Do It Yourself: Learn a Foreign Language

Few adventures are as fascinating as learning a foreign language. Mastering a foreign language is not just a question of memorizing new words and stringing them together into sentences; it is also (mostly, maybe) about mastering a whole new way of thinking and perceiving the world around us.

Whatever your reason for wanting to learn a foreign language, you can do it yourself. There is an unbelievable wealth of learning resources out there to get you started.

Here are a few tips to help make your journey even more enjoyable and fruitful:

Define your goals: Why are you learning the language in the first place? Because you've always dreamed of visiting countries it's spoken in? Because you like the sound of it? Because it is the language of a literary masterpiece you'd love to read in the original? Defining your learning goals will help you pick the learning materials best suited to your needs.

Choose the appropriate materials: What are you studying the language for? What is your time frame for achieving your goals? How frequently are you planning to study? All these and many more questions will help you pick the course and supplementary materials that are right for you. If you are into grammatical theory, then get yourself a course that spells everything out in grammatical terms. If, on the other hand, you have always been intimidated by noun adjuncts and prepositional phrases, then an immersion course may work best for you. Take your time, browse, consider.

Learn in small doses: It is understandable that at first you will want to plunge right in and study the new language for hours and hours on end. Please don't! It is best to study a little at a time and regularly than do nothing but study at first and then either lose interest or get discouraged by how easy you forget what you've studied. Forgetting is a natural part of the whole learning process. It can be battled with the powerful learning tool of repetition. Learning is essentially re-learning, re-visiting the material as many times as it takes until you feel 100% comfortable with it.

Language is sound: Language (that is, spoken language) has been around for at least 5 times as long as the written word. Hard to believe, given the amount of written texts we tackle everyday, but true. So, pay attention to the sounds of the new language: study the pronunciation sections of your course and practice extensively using the audio-visual materials. Even if you are ultimately planning on using the language for writing and/or reading purposes mostly, you will see that learning its sounds will pay off big time in the long run.

Practice, practice, practice: If you have access to a native speaker of your target language, by all means enlist their help. Radio and TV broadcasts are also powerful learning tools: You will understand very little at first, but in the meantime you will be familiarizing yourself with the sound patterns (intonation) of the new language. You can practice at any time during the day, not just during your study sessions: For example, using the target language, try to name as many objects around you while, say, waiting for the bus, doing the laundry, or browsing at the supermarket. Ask yourself simple questions and answer them in the foreign language.