I’ve Changed My Language Learning Journey With These 3 Tools

Now it’s just a matter of practicing every day.

Learning languages is such an important part of life. It exposes you to another culture, another way of thinking, and simply humans who have different experiences than yours.

It doesn’t matter which language you are learning, there is one thing that stays the same: it’s fricking hard.

Some are said to be easier to learn, like English or Spanish, but eventually, all languages will require an enormous investment in time and effort to become fluent.

That’s why each hour of your time needs to be invested wisely when learning a new language.

For a bit more than a year, I’ve been putting 1 hour per day into my German learning journey. I made a lot of progress but some of this time has sadly been a bit wasted. After refining my technique though, I’ve found the 3 most effective tools to learn a new language.

I’ll demonstrate here in German but that can be applied to any language as well.

What matters most is always exposure. The more you expose yourself to different stimuli the better you will learn.

YouTube

Not too surprisingly, the best way to start learning a new language is to simply use youtube. There is a massive amount of language learning channels that you can follow and there is probably one specifically targeted toward your current level.

One thing that helped me a lot as well is watching videos about the same subject in different languages. It’s a great way to help your brain make connections on the same event but with different words.

It’s very important to make that a habit. Watch one video while having breakfast. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand all of it. Getting exposed to the language is half the battle.

A recommendation I have for you is the YouTube channel of Easy Languages, you can basically type “Easy” followed by the language you want to learn and you will find the channel dedicated to it.

The idea is simple: They go on the street of the capital city of the country you want to learn the language from and ask people questions about their life. It’s an amazing way to learn about the daily life of people and a plethora of vocabulary.

Most often they also give you the option to work on the vocabulary by becoming a Patreon (I’m not sponsored sadly) which is a great idea if you have the money to do so.

Reading

Reading is a great way to get in contact with a language you want to learn at your own speed. Even if it takes you 20 minutes per page, these 20 minutes are very well invested and will have lasting results.

In the beginning, I would highly recommend children’s books, they will teach you the basic vocabulary. Something nice as well is magazines because you can keep the interesting articles and because they might talk about subjects you hear in your mother language which makes it easier to learn.

There is also a specialized magazine for language learning. They are very handy and they underline the hard words in their articles so you can note them and learn the vocabulary bit by bit.

One of the most gratifying things about learning a new language is being able to read the classics of that language. This won’t happen for a while but once you can do this it becomes the best way to truly master a language. I’m currently reading Kafka in German. It’s going insanely slow as I’m translating and learning what I don’t understand but it’s one of the most gratifying experiences I have had during my journey.

Speaking

That is by far the hardest of the three because that’s the one that will get you out of your comfort zone.

It’s called a language because people speak it. And there is a massive difference between reading a language and speaking it. As a french, a lot of how we speak are abbreviations and special expressions that one has to learn in the wild.

Practicing your speech and hearing is therefore very important. But it’s of course very hard to do when you don’t live in the country. One solution to this that I have loved is called Tandem (again, sadly not sponsored).

Tandem is an app that connects you to a native speaker nearby you in the language you want to learn. What happens is that they can help you learn a language you want to learn while doing the same for you. I live in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and I’ve met amazing people with this app. We usually go to a bar and discuss half of the time in German for me to learn and half in French or English for them to improve.

The special perk that this app has is that it creates a sort of safe space for you to learn. You are not pushed into the wild in the middle of a group of native speakers. You are with one person who is as scared as you to speak a foreign language. Truly an amazing experience.

Final Thoughts

Learning a new language is one of those things that can change your life forever and for the best. It’s hard, but most good and fulfilling things are hard in life.

So don’t waste your time learning useless stuff on apps that all look like each other (I see you Duolingo).

Focus on what makes a language an experience, which is how people speak, write, read and interact with each other.

You will learn twice as fast and it will be twice as fun.