Learning a language is a very complex thing. Having the right approach to this can greatly work to your advantage. Some people can learn a language very fast, as other people seem to struggle for an eternity. The method of learning is crucial. I have learned some languages over the years (I’m a native Dutch speaker, I also speak English, French, German, Japanese and can read Traditional Chinese, Latin/Italian). The thing is, my mind is more a mathematical one. I’ve never been extremely good at learning languages. How so that I’m twenty years old and have managed to learn quite some foreign languages? Yes, that’s right I’m twenty years old. I still have quite some time to learn some more languages, as you learn more languages you’ll be able to learn foreign languages much better. Next in this article I’ll write some pointers as to how to get fluent in a foreign language. Some of them may be obvious, others you’ve never heard of and will have to try out.

Basic Skill

To learn a language you’ll need basic skills. Any language has basics and you need to learn them. You can learn them in two or three weeks. You’ll need to learn the characters or alphabet of the new language; you’ll need to know the basic expressions:

• Hello
• How are you?
• I’m fine
• Good morning
• I like apples
• I am a human
• I live in Belgium
• Where is the library?
• What time is it now?

Without going in much further detail you can catch what I mean. The important thing here is that you need to learn both reading and writing and speaking. (Unless it’s a dead language and even then, it might come in handy)

Skill Expansion

There are a lot of ways in which you can expand your initial skill. I’ll describe some of them.

Vocabulary

By learning additional vocabulary you’ll be able to read, speak and write in more situations. It speaks for itself that a person who knows 300 words will be able to express him or herself better than a person who knows only 100 words. The problem is that a lot of people have difficulty learning lists of words. I myself find it horrible. There are alternatives. The first alternative would be hands on experience. If you can go to Greece and people say “calispera” (Good evening), it will stick better than when you read it in a textbook. Of course traveling to Greece to learn Greek may be expensive/hard for some people. There are other alternatives. You have a lot of language programs, that show you an image and then show you either written or have an audio file of the word in that language. The most famous (although a bit expensive), is the Rosetta stone program. There are free alternatives for example at http://www.word2word.com/coursead.html, but they are free for a reason. Copying words by writing something yourself, reading and watching videos in the language you want to learn also helps, but you need a real firm basis before you can start going down that road.

Grammar

Grammar is the basis of every language. Once you know the grammar, every new word of vocabulary will be put to good use. In order to use grammar, you need exercise. You have to practice. Either in the country, by doing writing exercises, by talking to people in the foreign language. The key to good grammar is exercise. You can start off by learning the grammar “rules” but only when you make mistakes and get corrected, you’ll be able to construct good sentences by yourself.

Speaking

Speaking a language can’t be learned passively. You need to talk to people. You need to have conversations. You can’t adopt an accent by yourself. Find people who speak the language well, really well. I rather have immense difficulty speaking to a real Spanish guy, than learning Spanish, from a guy who is native English and learned Spanish. The real thing is always best. You can find people on the Internet and use “skype” for example to talk to them. You can go to language pubs and so on.

Feeling

Language feeling is hard to define, but I usually define it as the ability to guess what a word or a sentence may mean. I have never learned Italian, but since I know Latin and French, I can read Italian with sometimes a little help of the dictionary. Once you’ve learned language feeling and have a basis in the language, you can easily start reading books or watching movies in the language. How to create language feeling is by looking through the language, by paying attention to similarities. If you know a language close to the other language, you can use conversions. For example the word day:

• English: day
• Dutch: dag
• German: Tag
• Spanish: Dia
• But French and Italian: jour and giorno

You can also use conversions from words in the same language. If you know mature and immature and mobile you’ll be able to find out what immobile means.

Persistence

To learn a language you need persistence, the determination to keep going. Don’t learn Spanish and say: “when I’m fluent in three years I’ll go to Peru, because I’ll be able to understand the people.” Instead book a travel to Peru for next year and start studying; you’ll be motivated then. I studied Japanese for two years and then got worn out a bit. I then booked a trip that would get me to Japan for some more than two months. Now when I’m back I’m more than ready to keep studying. I write e-mails and letters to my friends there. I use messengers like skype and msn to communicate and so on. Find what motivates you and participate in that actively.

Anyone can learn a foreign language. There are no excuses, except for the lack of will to do so, in which case you haven’t read this through until the end anyway.