Learning a Foreign Language for Beginners pt. 1: Getting Started
Rules to enter an arcade
So you want to learn a second language. Maybe you’ve come across multi-lingual people and felt like you’re missing out, or maybe you’ve read some of the articles on this site and decided to try learning another language for yourself. However you came to the decision to learn another language, here are some tips on getting started.
Pick a language
This one is a no brainer, but it does require some thought behind it. What language do you wish you could speak? Why? Can you imagine yourself speaking it in the future? Is it going to be for fun or business?
Letters or characters?
Depending on what language you decide on, you may have to learn how to read and write an entirely different sort of alphabet. Japanese has three alphabets, two of them consisting of 52 basic characters each, while the third contains thousands of kanji characters (the more complicated looking ones that you see people get tattoos of.) Are you willing to learn how to write characters? Or do you want to stick with the romance lanuages, which only include variations of the alphabet you already know?
Do some research
Before you go out and buy extremely overpriced language books and dictionaries, do a little research online on how others are picking up the language. Join some language communities and read common questions other learners have, such as pronunciation or grammar problems.
Be realistic
You know yourself better than anyone else. How disciplined are you when it comes to teaching yourself things? Do you start out passionately, only to fizzle out a week later? Languages take a long time to master, especially if you are juggling other things such as school and a job. If you are really serious about learning one, you need to put in the time everyday.
Manage time wisely
Like with everything else, learning a language requires a lot of practice and reenforcement. Make sure you budget your time wisely so that you can get studying in everyday, holiday or no.
Set a goal
Setting a goal is a great way to get started in learning a language. Set a goal for yourself to learn x amount of words within a week, or to be able to read x amount of characters if you’re learning an Asian language.
Do a 30-day trial
If you aren’t positive that you can commit to learning a language, try the language out for 30 days. Don’t worry about learning it a month from now. Instead, try to integrate your learning everyday for 30 days and see how much you can learn within that initial period. By the end of the 30 days, you can decide whether to keep going or to look for other languages to learn.
Stay away from get-rich-quick schemes
Unless you are a robot or the Rain Man, you are not going to learn any language within a week. In fact, you are probably not going to learn it within a month. If you’re absolutely dedicated, maybe you can learn it within 6 months to a year. But probably not. Stay away from books and products that claim you can learn a language in a short amount of time–chances are they omitted a lot of basic grammar rules and focus more on memorizing phrases and sentences. It might seem like you’re making progress, but instead of learning how to form sentences on your own, you are merely memorizing catch phrases.
Do you think you can handle learning another language? If you’ve stuck with it this far, stay tuned for my next post on learning a foreign language for beginners!
More of my Language Articles:
- How I Skipped An Entire Semester of Japanese in One Month
- Tips in Building Up Vocabulary in a Foreign Language
- Improve Your Foreign Language Skills By Being Consistent
- Why You Should Learn a Foreign Language
- Improve Your Listening Skills in a Foreign Language
- Speak a Foreign Language Fluently, or at Least Pretend You Can
- Learn Gestures to Improve Fluency in a Foreign Language
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