5 WAYS TO START WITH A NEW LANGUAGE

GETTING FAMILIAR WITH IT

Learning another language is about getting familiar with new things like a different writing, pronunciation; and if you wanna succeed you will have to incorporate those things to your daily routine, that’s why we bring you these five ways to start with a new language so you feel motivated to begin with this amazing journey:

Change the language in your devices (laptop, cellphone, whatever)

Learning a new language isn’t only about practicing grammar or solving exercises, it’s about committing to the goal and embracing a new culture, that’s why it’s crucial you to set the right atmosphere. A good way to do this is by changing the language in all your devices such as your laptop, including all your social media like Facebook, Google, Twitter and so on. This will force you to learn some new words, as you probably use social media everyday. The idea here is you to get familiar and feel more comfortable with the language you’re learning. You should change the language in your cellphone as well since this little advice has become more and more important to your daily life.

Related: How to become fluent in not more than 20 minutes a day

Start listening to music in the new language

You don’t need to understand every word, the important thing here is to do this constantly. Remember that learning a new language is like a marathon, not a sprint so there’s no need to desperate if you don’t get a word of what they are saying, just try to listen carefully and you’ll understand at least a few words, that’s a good start. In case you wanna look for something easier to understand than music, you can try radio, where radio announcers speak slowly and clearly. Tunein.com is a great platform to start with this, you’ll find radio stations from all over the world for free and in good sound quality. Once again, the idea here is to become familiar, this time with the pronunciation and some common phrases of the language you’re learning.

Listen to podcasts from your phone

We may not always have the time or the wifi connection to listen to live radio, so a great way to keep on practicing your listening is to download podcasts to your phone and playing them in your dead time; that is to say, whenever you can’t do anything else, like when you go to work/school and you are on the bus looking at the people walking on the streets. Instead of that you could simply put on your headphones and listen to short podcasts that will help you boost your listening; and not only that. When you listen to a particular phrase over and over again, it goes from your short-term memory into your long-term memory. As a result, whenever you need to use this phrase in a conversation, even without having repeated it, it will automatically come out of your brain. MAGIC!

Watch TV shows and videos

Another good way to start getting familiar with any language is watching TV shows and videos; not only to learn the pronunciation and intonation but also in order to catch some informal language you won’t find in books by any means. Nowadays we have too many options when it comes to look for a good TV show so this won’t be a problem. This is perfect to learn some slang and common phrases you will definitely wanna use with native speakers who will be impressed by your language skills.

Read articles

Finally, once you are able to understand approximately the 50% of what you read, you are ready to start looking for short articles that will allow you to learn more expressions and improve your fluency in the language you’re learning. A great way to force this is to start following fan pages on Facebook and other social media about the topics you like the most so you won’t get bored. By doing this you will unintentionally see the articles in your feed and at least you will read the headlines which is already good.

Learning a language involves a lot of new things, some of them you might like and others you will just hate at the beginning, but for sure it will pay off and at the end you will see the results in the best way you can imagine. Is there another way to learn a new language we haven’t mentioned? Please leave your comments below 😉