10 Articles to Help Get You Started Learning a New Language

Written on February 2, 2012 by aarongmyers in Resources

Helping You Get Started, Encouraging You to Keep Going.

At The Everyday Language Learner my goal is to help normal people begin and then do well with learning a new language; Normal people who may not know exactly how to go about learning another language, people who might be a bit overwhelmed with the prospect of the language learning journey.

I want to help soccer moms and business men and volunteers and missionaries and peace corp workers – people like you and me.

It is for those people that I created a free course called The Ten Week Journey. It was for those people that I wrote the comprehensive EDLL Guide to Getting Started, The EDLL Guide to Self-Assessment and the free manifesto on motivation and commitment called Sustaining.

It is also the focus of the majority of my writing here at the blog. Today then I went back through the last year of blog posts and picked ten that I feel would be helpful, empowering and encouraging for the beginning language learner. These posts will help lay a foundation for learning that will propel you toward fluency in the language you wish to master. Be sure and bookmark the ones that are most helpful.

Destiny + Experience = Powerful Language Learning: In this article I help you think about why you want to learn the target language. Connecting your learning to a clear and meaningful purpose is important if you want to stay with it for the long haul.
The World’s Best Language Learning Method: Another article to help you take control of your language learner so that you can be successful.
Comprehensible Input: Comprehensible input is an important idea for language learning and with this article I’ll help you understand what it is and why you need to find it.
25 Ways to Find Comprehensible Input: The title explains it all; ideas for finding comprehensible input.
Putting in the Time: Comprehensible input is important and so is time – lots of it. In this article I’ll encourage you to think about time as a language learner.
40 Simple Ways to Learn Another Language: A list of 40 ideas for learning.
5 Reasons You Should Write as Part of Your Language Learning: I have found writing to be an invaluable part of my language learning journey. With this article, I’ll help you understand why you should be writing too.
Find Your Style: Your personal learning style and personality is not often considered when we begin to learn another language. In this post, I’ll help you discover yours.
4 Considerations in Choosing a Great Book for Language Learning: Reading is an important activity that every language learner should be doing as they learn the language. With this article, I’ll help you know how to choose an appropriate book.
10 Ways to Maximize Your Language School Experience: If you are thinking of language school, this article will help make it a more effective time.

So I hope these 10 articles will help you if you are just getting started learning another language. I want to encourage you as well to stop by the Language Learning Activities Page to find a list of ideas for ways to learn the language.

Have an amazing day, and if you haven’t yet, get started learning another language right now!

Ready to get serious about learning another language?

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"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

Your privacy will never be comprimised.

Steal My Blog

I have a problem.

My blog is an exclusive club where members only are allowed in. The secret password is the English language. If you don't have it, you don't get in. This is a problem because I believe that information about independent language learning should be available to those who need it most.

There are people all over the world who are desperate to learn English.

Desperate because mastering the English language will open up new doors of opportunity for them, for their families. But they don't know enough English yet to access my blog and learn how to be independent language learners. So they are stuck. Stuck in the systemic ineptitude of outdated and broken national education systems. Thy are held hostage by expensive language school that have stepped into fill the void. They stand looking down two roads: one an ineffective system; the other an expensive system. But there is a third way. They can harness the power of the Internet and an increasingly shrinking world. They can do this if they know how. Independence from the system is possible, but a revolution in language education needs to take place.

Will you join me?

Will you join the revolution?

Step 1: Steal my blog. Create your own blog. Take the ideas from this blog, translate them into your language and share them with your people. Begin to preach the good news of the third way - the independent way. Begin to empower and teach and give tools to those who desire to learn language. Step 2: Steal The Ten Week Journey. This is an email series that I create to walk beginning language learners into the life of an independent, self-directed language learner. I'll walk you into how to set this up with a free email subscription company. It's pretty easy. Step 3: Steal my books. They aren't the greatest books ever written but they were created to break down the old paradigms of teacher directed learning and introduce and explain self-directed learning. I'll give you the books if you can gather a group of friends around you who will work to translate them and then spread them like a wild fire through Facebook and Twitter and Myspace and email and whatever the people of your nation are using to communicate. Use them to direct people back to your blog. Use them to introduce the people of your nation to these ideas. Use them to break the chains of a broken system and set language learner's free to learn on their own. Interested? Send me an email and let's talk. aarongmyers @ gmail.com

Credit and Payment

I'm not asking for either credit or payment. While I think it would be great if you would let people know that what you are sharing with them was originally written by me, I'm not going to tell you that you have to. I also don't want any payment from you. Now, if you want to add an affiliate link on your site to my books (English versions) that I do sell, you can sure do that and then you would get 50% of the profit as well. So in that sense, I'll be paying you. I am mostly concerned with a world that continues to use a broken and outdated system that is effectively locking millions of people out of the advantages of learning another language.

Why Am I Doing This

I want to do something big with my life. I want to make a ruckus and be a part of tearing down broken systems. I don't wear a cape though and I have no super powers. So I need to assemble an army of other like minded people to wage the battle with me. I'm not the first to give away my content. Leo Babauta has been doing it for a while and he has one of the most widely read blogs in the world. I think we can start a grass roots movement of free information that a new system for language building can be built upon. But the important word here is WE. We can do it together. Let's get started.

tjbh13

February 4, 2012 | 11:45 am

Nicely done! I haven’t had a chance to look at all of the articles yet, but it looks like a wealth of information. I plan to pass this on. Thanks! Terry