Learning Languages - several suggestions. Part 1

Some of us are bilingual from childhood, others might know only one language for their whole life, while some are passionate about languages and actively learn new ones. With a background from Ukraine, usually, a person who is born after the 90s, might know three languages on a high level and learn the 4th one at secondary school. However, not only, knowledge of the foreign language is not connected to the time a person was born, but rather to the quality of education at school and own intention to speak the language. That was my case, with speaking natively in Russian and Ukrainian, but English started from elementary school and then later German. So, in high school, I had lessons of four different languages every week. Automatically by knowing Ukrainian as from Eastern Slavic language group, I can easily catch the Polish language. That helped me when I was living in Poland for two years, my pronunciation and knowledge of grammar structures quickly constructed the feeling to the Polish language, so I could freely use it in my daily life. However, if I wanted to work or study on this language, it requests some time to improve my lexical resources and language-specific rules. That is why I would say that is not so easy to learn Polish if you are a native speaker of any Slavic language. Sadly, that was not the same with German. Even though I had been learning German at school for several years and was one of the best students in the German language, I could not say that I was about even full A2 level. Anyway, the school helped me to be really confident in reading and pronunciation if to look how good I am in these now. So, how did I learn the language, and what would be my tips in learning a foreign language?

1. Clearly understand your goal (create SMART goals).

Is your goal to travel in the country, while people there do not speak English well or any language you already speak? Or do you want to study in this language in the nearest future? It might happen, that you learn the language just because of curiosity. At the same time, it can be possible that you have to pass an exam in order to enter university or for migration reasons. These grounds might explain that there are different methods, strategies, and speeds to learn the language. Just to mention, studying for the test sometimes might be not about the knowledge, but rather preparation for the structure of the test, learning phrases by heart, and specifically understanding what the examiner wants from you.

I checked it on my own, being fluent in English and passing the Academic IELTS test are not the same things! The preparation teaches you time management, particular techniques, and tricks to certain tasks, specific phrases, and overview in a range of academic topics.

2. Study regularly, create a schedule.

It is important that you regularly invest time in your daily routine. It might be either 15 minutes every day, or 3 hours per week with a particular schedule, or every day for several hours - intensive time. Neither of them might be the most efficient way because it depends on which level of the language you already are, how you put your concentration, which languages you already know, and not the least if you live in the area where the learning language is spoken. A lot of factors!

3. Find someone who could correct your mistakes. 

It is possible that we learn the language on our own, while sometimes we need assistance, for example, that someone checks our writing part. We can be fluent but still make regular mistakes, without understanding them. Find either a friend, a language-tandem partner, a teacher, or join the language course in order to have guidance from someone who is fluent or who knows the particular rule, so could explain where the mistake is and why it is so.

4. Surround yourself with content in a learning language. 

Even if you do not live in that area, it is possible to listen to podcasts, videos, bloggers in a new language. I turned my phone several times into German and unconsciously started to understand new words.

These were just a few organisational points. For some specific tools and techniques, I would write in the next report. I know, it might be tough and there are a lot of distracting factors not to concentrate on learning the language, but try to surround yourself with the language and naturally understand new words.