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Language Learning (Beginner) | ||
Tags: Beginner | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| AliceM Newbie Poland Joined 3909 days ago 4 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Polish* | Message 1 of 12 05 March 2014 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi! My name is Alice and I'm a newbie on this forum.
I'm just beginning my adventure with learning languages, so could you recommend me the best way of learning? Should I learn with personal tutor or should I sing in some school of foreign languages? Or maybe I should learn by myself with e-learnig? Perhaps someone can give me an adice or have other ideas? Edited by Fasulye on 07 March 2014 at 5:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4244 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 12 05 March 2014 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well this website is about how to teach yourself a language and that's our niche or area of expertise, so to speak.
You should start with telling us which language you want to learn. The best methods are often (but not always) dependant quite largely on that. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5523 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 12 05 March 2014 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you want to learn a language on your own, we have some very generic advice on our wiki.
But if you'd like more personalized advice, then—as Henkkles suggested—please let us know a bit more about what language you'd like to learn, why you'd like to learn a language, and what kind of things you enjoy. Have you had good or bad experiences with languages in school? What did you like? What did you hate? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4038 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 4 of 12 05 March 2014 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, you're in the right place ;)
I cannot add something after two users like @emk and @Henkkles so I limit myself to welcome you in this forum. Edited by tristano on 05 March 2014 at 8:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5180 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 5 of 12 05 March 2014 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||
To start learning a language I usually do 3 things together:
Now here is the trick. Most people would rely on the weekly class for 90% of their learning. I use the class just as a motivator - it takes only 10% of my attention; the rest goes into self-study. The more free time you can devote, the better, but even 2-4 hours a week is a starting point. 8 is great. Try to do some listening, some reading, some writing and some speaking each week - using the techniques you will read about on this forum. Soon you will be the most confident student in the class, leaving your classmates in the dust, and it may begin to seem like a waste of your time and money. But it's not. It's the motivator which will keep you studying hard for a 10-week period, turning you into a language demon! You're welcome, and enjoy the forum :) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mork the Fiddle Senior Member United States Joined 3960 days ago 86 posts - 159 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 12 06 March 2014 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, Alice. Welcome to the forum.
These forums are loaded with excellent advice for language learners. In addition to what has already been said, I advise you to browse around for a bit, especially in the forum "Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies," and find out what the members here have already suggested. http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_topics.asp? FID=22 What you're looking for, I think, is an overview of methods and strategies, which you will find in these pages. And don't be surprised or discouraged to find conflicting advice and different points of view. More voices not only create more disagreements but they also give you more options. Good luck. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4435 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 7 of 12 08 March 2014 at 4:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Although my mother-tongue is Chinese, over the years, my English became the stronger language.
The past 6 months I've been watching all sorts of Chinese videos and listen to 1/2h radio discussions almost every night on whatever topic they broadcast to pick up words & phrases. Because my Chinese is already at a conversation level, I don't have much trouble picking up the content of a conversation. It is usually a few words & phrases in between a sentence that I have to look up. In the beginning you have to rely on 1. Phrase books 2. Grammar guide 3. Some in class instructions. To get yourself up from the basic level to intermediate and conversational you have to spend a lot of time outside class to listen to radio, watch TV broadcasts because most people only spend 2h in a class so the exposure you have on a language is limited. The people who are successfully tend to spend a lot more time outside class learning on their own. Right now I am working on my French. When I am watching videos, I would pick videos with captions (words & phrases in French) instead of subtitles which are usually translated into English or the language you know. When I am watching a Chinese movie, I have no trouble with captions / subtitles because I know enough words & phrases to figure out what is going on. But in French I prefer captions because I can see exactly what the person said and look up words that I don't know with the exact spelling. I found some good learning videos on YouTube for French: Learn French with Victor (Français pour débutant). Each lesson there is a set of characters acting out a situation such as in a restaurant, at a train station, etc. Here is the link to a good language learning site with a lot of videos with captions that you can go at your own pace, replay a section as many times as you like: Yabla French Video Immersion 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 12 08 March 2014 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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