3 Tips for Learning Any Language

3 Tips for Learning Any Language Learning a language can be challenging, so here are 3 tips from one of our italki tutors on what to focus on in order to reach your goal! 1) LEARN THE STRUCTURE Learn the structure first, with limited lexicon, by making up a lot of sentences, with the help of a native friend or teacher. Languages are all about composing sentences, recounting facts and expressing any kind of idea or thoughts. You do not need to know a lot of words in order to make up many useful, real-life phrases. Learning a language should be mostly a constructive process: the more sentences you build, the more you understand and remember the syntax of the language. You cant learn by reading only. You have to make the effort to write and speak, that is to communicate. There are two aspects to every language: syntax and semantics. Semantics is usually quite easy: a good dictionary can tell you the meaning of an unknown word. If a word has many possible meanings, you will be easily able to tell the right one from the context. Idiomatic expressions can be difficult to look up in a traditional dictionary, but there are many online resources out there to help you with that as well. Syntax is the real tricky thing, because word order can be very different from your own language, as well as the usage of verbs, which is very important to master correctly as soon as possible. Here you absolutely need a native to tell you whether the sentences you invent are grammatically correct or not. It is helpful to be aware of all correct word orders in which you can express a certain sentence. In order to become fluent, you need to build into your brain a sort of grammar machine for the target language: an automation that is able to generate all grammatical sentences and recognize the ungrammatical ones. This is where a native teacher can and should help you most. 2) RELATE WORDS Do not try to memorize words, but instead relate words between each other both in the target language and in the languages you already know. Compare the structure of the languages, too. There is a lot of contamination between languages. Depending on the relative geographical nearness of people speaking different languages, you will find more or less cognates or loan words. Sometimes a word is borrowed by a language indirectly from another language, e.g. English borrowed many words from French, and French from Latin. These words happen to be similar to Spanish or Italian, because of the common Latin origin. Anyway, you do not need to know the exact etymology of each word, which sometimes remains controversial, in order to speak a language. Just exploit both similarities and differences between the languages. They both can help you to remember, so it is important you are aware of them. Never try to learn a word by heart, without understanding a bit of its internal structure.  (*) We cannot learn a language using word lists and we cannot remember a lot of words without relating them. Paradoxically, it is easier for us to learn many related words together than unrelated words separately. Also, you have to use words to make sentences many times until they go into your permanent memory and you will never forget them. A good teacher can help you to practice the same words in different contexts and will not introduce too many new words at a time. He will also never pretend you to learn by heart sentences where you do not understand the meaning of each word and the grammatical structure. Both are needed if you want to reuse what you have learned to make new, different sentences. (*) For instance, the word for both why and because in Italian is perché. By learning this word and recognizing its structure, you can easily learn three words in one, since per is for and che is what. So why/because is for what in Italian. By the way, because in English is not the contraction of be cause but comes from by cause. The latter would be per causa in Italian. Causa comes directly from Latin. Because of me in Italian is just by cause my/mine or per causa mia. It is not by my cause, because (no pun intended) in Italian we put an adjective after the noun in order to restrict its sense: per mia causa would be correct but there is no stress on mia if put before the noun it refers to. In other words by putting mia after causa we mean mine and not anothers cause and that equates to stress my. This is typical of Italian: you can revert the order with other adjectives as well, not only possessives. 3) USE A METHOD WITH YOUR LANGUAGE PARTNER Use a method to structure your language exchanges and make them more fruitful. With a proper method you can make the most of the usually limited time available to practice languages with native speakers on an exchange basis. First, make sure your language partner has the same level of knowledge of your mother tongue as you have of his/her native language. Also, make sure he/she is a native speaker of the language you want to learn. Second, arrange the exchange so that both languages can be practiced at the same time, so neither will get bored. Third, do not be afraid to ask questions to clear up any doubt, e.g. ask about word choices and correct structure and possible variations on the same sentence. Avoid using complex grammar terminology, which most native speakers do not know. Answer the same questions for your own language too, so your partner can learn something as well. Fourth, build up complex sentences step-by-step, by starting from simple ones, adding to them and joining shorter sentences to obtain longer ones. A funny and informative way to practice with a language partner is to simulate a conversation between two people in a real-life situation e.g. between a customer and a salesperson in a shop, two friends in a pub, two students taking an exam together, two friends who meet up after a long time etc. The possibilities are endless and no personal questions are involved. Invent the dialog on the spot, without any prior preparation, starting from a sentence and adding more sentences as you go. In turn, you and your partner make up the next sentence of the dialog in the languages you want to learn, the other checks whether the sentence is correct and translates it in the other language. So you both make the effort to make the sentence in your target language and have their phrase checked by a native. Any mistakes should be pointed out by trying to explain both what is wrong, why it is wrong and how to make the sentence grammatical. You can first pronounce a sentence and then write it down in a text chat. The exchange transcript can be copied and pasted and used for brushing up by both. About the author:  Antonio Bonifati is an Italian language teacher for speakers of English. He has a fondness for both natural and formal languages, like those used in mathematics and computer science to unambiguosly describe information processing and trying to simulate human intelligence. In 2010 he developed a mnemonic language teaching method primarily based on the structure of languages. Antonio has a 5-star feedback rating, and has taught over 52 sessions on italki. 3 Tips for Learning Any Language Learning a language can be challenging, so here are 3 tips from one of our italki tutors on what to focus on in order to reach your goal! 1) LEARN THE STRUCTURE Learn the structure first, with limited lexicon, by making up a lot of sentences, with the help of a native friend or teacher. Languages are all about composing sentences, recounting facts and expressing any kind of idea or thoughts. You do not need to know a lot of words in order to make up many useful, real-life phrases. Learning a language should be mostly a constructive process: the more sentences you build, the more you understand and remember the syntax of the language. You cant learn by reading only. You have to make the effort to write and speak, that is to communicate. There are two aspects to every language: syntax and semantics. Semantics is usually quite easy: a good dictionary can tell you the meaning of an unknown word. If a word has many possible meanings, you will be easily able to tell the right one from the context. Idiomatic expressions can be difficult to look up in a traditional dictionary, but there are many online resources out there to help you with that as well. Syntax is the real tricky thing, because word order can be very different from your own language, as well as the usage of verbs, which is very important to master correctly as soon as possible. Here you absolutely need a native to tell you whether the sentences you invent are grammatically correct or not. It is helpful to be aware of all correct word orders in which you can express a certain sentence. In order to become fluent, you need to build into your brain a sort of grammar machine for the target language: an automation that is able to generate all grammatical sentences and recognize the ungrammatical ones. This is where a native teacher can and should help you most. 2) RELATE WORDS Do not try to memorize words, but instead relate words between each other both in the target language and in the languages you already know. Compare the structure of the languages, too. There is a lot of contamination between languages. Depending on the relative geographical nearness of people speaking different languages, you will find more or less cognates or loan words. Sometimes a word is borrowed by a language indirectly from another language, e.g. English borrowed many words from French, and French from Latin. These words happen to be similar to Spanish or Italian, because of the common Latin origin. Anyway, you do not need to know the exact etymology of each word, which sometimes remains controversial, in order to speak a language. Just exploit both similarities and differences between the languages. They both can help you to remember, so it is important you are aware of them. Never try to learn a word by heart, without understanding a bit of its internal structure.  (*) We cannot learn a language using word lists and we cannot remember a lot of words without relating them. Paradoxically, it is easier for us to learn many related words together than unrelated words separately. Also, you have to use words to make sentences many times until they go into your permanent memory and you will never forget them. A good teacher can help you to practice the same words in different contexts and will not introduce too many new words at a time. He will also never pretend you to learn by heart sentences where you do not understand the meaning of each word and the grammatical structure. Both are needed if you want to reuse what you have learned to make new, different sentences. (*) For instance, the word for both why and because in Italian is perché. By learning this word and recognizing its structure, you can easily learn three words in one, since per is for and che is what. So why/because is for what in Italian. By the way, because in English is not the contraction of be cause but comes from by cause. The latter would be per causa in Italian. Causa comes directly from Latin. Because of me in Italian is just by cause my/mine or per causa mia. It is not by my cause, because (no pun intended) in Italian we put an adjective after the noun in order to restrict its sense: per mia causa would be correct but there is no stress on mia if put before the noun it refers to. In other words by putting mia after causa we mean mine and not anothers cause and that equates to stress my. This is typical of Italian: you can revert the order with other adjectives as well, not only possessives. 3) USE A METHOD WITH YOUR LANGUAGE PARTNER Use a method to structure your language exchanges and make them more fruitful. With a proper method you can make the most of the usually limited time available to practice languages with native speakers on an exchange basis. First, make sure your language partner has the same level of knowledge of your mother tongue as you have of his/her native language. Also, make sure he/she is a native speaker of the language you want to learn. Second, arrange the exchange so that both languages can be practiced at the same time, so neither will get bored. Third, do not be afraid to ask questions to clear up any doubt, e.g. ask about word choices and correct structure and possible variations on the same sentence. Avoid using complex grammar terminology, which most native speakers do not know. Answer the same questions for your own language too, so your partner can learn something as well. Fourth, build up complex sentences step-by-step, by starting from simple ones, adding to them and joining shorter sentences to obtain longer ones. A funny and informative way to practice with a language partner is to simulate a conversation between two people in a real-life situation e.g. between a customer and a salesperson in a shop, two friends in a pub, two students taking an exam together, two friends who meet up after a long time etc. The possibilities are endless and no personal questions are involved. Invent the dialog on the spot, without any prior preparation, starting from a sentence and adding more sentences as you go. In turn, you and your partner make up the next sentence of the dialog in the languages you want to learn, the other checks whether the sentence is correct and translates it in the other language. So you both make the effort to make the sentence in your target language and have their phrase checked by a native. Any mistakes should be pointed out by trying to explain both what is wrong, why it is wrong and how to make the sentence grammatical. You can first pronounce a sentence and then write it down in a text chat. The exchange transcript can be copied and pasted and used for brushing up by both. About the author:  Antonio Bonifati is an Italian language teacher for speakers of English. He has a fondness for both natural and formal languages, like those used in mathematics and computer science to unambiguosly describe information processing and trying to simulate human intelligence. In 2010 he developed a mnemonic language teaching method primarily based on the structure of languages. Antonio has a 5-star feedback rating, and has taught over 52 sessions on italki.