Learn Languages :: Yago

In my view, learning a language isn’t so much about intelligence, or understanding of the subject matter, as it is a matter of just doing it and persisting. I won’t deny that some people ‘get’ grammar a whole lot faster than others, but even they won’t become fluent until they have put in a lot of hours practicing and using the language in reality.

So how do you make sure you get enough exercise? To get a good picture of how you are currently learning, take a critical look at your personal learning network. Does it only include academic resources, such as study books, teacher led instruction, dictionaries and software tools? Then I can surely tell you that you don’t have enough reinforcement to keep on the winning track.

To be sure, all of the above things are essential to push your understanding of the language forward, but whatever you take in through these means needs reinforcement in real life. Reality is that you are not going to have the chance to study the language academically until perfection and will only start using it after you have perfected your ability. Make sure you NEED to learn what you WANT to learn.

I’m personally in the lucky situation that my wife is from China. While her English is impeccable, most of my in-laws speak only limited English, if any. When I meet them (and increasingly when talking with my wife) I’ll have to pull anything out of my brain that I learnt in the classroom or picked up from a book. And by using and reusing the words, I engrave them ever deeper into my conscience.

If you have no reinforcement from having to speak to anyone who speaks the language, try to find people to speak with, or even to communicate with in writing. Writing characters on your computer isn’t as difficult as it seems, as I covered in this post.

If you can’t find anyone to communicate in Chinese with (or in any other language you’re learning), ask yourself: what use is it going to be to know this language?