How to Learn Any Language

Listen. Listening practice through movies or TV shows, audio language courses, or music can help you remember the words you’re learning. But just listening doesn’t help much. You need to repeat the words and speak for yourself.

• A method called “shadowing” is considered by multilingual people to be an effective technique. Put on your headphones and step outside, listen while walking quickly. Repeat out loud and clear what you are hearing as you walk. Repeat, repeat and repeat. This will help you connect movement (movement) to language and reframe your focus so you don’t obsess over memorization. ^[4]
• Use audio books or recorded language lessons. You can listen to these materials on your way to work or while jogging in the park. This will help you improve your listening skills. Listen again at short intervals of about 30 seconds to 1 minute until you feel completely understood. Sometimes you need to listen to the lesson more than twice to fully understand the content.
  

  

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• Watch TV shows and movies without subtitles. It could be TV series, news reports, even shows that you know are dubbed. This is a fun way to practice and apply your knowledge.
  

  

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• Listen to songs that sing in the language you are learning. This is a fun, easy, and hopefully helpful way to enjoy what you’re doing. You just need to turn on the music while washing the dishes or going for a walk outside and pay attention to the words in the song. You’ll probably want to listen to classical songs because they often have easy-to-understand lyrics.
  

  

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Read a lot in the language you have chosen to learn. Start with simple books and move on to more difficult books as you get better. Challenge yourself to read without a dictionary and guess what the words mean.

• Children’s books are a great starting point, as they are designed to teach children to read and understand their mother tongue. As a beginner, you should start from the easy level.
  

  

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• Find books that you enjoy reading in your native language and in the language you are learning. Your existing knowledge of the book’s content will help you decipher new words and keep reading interesting.
• Read newspapers or popular magazines in the language you want to learn. Choose a topic that interests you. Magazines are a great resource for learning common idioms put in context. Articles in newspapers and magazines cover a wide range of topics, and are generally much shorter than books.
  

  

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• You can buy a reputable dictionary of the language you want to learn, or use a free dictionary online. Bold in the dictionary whenever you come across a new word, copy the word with its definition and example sentences in your notebook. Then study in your notebook. This activity will help you reflect on the language you are learning.
• Sometimes a picture dictionary can help as you learn common nouns in several languages. For example, you can use a picture dictionary to learn Japanese, because many Japanese words have many different meanings, similar to Vietnamese.

Talk to native speakers. If you don’t speak, it will be difficult for you to learn and remember the language well. There are programs that help connect language learners and native speakers through the Skype app. If you can’t, search in the city or town you live in. Maybe you will meet someone who can recommend someone who can help you practice. Language schools are a great place to start.

• Learn some idioms, proverbs, and expressions. When you get to a higher level, learn some idioms, even slang, in that language. Even if you don’t use it very often, it will help you recognize and understand the meaning when you read somewhere or hear someone say it.
• Don’t be ashamed if you say it wrong. This takes time to practice.
• It should be emphasized that this step is very important. If you don’t practice speaking, you won’t be able to master it. You can talk to native speakers, find a friend to study with and practice with them, interact with TV shows on TV, etc.