For example, if you’re good at math, you may want to focus on grammar. Errare humanum est.Īre you good at math? Programming? Cooking? Craft work? Now’s the time to identify your strengths and apply them to the world of languages. Learn to laugh at yourself now and again, and you’ll learn even more quickly. Recognise also that learning a language is a humbling experience. Take a deep breath, remember that empathy exists and everyone in the circle will, assuming they’re capable of basic human decency, afford you the time necessary to collect your thoughts and deliver your response. You’ve understood the question, but the fear factor has invaded your brain and swept away all the vocabulary you ever learned. Suddenly, someone asks you a question and all attention turns to you. Everyone who’s ever learned a language knows the situation: You’re sitting in a circle and everyone’s chatting away animatedly in another language. The mind goes blank and one can only focus on the fear itself: Whether it’s flying, heights, spiders or a dark street, the fear response is hardly conducive to complex cognition. Imitate the music of Italian, the conspicuous consonants of German, and the gentle lisps of Spanish or Danish. Don’t be afraid of playing with the sounds and intonations of your new language. Have you ever noticed how people who speak more than one language seem to have more than one voice? Sometimes they even seem to have a whole different personality. For many, this is both the scariest and the most fulfilling part of learning a new language that priceless moment when your first self-constructed sentence tumbles awkwardly from your mouth to be met with… comprehension! Get speaking and get familiar with the music of the language. Sitting at home and listening to French on your television, computer or smartphone is all very well, but at some point you’ll have to get out there and speak the language. This may sound absurdly obvious, but many learners focus so much on their own voice that they forget to really listen.ģ) Speak, speak and… you guessed it, speak! There are specific tricks for every sound - I picked up the German r by gargling progressively smaller amounts of water while saying trinken - but it’s most important to pay attention to the way native speakers talk, and then imitate them. Fortunately, there are always tricks to elevate you from pronunciation purgatory to enunciation ecstasy. Just as speakers of English as a second language often possess very particular accents, English natives typically struggle with novel sounds in their learning language the rolled r at the front of the mouth in Spanish and Italian, or the cheeky umlauts that usurp the German u, for example. Perfect pronunciation isn’t fundamental to communicating in a language, but people will understand you more easily if you can train yourself to avoid the most common pronunciation errors. How are you going to use the subjunctive in Spanish to express your desire to see your team avoid relegation? “¡Deseo que mi equipo no baje a la segunda liga!” And how are you going to employ German verbs to translate your favorite Britney Spears song? “Oops!… Ich habe es wieder getan, ich habe mit deinem Herz gespielt, ich habe mich im Spiel verloren…” What’s the solution? Create connections between topics that interest you and the language you’re learning. But when it comes to grammar rules and irregular verbs, your neurons go on strike and picket your long-term memory. If you’re into music in a big way, you can probably indulge in some heartfelt karaoke without looking at the lyrics. If you’re a huge football fan, you’ll probably be able to remember the entire line-up of your favorite team. Memory normally serves us best for the topics in which we’re most interested. 1) MemoryĮveryone purports to have a good memory for some things but not for others. Then it’s a matter of playing to your strengths and reinforcing your weaknesses. It’s worth taking time to identify your strengths and weaknesses before embarking on a new language.
You’ll undoubtedly be better at some of these skills than others, and you certainly won’t be terrible at all of them. Using a language implies numerous different skills, from reading and writing to conversing, improvising, and remembering vocabulary. We could comfort you with those barely comforting words, you can’t be good at everything, but it’s more pertinent to say that you can’t be bad at everything.
Either you’re an avid reader of the Babbel Magazine and never miss a new post, or the title struck a chord with you: when listing your strengths and weaknesses, language learning falls into the latter category (not that you’d admit that publicly).
We can safely assume that you’re reading this article for one of two reasons.
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