One for the Road! A Comprehensive Language Study Guide

One for the Road! A Comprehensive Language Study Guide Plotting Your Way to Fluency: A Flexible Language Study Guide Hindsight is 20/20.Looking back, well always see that it was at the beginning where we went wrong.Its when we set out on a journey of some kind that we can benefit the most from preparing ourselves for whats to come.But it may only be later that we understand just what we were missing at the start.When I started teaching myself French, I had no idea what I was doing.I bounced between different resources and techniques for more than a year, just picking up a few words and phrases here and there.Sometimes Id study like crazy. Sometimes Id put the language out of my head for a week.I finally enrolled in a great French class at school and realized that I could barely speak French.On top of that, Id been making some very ridiculous grammar mistakes.If Id had a study guide or a study plan to show me the way, I could have aced that class the minute I walked in.So now, Id like to give you the advantage I didnt have and show you a complete map for learning a language that you can adapt to you r own individual preferences.Ill show you what to study at each stage of learning and  how to keep your study time balanced over days and weeks where you might have a lot of other things going on.The key to learning success is consistency. As long as you keep at your studies and keep moving ahead, everything else will fall into place.And in this post, well look at how to ensure that things fall into place as quickly as possible. How Long Does It Take to Learn a Language, and How Can a Language Guide Help?But how long do you need to keep at those studies? Thats a question thats been asked many, many times over.It depends on a few main factors:The frequency of your study sessions.The familiarity of the language.The interest you have in the language.If you only study once a week, youll barely get anywhere. You need to give your brain a chance to absorb the material by frequently thinking in or about the language. More frequent and more consistent study means faster learning.A languag e that’s closely related to others you might know, or that shares a lot of vocabulary, will fit easier in your mind because you can guess how to apply your previous knowledge.Finally, if youre fascinated by it and the people who speak it, any language can become childs play, because youre intrinsically motivated to understand and communicate using it.You may not have as much control over the last two factors, but you do have some control over the first. Additionally, if youre disorganized in your learning, youre likely to retread old ground or run up against walls. Youve got to have something to help you along and show you what you should be focusing onâ€"like a language learning guide!A dedicated, motivated self-learner following a good guide should be able to achieve a comfortable intermediate level in about 300-500 study hours, spread over a period of roughly 10-14 months.That means averaging around an hour, or at least 40 minutes, of learning time every day. Its hard for most people to set aside that kind of time, but cut it into two or three chunks of 20 minutes and suddenly it seems far more doable. You might even spend 20 minutes reading posts or articles like this one today.An audio course in the car, a book in the bus, a video before bedâ€"thats how you fit those study hours into a busy day.You want to get in the habit of never really letting the language out of your sight.So youve got the time, but what should you do with it?Plotting Your Way to Fluency: A Flexible Language Study GuideBeginning: Pronunciation, First Words PhrasesPronunciationOne thing polyglots tend to do differently from the average learner is starting with pronunciation.Because practice doesnt make perfectâ€"practice makes permanent.If you get the wrong patterns in your head, youll have a devil of a time getting them out later on.Youre going to want to do some research on the sounds of the language youre learning and make sure you know how to make them and distinguish them.Wikip edia has articles on the sound systemâ€"called the phonologyâ€"of virtually every language out there, big and small. The articles are a bit technical, but in my opinion its some of the best technical knowledge you can pick up when it comes to language learning.If the Wikipedia articles are beyond you still, then go to YouTube and look for videos about the pronunciation of your target language. Try looking for more targeted, academic videos instead of just quick two- or three-minute overviews.If youre learning French, for instance, search for specific features like French R or French vowels.Once youre confident about the individual sounds, move on to words.Words PhrasesYoull need to practice listening and repeating words in isolation and in the context of an example sentence to understand the rhythm of the language.Rhythm is one of the most important parts of accent, and it really cant be ignored. Think of a toddlers speechâ€"they might have trouble with some consonants, but nobody would ever say they have a foreign accent. Thats because theyve already mastered the rhythm. They were hearing it even before birth, every time their mom spoke aloud!And so most dedicated learners will look high and low for courses with audio or good audiobooksâ€"they want to get as much exposure as possible to the sounds of the language and really soak the rhythm into their heads.A lot of these course books or guides will tell you to avoid memorization as if its something that might hurt your learning.At the true beginner stage, though, youre going to have to memorize something if you want to start understanding this language.The advice should really be something like dont memorize lists of words without context. Youve got to connect what youre learning to feelings or memories.So start with a simple game of pretending: Imagine the very first things most people will say to you.That means greetings, certainly.Lets assume youre using the language for travel. Youll want to know how to say hello, how to get someones attention, how to politely step past people in a crowded space, how to say thank you. If you still dont know exactly where to begin, these words and phrases are a good bet.After you pick these things up, you should branch out and learn some verbs, nouns and adjectives from dictionaries, phrasebooks or vocabulary lists.At this very early stage, its a great psychological boost to be able to recognize and understandâ€"so dont stress out if you cant produce very much in the language.High Beginning: Constructing Sentences, Listening to DialoguesConstructing SentencesPretty soon, youre going to want to move beyond the phrases youve learned and begin to express yourself.For that, youre going to need to know how to construct sentences.In many languages, you can start picking up these rules intuitively just by looking at a handful of examples.If your phrasebook tells you that What is your name and What is his name are identical except for the pronoun, theres a good chance that What is her name follows a similar pattern. Keeping your eyes open for these patterns is going to boost your learning significantly.But when its not clear from context what the next word should be, youre going to have to move beyond the phrasebook and begin with a grammar resource.The very concept makes a lot of people cringe. But these days, you can sample many simple, free online courses with an emphasis on sentences.Your local library may also have well-known coursebooks in its collection. Try books in the Teach Yourself  or Dummies series for a solid intro to the grammar.An extra-easy alternative is to start learning with FluentU, as it starts you off putting words and phrases into grammatical context immediately. FluentU takes real-world videosâ€"like movie trailers, music videos, news and inspiring talksâ€"and turns them into personalized language lessons. Youll find content on FluentU for complete beginners, but itll continue to fit right in with your learnin g as you make your way all through the rest of this guide and beyond, starting withListening to DialoguesAt the same time, youre going to want to begin your long listening journey around this point. Listening is incredibly important for learning languages at really any level, for all kinds of reasonsâ€"from getting used to different accents to improving your reaction time with new vocabulary.Use FluentU, search through YouTube to find beginner lessons or dialogues in your target language, or look for a textbook with companion audio that you can get at a low cost (or from a library!).Listen to these dialogues again and again over a period of a few days.You want to be giving your mind two simultaneous tracks to learning the language: naturally, through examples and dialogues, and systematically, through overt explanations of grammar rules.Low Intermediate: Improving Vocabulary, Listening, Speaking WritingAs you progress through the stages, youre naturally going to become a better and better self-learner.Because of that, you probably dont need this guide to tell you, Repeat after your dialogues. Keep an eye on your pronunciation. Of course, youre going to continue doing the things that make you progress onward.So take these next several steps as additional suggestions rather than all-encompassing instructions. Stay well-rounded in your learning, and even go back and review older material for as long as you want.Improving VocabularyNow that youve got some of the basics down, the whole wide world of vocabulary out there is yours to conquer. The only question is, where to start?Again, one of the best ways to learn vocabulary is to really connect with what youre trying to memorize. If you watch an interesting video or read an interesting article in your native language, look up some of the main vocabulary points and youll remember much better than if you learned those same words from a list.Continue to follow the guidance of whatever grammar resource youre usingâ€"i deally, your resource should challenge you enough as you move on that you dont grow bored and try to jump ahead too fast. If you bite off more than you can chew, youll likely lose motivation.ListeningAt this point, you should be looking for as many listening resources as you can.Its difficult at this point to pick up new words from listening aloneâ€"so dont shirk on the vocabularyâ€"but unless you plan to mostly read and write your target language, listening is the core skill.And it takes a lot of time to develop.That means enjoyment is the key to progress. Dont waste your time watching things you don’t like. If youre into photography, watch camera reviews. If you like makeup, there are makeup tutorials in hundreds of languages on YouTube.One of the most valuable resources at this point in your learning is audio with transcripts, such as videos with subtitles.Again, this is something you can turn to the trusty learning tools on FluentU for.Outside (and occasionally inside) of Flue ntU, the YouTube project Easy Languages is an outstanding collection of street interviews with subtitles in both the target language and English.Watching short, entertaining videos is a great way to keep yourself focused and on task during this important study activity.Speaking WritingIts tough to speak when you dont have much you can say.Thats why we havent mentioned speaking too much until now.Some language acquisition experts believe that you learn most effectively if youre not pushed to speak or write until you can understand a lot of what you read and hear.And that makes senseâ€"its demoralizing to enter a conversation and constantly be lost as to what your partner is saying.At this stage in your learning, however,  you should be itching for some speaking practice.The single best free place for speaking practice online is a language exchange site called Hellolingo. Its got a huge community of people from all over the world, waiting to help you with their native languages.If yo ure willing to spend a little money, though,  iTalki cant be beat for finding tutors. The selection of professional teachers and skilled enthusiasts is truly unparalleledâ€"plus theres a large community that will help you with writing practice as well.Writing is daunting, especially in languages with lots of grammatical forms to memorize. But writing practice always has a positive effect,  even if nobody corrects your mistakes.  Just the act of writing on its own helps you recall words better. As you continue reading, youll develop more and more of an intuition for the grammar as well, and before long youll even be able to correct your own mistakes.Scheduling your output practice is something youll have to do on your own depending on how comfortable you are with it and how important it is for your purposes. If you enjoy it, try to work in some speaking and writing at least twice a week so you dont get too rusty.Intermediate: Grammar and ReadingGrammarAt this point, youre going to ne ed to shore up any remaining leaks in your grammar knowledge.Your general online courses and book guides may not cut it here. Luckily, for commonly studied languages like French, Russian, Japanese and German, the internet is awash with free and in-depth grammar guides.Heres where I actually wont recommend YouTube, though there are of course some gems to be found, as the best resources tend to be single-purpose grammar overviews like Dartmouths German grammar page or JGram for Japanese.Beyond that, the publisher Routledge has a whole line of Modern Grammars  for ten major languages. Theyre some of the best reference grammars and workbooks around, and can really help you figure out what youve been missing. If your language isnt on that list, try their Essential Grammar line or looking around for a reference grammar at a library or online bookstore.Grammar is so important at this stage because youre likely to start internalizing mistakes soon. If you dont nip these in the bud, your gra mmar mistakes will become bad habits later on that are harder to break.ReadingNow you can slowly but surely work your way through simple native texts.I really like the NHK World news site for its no-frills daily news reporting (in 18 languages). The articles are written for natives, not learners, but theyre short and digestible enough to be very helpful reading practice.Every major city around the world has newspapers or other media outlets in their own language as well. For just one of scores of examples, check out Público,  a popular news source from Portugal.Now, its likely that the feature articles and opinion pieces on these websites will still be too hard for you at this point.But thats just fineâ€"most have all kinds of lighter content like recipes, entertainment news, sports scores and lifestyle tips. Usually with video included, too!Check out the topics that most interest you. Its fine if you end up only looking at pictures and their captions. The most important part is th at youre immersed in the language wherever you go on that site.Offline, you should look for translated books from your native language. If theres a best-seller youve read cover to cover tons of times, thats a perfect tool for diving into literature.Translated books are easier to start out with because the plot and characters are likely going to be more familiar to you, culturally speaking. With a more accessible story-line, you can focus on absorbing the language through your extensive reading.High Intermediate and Beyond: Expressing Yourself and Understanding OthersExpressing YourselfThe more you read, the more you listen, the more you expose yourself to, the more youre going to learn.Understanding complicated, authentic native speech is not an easy task. And at the high-intermediate stage, it really can seem like youve plateaued because the gains are harder to see.Going from a vocabulary of 100 to 500 words feels amazing, but from 4000 to 4400, the effect barely registers, since y ou can already understand most of what you encounter.The key is to keep going and to branch out. Challenge yourself with material you might not normally think of, such as cooking shows or comedy routines. When you come back to material you saw earlier, it wont seem nearly as hard.Understanding OthersRepeating after dialogues, writing on your own and reading aloud are all excellent learning strategies, but if your goal is fluent communication, theres no better way to get there than communicating.Whether its with a tutor, a friend or even strangers on the street, you should take whatever opportunities you can to have conversations.Ask your speaking partners to strike a balance between correcting your mistakes and allowing you to speak freely. Schedule some sessions as tutor sessions and some as conversations.You need a mix of these two practice styles to get into the flow of a natural interaction while also continuing to work on your mistakes.After that… its up to you.The intermedia te-advanced stage of language learning sometimes seems like itll never end.Even if youre continuing to study, it might not seem like youre making progress until you really challenge yourself.But then all of a sudden, you look back at an old piece of writing you did or a book that was giving you troubleâ€"and you see how far youve come.Consistency is the single most important part of any personal improvement.When you put in the time and effort on a regular basis, you simply cant fail to see results. And One More ThingLooking for engaging material for developing your language skills? Then youre going to love learning with FluentU!FluentU makes it possible to learn languages  from music videos, commercials, news and inspiring talks.  Its all stuff that native speakers  actually watch.  With FluentU, you learn real languagesâ€"the same way that natives  speak them. FluentU has a wide variety of videos like movie trailers, funny commercials and web series, as you can see here:FluentU A pp Browse Screen.FluentU has interactive captions that let you tap on any word to see an image, definition, audio and useful examples. Now native language content is within reach with interactive transcripts.Didnt catch something? Go back and listen again. Missed a word? Hover your mouse over the subtitles to instantly view definitions.Interactive transcript for Carlos Baute song.You can learn all the vocabulary in any video with FluentUs Quiz Mode. Swipe left or right to see  more examples for the word you’re learning.FluentU has quizzes for every videoAnd FluentU always keeps track of vocabulary that you’re learning. It uses that vocab to give you a 100% personalized experience by recommending videos and examples.Start using FluentU on the website  with your computer or tablet  or, better yet,  download the FluentU app from  the  iTunes  or  Google Play  store.