7 tips for learning a new language

For students, professionals, and even travelers or adventurers, learning a new language is an obligatory undertaking. Whether for reasons tied to opening the way to new career options or as a simple personal or intellectual goal, assimilating a new language is a process filled with valuable experiences. In my case, English was the first language I confronted after my mother tongue, and I suppose this is also the case for most people. From a very early age, a large part of the world's educational systems concentrate on teaching English as a second language so that generations grow up better equipped to insert themselves into the globalized world. The Internet, business, scientific publications, mass culture — that is to say, a large part of all the relevant activities in the world are dominated by English, and when this is not the case, the need to translate into this language invariably arises. It is curious to note that, despite the fact that many people start with English from an early age, many never manage to master or fully understand it. It is likely that most people on the planet receive at least 6 years of English instruction; within that figure I include the years we spend in primary school, in secondary school, those of us who attend higher education, and, if this is not your case, that time would be rounded out by the courses or professional development programs that many of us sign up for in order to attain greater command of the language. In the vast world of languages, having worked through the basic structures of 4 languages including my native Spanish, I consider English to be the simplest language one can learn in terms of syntax and complexity. English far surpasses many other languages when it comes to rapidly assimilating written and spoken skills. An article from the portal abc.es titled What are the easiest and most difficult languages to learn? reported that, based on the amount of time it takes a native North American speaker to master speaking and reading, mastering a difficult language could take a little under 2 years (1.69). So why do so many people around the world devote at least 3 times this figure, and most still fail to reach an intermediate or advanced level of competence? In my opinion, the reason is that the methodology employed is incorrect. In this text I will set out 7 tips that I believe we should keep in mind in order to learn a new language in a solid and rapid way, regardless of your mother tongue or your aptitude for learning languages.

1. Learn your own language well

It seems obvious, yet a very large percentage of people, including professionals and academics, do not have a good command of their own language. Whatever your native language may be, take care to acquire the best possible skills in it, since the main source of your intelligence and creativity will undoubtedly come from your mother tongue or the language to which you have had the most exposure. Knowing how to read and understand texts, to write correctly, and to express yourself properly in your own language is key to being able to progress quickly in another. Every language contains a particular set of judgments, meanings, concepts, ideas, and ways of thinking. Your intellectual capacity increases significantly when you are able to grasp the more complex concepts and ideas expressed in a language, so that when you set out on your journey toward learning a new language you will have a broader database with which to understand the equivalent references in that new language. Bear in mind that we tend to make ourselves understood better and to communicate more effectively in our native language, or in the one to which we have been exposed the longest. Only in that language will you be able to make your most valuable contributions of ideas, and it is surely the one through which you will best be able to convey your feelings and affections.

2. Follow the natural order of learning

There is a flaw in the traditional system when it comes to teaching languages, since I believe it begins by the wrong path. Do you remember how you learned your native language? How was it? By speaking, right? That is how all languages should be learned. One should begin first by practicing speech, making connections between concepts, activities, and sounds in order to make yourself understood — not by learning grammar. Everyone probably spends the first 6 years of life without knowing how to write or read very well; nevertheless, children can make themselves perfectly understood in most situations. For this reason I believe it is very important that you reverse the order in learning your language and begin by speaking it first, making connections between events, sounds, and words — in the order, in the form of speech. Afterward you can focus on the grammar of the language.

3. Learn enough vocabulary

One could say that ideas are a set of connected words. What distinguishes one idea from another on a superficial level is the words. For this reason, before learning how to connect them, begin adding words and their sounds to your database; the more words you recognize, the more progress you will be able to make in the language when the time comes to learn to read or write well. Therefore, learn many words. The average number of basic words across various languages tends to hover around 3,500 words. With that quantity of words you can surely communicate well enough in most situations.

4. Assimilate the culture

When we grow up we are exposed most of the time to a particular culture, from which we naturally inherit the language. Given a word in one language, we may not find an equivalent, even when a translation exists. It also happens that a single word can have different meanings within the same language, since there may be different interpretations according to place, race, or social class — all cultural elements. For this reason, when you begin a new language, follow the natural order as I mentioned in an earlier point: learn to speak, learn vocabulary, and then assimilate the culture. In this way you will learn much more quickly, and your progress will be more solid than the mere mechanical memorization of structures and grammar. The process of assimilating the culture can be approached from several angles, one of which is reading. You can begin with simple readings, just as children do. Watch films in that language, tune in to news broadcasts from the places where the language is spoken, learn the geography and history of the place, browse the Internet, or visit websites in that language. If our goal is to make a life in a particular country, then devote your time to investigating the social system: getting to know its currency, the fashion, the differences between the social classes of the place, the music and the art, the symbols, the celebrity scene, the food, its most popular products, the local brands. When we do this we quickly begin to assimilate more words and it becomes easier for us to communicate ideas, because by being constantly bombarded with the culture from which you are trying to learn the language, the connections between what you see and the words you are learning are established much more quickly, and you secure your fluency in a short time.

5. Bring your abilities in your native language up to par with those in the new language

Once the sounds, the dynamics of the accents, and the vocabulary have been learned and the culture assimilated as a whole, no step remains but to begin learning the structure; that is to say, it is time to learn to write, and to write correctly. When we formally begin to understand the structure of the language, the opportunity opens up to contribute new ideas, judgments, and concepts within the culture; that is, we move from being receivers or passive individuals in that language to being active individuals who contribute new visions and new elements. But your capacity to be more or less relevant in the message or ideas you wish to convey will be proportional to your intelligence and your command of the more advanced concepts. If you are an adult, then little by little you will have to concern yourself with recognizing the technical concepts that, in your working, professional, or academic life, you developed in your mother tongue. Put another way, if you are a university student or a professional, then you must begin to re-read all of your acquired knowledge in the new language. Appreciate the sciences from the other language, philosophy, history; learn everything you have learned so far in your mother tongue and learn to recognize the same concepts in the new language.

6. Change the way you think

You may learn to speak, acquire a good deal of vocabulary, assimilate the culture, and gain technical skills in the new language; however, if you have not changed your mental framework during the process, it is possible that all the work you have invested will lose much of its value. Throughout the entire process of learning the new language you will surely have realized that there are things that do not fit, that there are words that do not tend to have the expected translation, and that at times it is not possible to establish equivalent ideas satisfactorily. All of this is normal. When you begin to notice these aspects, you have just identified what I call the barrier of mental frameworks. Every existing language perceives reality in a different way. This means that in passing from one language to another, new concepts may appear and others may simply disappear. A German, an Italian, a Norwegian, a Spaniard, and a Canadian do not perceive reality in the same way; there are points on which they coincide and others on which, despite referring to the same concept, differences can be discerned. The reason many claim that those who master several languages are more intelligent is that they have overcome several barriers of mental frameworks and have adapted to perceiving concepts from different angles; they have adapted to thinking the ideas present in different cultures. Comparing the Spanish and English languages, you will agree with me when I say that there are things that cannot be translated from one language to another. There are ideas that are simply comprehensible in their entirety only when seen from the language in which they arose. For this reason, do not become fixated on maintaining your mental structure when you learn a new language; think as a person from that culture would. When I began to think in English, my capacity for learning and reasoning increased considerably in that language. I realized that I had spent a large part of my training in that language thinking in Spanish, and it should not be that way. Spanish tends to be much more difficult and complex; it is larger in size, has more verb tenses, and offers many ways of saying things. English, on the other hand, tends to be somewhat smaller by comparison, and it is often the case that a single word serves for a whole universe of possibilities. What I have just said is not trivial and may even prove controversial, which is why I invite you to confirm these statements in a study carried out at the University of Murcia titled English and Spanish from a quantitative and distributive perspective: equivalences and contrasts. Little by little I understood that I should not expend my energy searching for equivalent ideas. When I began to think in the other language, I significantly improved my reading and writing skills; that is to say, I consolidated the advanced level of the language.

7. Interact with more people whose native language is the one you are learning

What is it that ultimately anchors you to a culture? The people. You may visit the most beautiful places on the planet, but if the people of that place did not appeal to you, treated you badly, or you did not have good experiences with the people there, you may well end up hating or forgetting it. I believe the same happens with languages: their people are what anchor you to the language and make it something unusually alive. I therefore invite you to interact directly with the people who are native to the language you want to learn. These interactions can be approached from various angles: you can attend festivals, parties, or gatherings with people who share that language, cultural rituals, traditional restaurants, visit the places or communities where only that language is spoken; making friends in that language is very productive as well. I admit that when I began to interact with native speakers of the language I was learning it helped me enormously, something that happened to me with Mandarin. I understood that the true way of communicating is not the one you see in books, in films, or on the news, which tend to be processed cultural elements. I was able to notice their idioms, their manner of speaking, to observe their customs up close, their psychology, their behaviors, the beauty and physiognomy of these people, their fears, their concerns, their strengths, their virtues and their flaws; when you see them this closely you gradually fall in love with the language, it gradually becomes part of you, and finally, before long, you will be speaking a new language. © Alejandro Guipe | All Rights Reserved.