Learning a language can be intimidating and daunting for many, but it’s certainly doable if someone knows how to go about it. Mixed with study strategies and time, anyone can pick up a language if they put the effort into memorization and immerse themselves in not only the language but the culture as well.
Textbooks
Textbooks aren’t always needed, but I definitely encourage looking into buying college language books to be able to have an easier time learning grammar. For example, I have Genki, a textbook series that teaches you vocabulary and grammar in Japanese that I find to be helpful. For languages that use similar alphabets to English, I recommend getting grammar books as well. Another series I find useful is the 501/301 Verb series, a group of books put out by Barron’s. Here you can dedicate to memorizing useful verbs if you’re serious about being fluent in a language. I used the 500 Verbs for Japanese and used the one for French as well for fun, but Barron’s has a number of language books that you can utilize in multiple different languages.
Duolingo
I personally adore this website. Duolingo is a great tool to learn a language at your own pace. They rely on volunteers to contribute to building their courses and create customized classes based on that. From Vietnamese to Spanish, they have a growing number of languages that you can choose to learn from. Right now I’m learning Welsh and it’s a lot of fun. You can download their mobile app to get daily reminders to do your lesson, and the lessons are fun and easy to do; you can customize how much you want to do a day, as well, from ten to fifty minutes. This is a great tool to not only learn a language, but experience learning other languages and find out which one you really love learning.
Communicate with Native Speakers
This is something a lot of people have problems with since it’s harder to talk to people if you don’t know anyone who speaks the same language you’re learning. However, that problem can be solved with Lang-8. This is a social networking site that gets you in touch with someone who speaks the language you’re trying to learn. The person who you’re matched with corrects your writing and in return, you correct theirs in your native language. This is a great way to meet people and make friends while practicing writing.
Immerse in the Culture and Media
What’s important is to take the time to just immerse yourself in the culture and listen to how people talk; it ties everything together. Whether you find shows or movies, read books or the news, or listen to music, audiobooks, and podcasts in the language you want to learn, it’s important to ingest media in all forms to be able to have a concrete comprehension of the language. With immersing yourself in media, you will be able to get a handle on culture, as well.
The key to learning a language is to always practice, even if it’s just ten minutes a day. Learning a language takes time, patience. The sites I listed in this article are good stepping stones to learning language, and I encourage anyone reading this to broaden their horizons. I'm also linking LingQ, a website that helps with language acquisition.
