tips there to for keeping motivated to learn a language
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HOW TO PRACTICE A DAILY LIFE TOPIC IN ENGLISH.
In my view it is expedient to master a conversation topic in English in the following order:
1. Learners listen to and pronounce each sentence of English speech (thematic dialogues and narrative texts with transcripts).
It is helpful for learners to compare their pronunciation to the narrator’s pronunciation.
Learners make sure that they understand everything clearly in each sentence in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.
2. Speaking on each conversation topic (imitation of dialogues (role play), ready-made thematic questions and answers with helpful content for using in daily life, narrations/telling stories, talking points and discussions of issues).
Learners practice speaking on the topic (telling the content of a dialogue or a narrative text closely to the original text as much as possible: imitation of a dialog (role play) and narration of a text on the topic). Learners can write key words and phrases, or main ideas as a plan, or questions on the dialogue or text learners listened to previously in order to make easier for learners to tell the content in English. It is important to compare what they said to the transcript.
It is a good idea for learners to record their speech on audio to compare it with the original audio recording.
The most important thing for learners is to speak English, and to check in the transcript of texts whether they have made any mistakes in speaking.
3. Learning of additional conversation sentences and vocabulary from English phrase books, conversation books and general thematic English dictionaries that provide useful usage sentences. Making up one’s own sentences with difficult vocabulary for potential use in daily life.
4. Extensive reading of thematic texts and materials from various sources.
Telling the content of thematic texts.
It is better for learners to write down unknown vocabulary in whole sentences to remember word meanings easier. It would be a good speaking practice for learners telling the content of the texts that they have read. Learners can write key words and phrases, or main ideas as a plan, or questions on the text that require long answers to make easier for learners to tell the content of the text. I believe it is a good idea to read each logical chunk or paragraph of a text and to narrate each paragraph separately, and then the whole text.
5. Writing on real life topics.
Output before input will not stick long-term for the majority of human beings. Get enough comprehensible input and you will become proficient. It’s really very simple.
Output vs. Input isn’t something I really try to get into. I guess I feel it is more important that learners hit the sweet spot of personality, personal learning style, interests, etc. I am also not entirely convinced that output isn’t in fact also input. Your brain is interacting with the word either way. A stick is a stick whether you hear it or say it. That though is an idea I am still mulling over.
Thanks for your comment and I hope you were able to find plenty of input ideas in the list above as well.
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