Update: Since this topic is sticked and that means no bump is made, I felt correct to post some thoughts about this guide in general. In fact, my intention is to give a completely different perspective about language learning and acquisition.
The first thing that I want to say something very important and experienced by every polyglot that you can listen on youtube, spotify or wherever:
today, there is no actual barrier between you and a new language in terms of accesibility. You can find material everywhere.
How can I, then, learn a language effectively?It is all about input.
There's been an important amount of investigations about the way that we generally take when we are babies to learn a language. Research has been done over and over about this and have simply concluded at the same point - the fact that we acquire a new language through subconscious processes in our own minds. We don't memorize; we simply
get to understand the principal message, then our brain makes connections between words and the ways of reaching to that message and unconsciously we go through little steps taking vocabulary.
In most of the cases, you are not even aware of it.We need to cut off the thought of that we learn a language by reading thousands of times grammatical rules, memorizing vocabulary out of context that we don't apply, that we need an academy, a course or a professor in order to learn. The real and unique way for which humans learn a language is through
input and your method has to meet these requirements:
- You have to understand the message, even if you don't completely understand the fully structure of the sentence
- You have to be gradually acquiring new words by having more and more input, not conforming yourself with the ones that you already know
- You should do it preferably daily. If you play an instrument then you know what I'm talking about. Practice makes master. More input, more habit: more language acquisition at shorter time.
- You must listen and read with subtitles in the language that you want to learn. There's this kind of people that watch series on English but puts subtitles in Spanish, or viceversa. There's a scientific research that shows that this does not work at all.
Then, if it's so easy, why people can't speak more than a single language? Why can't even you who are talking to us speak more than English and Spanish?Because it is not
easy. You see, the most problematic part about learning a language is that people want to see results instantly. LEARN ENGLISH IN THREE MONTHS WITH THIS COURSE! LEARN GERMAN IN TWO WEEKS! LEARN JAPANESE IN 3 MONTHS!
Yes. Sure. But try to actually speak. Try to read a debate between two different political sides. Try, I don't know, read a newspaper. Oh what's up? Yeah, you cannot. You trusted in results which are impossible and unable to get and you feel dissappointed. I've been there.
Learning a language takes also these following things:
- Dedication
- Time
- Motivation
- Dedication
- Self-confidence
- Knowing the right method
- Accepting that you will not be perfect, accepting that it will not be easy to speak the first months
The last thing that I want to say before I let you with the MASTERS who can speak about this thing much better than I, is, that together with this goal of 'quick time' language acquisition, people also fail into another mistake: be afraid.
Don't be afraid of practising. Don't be afraid to try in your mind, or by speaking, the new words you know. Don't be afraid of writing. Don't be afraid of trying to give your opinion at a Quora forum. The only goal is that people can understand you well. You don't need anything else. Do not seek perfection,
seek the benefits of breaking these barrers and, fundamentally, the fun. You must, above anything, have fun.