Have you just decided to learn a foreign language? Do you feel like you’re too old? Too young? Not smart enough? Are you enrolled in a class and going nowhere? Is grammar killing you? Do strange words and weird letters make you break out into a cold sweat of confusion?

Fear not.

Learning a foreign language is a daunting task for anyone. Here’s ten tips (plus one extra) that will help anyone learning a foreign language to reach their goal faster while having fun and making friends along the way.

1. FALL IN LOVE…

…with something about your target language. Whether it’s movies, music, animation, craftwork, martial arts, dance, authentic painting, architecture, food, it doesn’t matter. Make sure to find something about the language and culture that you unequivocally love.

Think about it. We’re constantly fascinated with what we love. Love holds a certain shimmer. It takes something that would ordinarily seem like hard work, and turns it into a joy.

The fact is, learning a foreign language is hard work. It’s rewarding, worthy, and if done correctly a ton of fun, but none of that comes without the labor. So make sure you have a good reason to want to get involved. All you need is love.

2. UNDERSTAND THE MUSIC OF YOUR TARGET LANGUAGE

Every language has it’s own sound. Words and sentences in French could not be mistaken for Russian, or Chinese. Whatever language you are trying to learn, it is best to get your ear attuned to the sound of the language. A wonderful way to do this is through listening to music and watching movies in your chosen language.

If possible, pick up the first ten to fifteen lessons of any Pimsluer audio series for your chosen language. Your average Barnes and Noble or Borders will sell the first ten or 18 lessons of practically any language that Pimsleur carries. If not, you can easily purchase Pimsleur online.

The magic of the Pimsleur method is how it gets your subconscious tuned to the rhythm and feel of the language. Language is speaking and listening. Pimsleur forces you to do both in the very beginning stages, with the help of native speakers you can replay again and again until you get yourself sounding right. After only five days of Mandarin Chinese with Pimsleur, I tried out my words on an acquaintance who teaches Mandarin. She immediately asked where I had learned and how long I had been studying. When I revealed to her I used Pimsleur, she wanted to know where she could get the CD’s to improve her students use of tones.

Whether or not you stick with Pimsleur, your accent and feel for the sound of the language will definitely benefit from even a short course with the program.

3. GET INTIMATE

Don’t just go to class and read your textbook. Classroom time is good (if you can afford it), but nothing beats real time interaction with your target language. This includes finding a conversation partner or group, reading magazines, watching TV, and listening to the music of the language you want to learn. Make friends with a native speaker. Even if you are in a country very far away from where your target language hails from, there’s still the possibility of finding a native or near native speaker near you. Also, in this modern age, the internet offers tons of chances at real language interaction, from internet news, to music video downloads and the like. The more real connection you form to the language you are trying to learn, the better.

4. GET FRUSTRATED AND GET EVEN

As soon as you stray from the whitewashed world of your textbook, class, or audio-series, you’ll find plenty of frustration as you try to understand and communicate. This is good. Once you find something you don’t understand, make it your mission to find out why you don’t understand it. Nothing reinforces a point like trying to figure it out yourself. Instead of just memorizing (and soon forgetting) endless grammar rules, you will find yourself the detective solving a grand mystery.

For example, I will never forget what the infinitive form of a verb is in Japanese. This is because I spent a solid week trying to figure out what it was, scouring websites and standing up skimming language books in the Barnes and Noble. It turns out that the infinitive and the dictionary form are the same thing in Japanese, and further, the infinitive in Japanese really doesn’t have much to do with the infinitive in English or Spanish. That revelation completely changed my way of looking at the Japanese language. It made it clear in my gut that Japanese operated by it’s own, (and often unrelated to English) set of rules.

Simply reading in a book that Japanese had a radically different structure from English would never have TAUGHT me that lesson.

5. CONNECT THE DOTS

The best way to learn new vocabulary is to relate it to something you already know. If a word you’re learning sounds like a word you know, USE IT. For example:

My coworker speaks a southern dialect of Chinese. When I started learning Mandarin, we ended up exchanging Chinese vocabulary to see how the dialects differed. It turns out that the word for butt (posterior) in her dialect sounds like PEE GOO.

Immediately, I imagined a giant butt PEEING GOO. Eww. I’ve never forgotten the word. Nor did I forget YAO – to want (which sounds a lot like YOW! I WANT YOU TO STOP HURTING ME). I made my whole Japanese class crack up with ARAU – to wash: Imagine washing your cat. The sound is A huge RAUW! Even if the sound thing doesn’t quite work out, the sound, feel or meaning of the word should relate to something in your mind. The funnier, weirder, or more disgusting, the better.

Further, if you learn the word in an interesting way, remember the story associated to the word. For example, I find it is much easier to remember vocabulary I’ve learned from watching raws of Japanese dramas. In part, this is because of Rule 4 (I get frustrated, find out what it means, then it sticks). It’s also because of how the brain works. The more links your brain has to a certain piece of information, the faster that piece of information will be recalled.

6. ATTACK FROM ALL ANGLES

While I feel the textbook I’m using for my class “GENKI” is one of the best on the market, I still have a shelf full of other books and tapes. I’m always adding to the Learning Japanese section of my favorites. That’s because no matter how good one source is, it can’t do everything. No one person knows everything. Sometimes, simply a different explanation of the same point will open your eyes to something you really didn’t understand before. The fact is, the more angles from which you attack a problem, the faster it will become dust beneath your feet.

7. LEARN TO READ AND WRITE

Some alphabets are easier than others. If you’re an American learning Spanish, you don’t have a lot of work to do. If you are Chinese person learning Japanese, you’ve gotten most of the grunt work out of the way already. If your lucky enough to have an alphabet even close in concept to your own, why wait to learn it? And if it’s something completely different and daunting, what’s the point in putting it off? Fate favors the intrepid. Further the hard stuff might surprise you. I’ve personally found Kanji (since adopting the methods outlined in Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji) to be fun and actually helpful in my study of Japanese conversation.

Learning a new alphabet is fun and exciting once you get the hang of it. Also, the more difficult the writing system, the more you can impress your friends at parties and tattoo parlors. Why let this opportunity pass you by?

8. FLASHCARDS ARE YOUR FRIENDS

Think about how much time you waste in a day. You stand in line for lunch, chill in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, waiting for the buss or train, and even waste your brainpower listening to commercials on TV. Why not make that time work for you. For the price of 100 index cards, you can turn those idle moments into power learning sessions. Take a stack of 25-50 flashcards with key vocabulary or grammar with you wherever you go. On one side, write the meaning in English. On the other, the word or phrase you are trying to memorize. Soon you’ll find yourself more quickly retaining vocabulary, simply through these self quizzes. This technique works very well for Kanji also.

A quick tip: It’s better to review the words from the English meaning to the word in the language you are trying to learn. This forces your brain to really recall the word, as opposed to just recognizing it when you see it. After all, when you speak, isn’t your goal to say what you mean?

9. TALK TO YOURSELF AND TO YOUR PETS

…in the language you are trying to learn. I work at a veterinarian’s office. At this point, my coworkers have gotten used to me trying out Chinese, Japanese and even a little Arabic on our patients. At home, if I’m doing something, I often ask myself, “how would I say this in Japanese?” If I’m alone, I’ll talk to myself out loud. Maybe what I’m saying is correct. Maybe I’m thoroughly incomprehensible. It doesn’t matter. The point is I’m painlessly getting used to manipulating my new vocabulary and melding it to my needs. The more you train yourself to think and speak in your target language, the more natural and relaxed your speech will become.

10. LABEL EVERYTHING IN YOUR HOUSE

Your home is a treasure trove of useful, everyday words. Why not learn how to say them in your target language? While ordinary words like ‘bread’, ‘fork’, or ‘table’ may not seem exciting at first, they will definitely make traveling abroad easier. If you take the time to label the items and landscape of your house, you will quickly get used to seeing and hearing those words.

Currently, my focus is on learning Japanese. As such, my house is labeled in Japanese. To do this, I started by looking around the room I was in and writing down what I saw. I then took those words, looked them up in a Japanese/English dictionary, and put them on a small piece of paper. I taped each piece of paper to it’s matching object. Later, I did the same thing for the bathroom, the kitchen, and the living room. Now, when I open the refrigerator, I know it’s a ‘reizouko’. Maybe tonight I’ll sit down on the ‘isu’, turn off the ‘akarui’ and watch and watch an ‘eiga’ on the ‘terebe’.

10 + 1: YOU GOTTA SPEAK BAD TO GET GOOD

That’s the long and the short of it. No matter how hard you work to speak perfectly, you will always make mistakes. Even native speakers make mistakes. Accept this and strive for communication. The faster you work through your inability to speak, the faster you will gain an ability to speak. So let no speaking opportunity go without taking it.

Just jump in. The water is fine, the sun is warm, and the world waits just beyond the horizon.

Minna Shiawase
Minna Shiawase is an avid Japanese student and fan of Japanese culture. Read more about Japanese grammer at her blog,
http://ailovebunpou.blogspot.com/