I've been a linguophile for a long time, and I'm always studying a little bit of some language or another. However, it's only recently that I've finally figured out the way that works best for me. Conceitedly I thought perhaps this might help you, too.
I was inspired to write this after reading "How to Learn Any Language" by Barry Farber over a weekend. The method he describes is very similar to the one that I came up with, though I take issue with a couple of his suggestions, and I think his method needs to be updated for the internet age (more below). Nevertheless I recommend the book highly, as it's full of good suggestions and is very motivating.
Please note I'm not an expert, unless you use the words "self-styled expert". These are just the results of my own experiences, and how some tech savvy has helped me pursue my chief pleasure in life: learning languages.
A note on technology and the net
I generally take the internet for granted as an important tool in my daily life, but I still have those occasional "wow!" moments. When I'm corresponding, talking or video-chatting with a person on the other side of the world, learning about their culture and what they eat for breakfast or what it's like living in a dictatorship, the power of technology is really driven home to me. This experience goes completely hand-in-hand with learning a language using the net; it's what the net is all about. Also, though, compile a list of your favorite newsgroups, online dictionaries, support sites and other web resources to help with your learning. There is so much good information out there.
As I will touch on later, I also use the computer itself (to run teaching software) and other appliances like my PDA phone to help me with my studies. Whether you have a fancy phone like my Treo or an iPod or just a regular cell phone, chances are it can help you in your quest to learn a language. See what is out there on the web for you.
If you find these tips useful, or find them terribly unhelpful, consider dropping me a line at
.
Controversial First Steps
The best way to learn a language is to live in a country where they speak it for 6 months or a year. Unfortunately, that's not always practical. The good news is that learning by yourself you can actually make considerable progress in a language. However, if you're about to learn your first foreign language, I have a very controversial and wholly optional first step for you to consider: Learn some Esperanto.
Esperanto is a language that was designed to be easy to learn. If you study it for a few days or a couple of weeks, you'll be able to write a credible letter or have a basic conversation in it, guaranteed. More importantly, learning Esperanto is fun. It will show you the joys of learning another language without the headaches of complicated grammar, but will let you get acquainted with the grammatical terms and concepts you'll need for your chosen next language. Studies show that for schoolchildren and others, a year of Esperanto followed by a year of French study is actually better than two years of French for the reasons I listed.
I love learning languages, cultures and meeting people from around the globe. I like finding new ways to express myself. Surprisingly, the constructed language Esperanto has been as effective or better at achieving these goals as natural languages such as German, Spanish and Chinese (though I've had a blast learning them too).
For more information, check out these sites:
Esperanto.org
Think about it. Anyway, let's move on to the core of your study of a new language!
What You'll Need
As others including Farber recommend, a multi-track approach is the best. The various methods you employ reinforce one another and more importantly, keep you from getting bored.
I find the best combination is:
An audio course;
a textbook;
some software ;
flashcards; and
a reader.
In the following pages I explain why, and share what I learned about how to select the best of each.
An audio course
It's pretty crucial that when you're learning a language, you are able to hear what a native speaker of that language sounds like. No matter what they write in the books about pronunciation, you'll come away with some pretty serious misconceptions. When you read in a book that a consonant is "halfway between a j and an r", you'll know what I mean.
Hands down, the best audio course you can find is a Pimsleur, named for Dr. Paul Pimsleur. The courses are comprehensive, interactive, and scientifically engineered to make the most of your time. By this I mean that a word or phrase is repeated to you pretty close to the minimum number of times you need for it to stick. Just when you're forgetting how to say a word, the speaker will ask you to remember it again, dragging it back from the abyss. It really works, and you can feel yourself making progress rapidly which is very encouraging. Personally, I've done more than 60 hours of Pimsleur lessons and I'm just getting started.
Do a lesson every day. Progress feeds on progress. If you start to let yourself slip, it'll be harder to motivate yourself to get back into it, especially if you need to backtrack or go back to the beginning. The best thing is to make it part of your daily routine, such as on the morning commute, or during your evening walk. It's not feasible to learn much from any audio course including Pimsleur while you're concentrating on something else, so it won't work while you're cleaning the house, answering email, or even doing yoga. Walking, sitting on a train, or lying on the couch are better options. I make MP3s of the CDs and store them in my portable MP3 player, so I have some ready wherever I go.
The Pimsleur courses can be expensive, although smaller versions of the comprehensive courses are now available in many bookshops for a reduced price.
Look for them here, but also try libraries, EBay, or elsewhere on the web if you're looking for a deal.
This should be the easiest thing to acquire. A good introductory book about the language and its grammar is a key ingredient in your study of a language. Don't equate the studying of a language with the study of the grammar. They're not the same, though grammar had to be a component of any language study.
I recommend the Living Language ("Ultimate") and Teach Yourself series of books, but find which book is the most highly recommended for your language. Living Language tend to move pretty rapidly in my experience, but combined with the other tracks in your study, work quite well.
Software
Getting some good software is another helpful tactic you can try. Firstly, software is very interactive and so it's an engaging way to learn. It's a refreshing change from reading a book or even listening to an audio course, and can use teaching methods that aren't available in these other formats. With software, it's usually easy to set your own pace.
In my experience the best software you can get is The Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone teaches you a foreign language the way you learned your first language. Using pictures, text and audio, it associates the foreign word with a concept and then gradually builds up new words and concepts based on the ones you already know. It starts with "boy", "girl", "man", "woman" and builds up from there: "A boy and a girl", "A boy and a table", "The boy is on the table". It feels strange at first, but it works. It sticks. It's fun.
The bad news is that the full Rosetta Stone courses are again pretty expensive. You can take a look on their web site. If this is too much for you, there are some options: Firstly, they offer some web-based subscriptions that might be a bit cheaper. Secondly, they make cut-down versions of the software (with 20-25 lessons instead of more than a hundred) which you can get for less than $10 - try EBay and search for "Rosetta Stone Explorer", such as "Japanese Explorer".
I can also recommend the "Learn Now!" series of software, available in many of the major languages, from Transparent Language. These are sold all over the place such as office supply stores, bookstores, etc, and ought to set you back about $30. These packages give you several texts to read and videos to watch at your own pace. You can hear every phrase and every word spoken at various speeds and instantly see the definition of a word as you do it. You can build custom vocabulary lists while you do it. Once you're done with reading a text or video, you can then play some games (such as crosswords) with the words in that text, and practice your speaking into a microphone. (This last piece is good for a laugh, but not something to concentrate on in my opinion.) All in all this is good value for money.
I don't recommend the "Instant Immersion" series. In my experience it was just a compilation of a lot of cheap crap and not a well engineered, central application. Steer clear.
Flashcards
The merits of using flashcards to build up a vocabulary are well known. You can buy sets of cards, or make your own, and carry them with you wherever you go to use in any idle time you find yourself with during the day. There's no question this is useful, and because you can use them in short bursts, it's not too much of a chore; it can be fun. I don't recommend drilling for hours at a time with flash cards.
If you want to use flashcard software, things get even better. There are many packages out there for maintaining and drilling flash cards. I recommend VTrain though there are many others.
One stands out, however: SuperMemo. Similar to Pimsleur, SuperMemo is engineered according to a carefully researched methodology in order to test you on a card the very minimum number of times you need to see it for it to stick. When you look at a card, you give some feedback to the software on whether you got it right and how easy you found it. It uses this information, and that of your previous attempts, to decide when you will be shown the card next. It's ingenious, and it really works. Take a look at the main web site.
If you're a gadget guy like me, the news is even better! I have a version of SuperMemo that runs on my PalmOS phone. Wherever I am, if I have my phone handy I have thousands of flash cards with me too. Honestly, it would be worth purchasing a cheap Palm device solely for this. You can pick one up for $20 or even less on eBay or elsewhere. Consider it, at least. (My high-end device also has language lessons as mp3s and full language dictionaries on it. It's a great example of how useful technology can be.)
A reader
If you can, I recommend a reader in the language of choice. By this I mean a book written in the language at a very basic level - simple enough for beginners to understand - but preferably getting more difficult as the chapters progress. A perfect example is this book, Easy Spanish Reader. The first chapter is at the level of "Maria is a student. She is 17 years old", but by the end you're reading about Mexican history and Spanish literature (albeit in abridged form) and have gotten to grips with past and future tenses and other important grammatical concepts. More importantly, it's fun and there is a real tangible feeling of progress. Again, I really want to stress how satisfying it is to read something completely in your target language and understand it, no matter how simple it seems. It really keeps your enthusiasm up which is why I recommend this part of the program so highly.
Optional but useful
At some point, you'll probably want a good dictionary. Because I don't advocate the "start on the first day reading a newspaper" approach, I don't think you'll need one from day one. However, after a while you will want to move onto reading more interesting sources in the language, and the usefulness of a dictionary in this case doesn't need to be elaborated on.
I use UltraLingua dictionaries on my Palm device. It's great to have a dictionary with me everywhere I go!
I also use yet another piece of software I can highly recommend: Babylon. Babylon allows you to download and install as many dictionaries and glossaries as you choose, and runs in the background on your computer. Whenever you want to look up a word, just middle-click (or whatever you choose) on it in any application such as instant messaging, web or word processor, and it will pop up a window with a translation to or from the languages of your choice. Very handy in reading a web page or responding to an instant message, where you need to know instantly what it is they are telling you.
You may also find a phrasebook handy. I don't tend to rely on these, but especially if you're heading out on a trip soon, incorporating some of the phrases in such a book into your repertoire would be a good idea. Lonely Planet phrasebooks are well recommended. Don't bother with a phrase book that doesn't have phrases to help you flirt (or more) with a member of the opposite sex, unless you're just going on a business trip...
By the way, check out Babelfish if you don't know it already. It comes in handy too, especially when reading or writing an email.
Self Study
Now that you have some or most of the components I mentioned, it should be pretty obvious how to use them. Below I'll outline the regimen that works for me, but here are a few things to bear in mind.
A little a day is better than a lot occasionally. Everyone says this, but it's true because that's how our brains work. Even on a day when you're too tired, busy, or stressed, try and find five minutes to review some notes or read a paragraph or two.
Keep fit. They say that when you're fit and exercising regularly, your brain works better and you learn more efficiently. I don't know if this is really true, but it does feel true. Thanks to the magic of portable audio devices, I found a way to combine the two, and they reinforced one another; I wanted to exercise to have a fit brain to learn, and I learned while exercising.
Keep it fun. If one particular part of the regimen annoys or bores you, de-emphasize it unless you really need to achieve maximum fluency for a journey or business meeting. If you're learning as a hobby or in your spare time, motivation will be the most important factor in making progress.
Find help. The best part of the whole thing is this part, about which I go into more detail in the next section.
Also, every time you read the following phrase in your studies, you must drink a shot. "Like the ch in the Scottish loch."
OK, here's the basic routine I have settled on when learning a language. The trick is to get into the habit, which isn't easy to pull off in the long run. That's why variety helps.
Do some audio course every day. If you have a good course like a Pimsleur, this by itself will keep things fresh in your mind and keep you progressing. That's why I make this part the foundation of my initial study of a language. (I say initial, because eventually you'll master all the material!)
Do a grammar lesson every few days. Initially, it's best to do a few quickly because the early lessons will teach you some really important fundamentals. After that, it's good to just keep plugging away at it slowly. Take notes for review.
After a week or two start on the reader. One you have these three going in parallel, they will reinforce one another.
Enter new words you learn from any source into a master vocabulary list, and maintain this list in your flashcard software.
Use the other software, such as Transparent Language or Rosetta Stone, whenever you feel like it or when you want to practice but are bored with the other materials. As it is the most interactive method, this is the best one to get you engaged again. (Rosetta Stone is better, though, with regular use).
Whenever you have a question or don't understand something, write it down. Either ask a friend or go to the web for help. Chat rooms and Usenet are full of friendly people, and of course the web knows all.
OK, let's move on to my favorite part.
Getting Help
Now, here's the best part of all. In today's wired society, you have absolutely no excuse for not making friends with a speaker of the language you're learning. None. There are many sites out there where you can meet pen pals in other countries; look around. In particular, though I recommend the following site: My Language Exchange. It's specifically designed to help find you a friend who speaks your chosen language natively, and is trying to learn your native language themselves. This site is a fantastic resource. I've made some great friends through it who I have visited or will visit in their home countries.
Once you find someone, try and exchange correspondence with them regularly. Composing your own sentences is very good practice, and it will help you learn the words you will need to talk about yourself anyway. Once again, though, technological advances can do even better than that. Using any of the main instant messaging clients, or third-party software such as Skype (again recommended) and a cheap microphone you can talk in real time with your friend just like on the telephone, and for free. Do it! Even when my Spanish was halting and a broken mess, I spoke every night for a little while with a pal in Spain. You think this helped my Spanish? Duh!
This technology even works over a dial-up connection. But the world is becoming surprisingly wired these days. I don't know about sub-Saharan Africa, but I believe broadband connections are ubiquitous in North America, Europe and Australia and common in South America, Russia and Asia.
By the way, don't use PalTalk (MyLanguageExchange recommend it). It's junk, and it's some kind of malware (it wouldn't uninstall itself, for example). AVOID!
Conclusion
Learning languages is one of the chief pleasures of my life. It provides both intellectual stimulus and social adventure. If you've never studied a foreign language before, or only studied one in high school (which is worse), you might be surprised at the fun and satisfaction you can achieve with a little study. When you roll out one of your phrases and make someone's face light up, you'll know what I mean.
Good luck!