Learning a new language: how to go about it?

[Dovana]

I was a language teacher for a couple of years and I am thinking of going back to teaching individuals or small groups by Skype for instance or in person.

At school you learn your grammar and your vocabulary and you have to use these textbooks and TBH it is all frightfully boring, unless as a teacher you are allowed to make up your own stuff, but as the curriculum is strictly controlled over here and in the UK for example chances are teachers just have to follow the guidelines which kill all creativity.

My kids learned to speak English by playing games, watching movies and series. They started to understand French and German when they heard other people speak these languages, the way we all learned our native language. I learned to speak German (it was one of my subjects at school, but I couldn't utter one word) when I heard it all day long. It happened quite naturally. The same goes for my French and English. Although I studied these languages at teacher training college I only became more proficient when I went abroad and when I started being immersed in the language.

So, my question is: what did you do in order to learn a new language? What helped, what didn't help? Do people really need schoolbooks or can we just look for alternative teaching materials which could be more tailor-made?
Thanks! :)

I see you’ve gotten many answers already. Still I’ll share what i’ve seen work very well.

I can speak comfortably about 6 languages, have at least basic knowledge in 6 more, and teach languages.

The most basic aspect to master is to just be in contact with the language. It doesn’t matter how - music, cell phone lgg, series, pasting translation of furniture on the furniture, whatever. For most people, pleasure is the name of the game - make it pleasant, and it’s much easier to stick to it.

When you have that down, start actually studying. The best study tool I know is Anki Flashcards. If you’re interested, I can give you more details.

Cheers

 

[Dovana]

Here's something else I'm testing, that's been very fruitful.
After talking to Chu, who introduced me to phono-semantics, I decided to try it out.

I'm learning Russian, using readymade Anki decks with audio prompts. Random phrases. I'm focusing quite a lot on the phonosematnics of consonants. Here's the procedure I'm using:

1. See what the consonants of a phrases are
2. think of as many words as you can, with same or similar consonants
3. see if you can find a grouping criterion for these words
4. try and guess what the new words in target language means. Accuracy notwithstanding!
5. see the meaning of the target word.
6. try and fit that word into the group you found earlier of similar consonanted words

example:

obezyala sidela na dereve
1. bzyl sd n drv (I'm not counting the 'la' in 'sidela' because it's a past morpheme)
2. bzyl --> buzz, búzios, bizarre, byzantine sd --> siddha, sit, saída, seid, sonda n --> no/na, on, in, nao, new, drv --> dver, derive, à deriva, dever
3. bzyla --> maybe something disruptive? sd --> sitting, established n --> negation and location drv --> maybe ramification, or connections? (dver = door, it connects. derive is a ramification. dever = duty, it's a "ramification" of one's actions?)
4. obezyala --> a buzzing animal? sidela --> sitting, being, stability na --> maybe location, dereve --> a doorway?
5.a monkey sat/ was sitting on a tree
6. well... a money can be rowdy. sidela really was about sitting. na really was about location. dereve really was somehow ramification

this is an example with a lot of 'hits', but that' not so common. Usually my hits are around 50% of the words in terms of guessing the groupings.

I do this for every single new word. I was having a hard time remembering new vocab - I'd see the same phrase many times. Often when I did remember it, it was the general meaning, not what each word meant, and usually I was far from being able to reproduce the phrase.
Now I can remember about 90% of the phrases and meaning of individual words if I review the same new phrase in about 10mins.

I'm discovering it can be even more detail than that. But that's for a bit further, after I've done new tests.

peace!

 

[3DStudent]

the already highly recommended Assimil method, along with Pimsleur tapes, a listen/repeat method

I saw this on my feed and thought it was an interesting idea. It shows how you listen speak and translate between the two languages using the Assimil method. It seems like a way to get immersion but there is no writing portion here:

 

[truepositive]

I got big plans after the next batch of books involving language, but the literal magic nested within english comes first. Dominant expressions within this world tend to have a rather big influence on what happens, and this subject plays a very important role in that. We are at a stage that i would rather see more emoji's than unconscious usage of living languages but i digress.

 

[Chu]

I was recently made aware of an app called Langua. It is based on AI, but dedicated exclusively to language learning.

At first, I refused to even look at it. Come on, AI? But then I did, and to my surprise, it IS something I would recommend! I've only been testing it for a couple of weeks, but it really has some cool features. It feels ALMOST like talking to a real person, but without the pressure. And, the corrections it provides are super helpful.

I think it's VERY good as extra practice, if you have reached level A2 or higher in any language. For less than that, you may find it to be a bit too limited or challenging, but you'd have to see.

The big pluses:
1) you can talk about what really interests you, instead of being bored by endless dialogs on how to buy a coffee and such.
2) you can use it to generate audio of texts that you want to work on.
3) you can vary the activities.
4) you can have a dialogue, download the report with corrections, review it a couple of days later, and then redo the same dialogue to see how you've improved.
5) even better than that, you can have a dialogue, review the corrections, then repeat but with your tutor/language partner.
6) some options for reviewing the vocabulary you have marked are nifty: you can, for example, tell it to create a story using all the new words you have, thus reviewing them in context.
7) when you have a grammar question, it's very good at explaining and helping you practice with examples.
8) you can use it even when you only have 5-10 minutes here and there, and in that sense, it requires less commitment than, say, a tutor.


The minuses:
1) I'm not finding many, other than what I said about it not being useful perhaps if you're a beginner.
2) Don't expect it to be TOO interesting. I've tried to trick it into telling me what it thought about Russia, but it refuses to give any personal opinions. I also asked it how may languages it was learning, and it said it couldn't answer personal questions.

Here are two demo videos (watch the second one if you don't have time to watch both):

Langua: the world's best AI platform for language learning • LanguaTalk

Become fluent fast through realistic speaking practice, comprehensible input, interactive transcripts, and scientifically-proven flashcard exercises.

languatalk.com

There are other options I haven't had a chance to explore yet, but wanted to share it for those of you who are struggling a bit with your comprehension and speaking skills.

You can do a lot for free, and only then decide if you want to pay for it or not. NOTE: the link I gave you is an Affiliate link they gave me after seeing that I teach languages, have a website, and a YT channel. I don't quite know how it works, but I think that if you use that one, I get a small discount or something. So, if you don't mind, please use it instead of going to the website directly.

If anyone tries it, let me know how it goes for you! I think @Jenn is liking it too.

 

[Jenn]

I was recently made aware of an app called Langua. It is based on AI, but dedicated exclusively to language learning.

At first, I refused to even look at it. Come on, AI? But then I did, and to my surprise, it IS something I would recommend! I've only been testing it for a couple of weeks, but it really has some cool features. It feels ALMOST like talking to a real person, but without the pressure. And, the corrections it provides are super helpful.

I think it's VERY good as extra practice, if you have reached level A2 or higher in any language. For less than that, you may find it to be a bit too limited or challenging, but you'd have to see.

The big pluses:
1) you can talk about what really interests you, instead of being bored by endless dialogs on how to buy a coffee and such.
2) you can use it to generate audio of texts that you want to work on.
3) you can vary the activities.
4) you can have a dialogue, download the report with corrections, review it a couple of days later, and then redo the same dialogue to see how you've improved.
5) even better than that, you can have a dialogue, review the corrections, then repeat but with your tutor/language partner.
6) some options for reviewing the vocabulary you have marked are nifty: you can, for example, tell it to create a story using all the new words you have, thus reviewing them in context.
7) when you have a grammar question, it's very good at explaining and helping you practice with examples.
8) you can use it even when you only have 5-10 minutes here and there, and in that sense, it requires less commitment than, say, a tutor.


The minuses:
1) I'm not finding many, other than what I said about it not being useful perhaps if you're a beginner.
2) Don't expect it to be TOO interesting. I've tried to trick it into telling me what it thought about Russia, but it refuses to give any personal opinions. I also asked it how may languages it was learning, and it said it couldn't answer personal questions.

Here are two demo videos (watch the second one if you don't have time to watch both):

Langua: the world's best AI platform for language learning • LanguaTalk

Become fluent fast through realistic speaking practice, comprehensible input, interactive transcripts, and scientifically-proven flashcard exercises.

languatalk.com

There are other options I haven't had a chance to explore yet, but wanted to share it for those of you who are struggling a bit with your comprehension and speaking skills.

You can do a lot for free, and only then decide if you want to pay for it or not. NOTE: the link I gave you is and Affiliate link they gave me after seeing that I teach languages, have a website, and a YT channel. I don't quite know how it works, but I think that if you use that one, I get a small discount or something. So, if you don't mind, please use it instead of going to the website directly.

If anyone tries it, let me know how it goes for you! I think @Jenn is liking it too.

Yes, I’ve been really impressed with the website so far and just upgraded to the paid version.

There are so many resources, including podcasts and YouTube videos, all with transcripts you can follow. If you come across a word you don’t understand, you can click on it for a translation and definition, similar to the Chrome extension Language React. There’s also a section called "Build My Vocab" where you can create flashcards and test yourself using different methods: recall, listening, or produce. In the produce mode, you see the vocabulary in your own language and translate it.

One of the major pluses for me is the AI chat feature. While I know it’s necessary to practice with real people (and I have been where possible) this function gives me time to formulate my response without the pressure of having someone right in front of me, it’s really helpful, particularly if you tend to feel anxious in social situations. The AI transcribes what I say and also suggests alternative ways to say something.

Anyway, so far so good, I haven't been using it long so I will report back in a month when I am fluent in French

 

[meadow_wind]

Darn, they don't have any Asian language
But there's hope! "We'll be launching Asian languages very soon."
I'm not yet at a conversational Mandarin level (I started 3 months ago), but by the time they launch it, I might be ready and will try this for sure. I'll update you on it and will use your affiliate link if I subscribe to the pro version.

 

[showmustgoon]

So, my question is: what did you do in order to learn a new language? What helped, what didn't help? Do people really need schoolbooks or can we just look for alternative teaching materials which could be more tailor-made?
Thanks! :)

Nothing, because my native language can produce billions of words. In other words, words can be recreated. They contain affixes and root structures. Certain affixes can be freely combined with certain roots. It can combine words to produce new meanings and even completely unknown words. It seems mathematical. Learning another language is perceived as a limitation. If there is another similar language, I can try it if it is explained.

This Turkish