Learning anything new is always a challenge, it seems like you only keep on encountering new concepts and it never ends. Few months down the lane, one day it hits you all of a sudden. Your progress is suddenly visible, reading your old notes start making sense.
Practice, consistency, and sincerity are all it takes. This brings me back to one of my favourite quotes:
Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!
- Tony Robbins
Spoonfeeding is never going to help, nor is copying someone else's notes. Here are some of my tips for learning and acquiring a new language as a skill; tips which I tried to follow my best as a student, and the same have benefitted all of my students.
1. Ask questions, seek answers
Use mobile apps, websites, forums to learn new vocabulary and its usage.
There are thousands of resources online, accounts of many who started learning or teaching themselves a new language and wrote about it. Duolingo, Reddit, WordReference have a large, engaging community that you can benefit from. Remember, learning can never be spoonfed to you. You will always have to do your own independent research! If you are following a classroom program or have hired a tutor, feel free to ask your questions. For a learner, there are no silly questions!
2. Make your plan and your timeline
Don't compare your journey, your goals with other learners.
Everyone has his/her own speed for learning, those who are gifted with an aptitude for languages tend to pick up a language in mere weeks, while for some it takes months to feel comfortable. This is where many get confused as some learners are able to write the A2 or B1 exam with 3-4 months of intensive study, while some are not even after 5-6 months. Learning a language, or learning for that matter, is never a race.
3. Set smaller goals
Start with conjugating 10 verbs a day, writing 20 new words a day.
This is something that reduced my dependency on verb conjugation apps and websites. During my learning days, I would conjugate 10 regular and irregular verbs with the help of apps and websites such as Reverso. Eventually, I could write sentences with verbs without stressing too much about the appropriate verb conjugation, for it would just click right then. I started writing tables of masculine, feminine, and neutral nouns and within months, I was able to just know whether the word was masculine, feminine, or neutral. of course, not tall the nouns, but once you learn the habit of tracking words, you will understand what I mean. I tracked my progress, made notes, and now, I tell the same to every single student of mine. Writing words down repeatedly helped me, for some of my students, it was recording and saying those words out loud. The more often they did it, the better it worked. However, it demands your daily commitment, for you have to do this every day.
Make sure that you write both article and plural form of the nouns you learn!
4. Indulge in media
Watch movies, series, read stories, comics as much as you can.
Nothing motivates you to learn further than self-confidence! Reading and listening are the two passive skills of learning and they make you feel comfortable as compared to writing and speaking, the active skills. Once you start reading a storybook, you might understand only 10% of the content, but you start noticing the verbs, nouns, adverbs. Reading the same story again after 4, 10, or 15 days will feel refreshing and new for you will be grasping more and more of what you are reading. The same goes for listening to songs, watching series and films. If you are learning a new language away from the target country, then this virtual immersion boosts your confidence. After all, the action comes before motivation!
5. Take breaks and try not to overexert
Learning something new demands your patience, sincerity. Don't rush it.
Learning is a commitment, but it is not a race! Take breaks, whether you are learning it on your own or attending classes.
6. Maintain a daily routine
Set aside 20 minutes a day only for revision and recap, no distractions.
This is perhaps the most challenging part. Thanks to social media, many of us thrive on instant gratification, thus we set our expectations from ourselves so high that the downfall crushes us and we don't feel like going back to the basics or revising it. Once you commit, you have to sail through! Start with 20 minutes a day and go on with an hour. All you need to do is to read and reread your notes. No distractions, no disturbances. Just you and your notes!
Here's an infographic that you can share!
I hope this helps you!
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