Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

by Gabriel Wyner

Sound Play: Learn how to hear and produce the sounds of your target language and how spelling and sound interrelate. 2. Word Play: Learn 625 frequent, concrete words by playing Spot the Differences in Google Images, finding personal connections, and if needed, adding mnemonic imagery for grammatical gender. 3. Sentence Play: Begin turning the sentences in your grammar book into flash cards for new words, word forms, and word order. Use written output to fill in the gaps missing from your textbook. Here’s what I suggest you do next: 1. If you haven’t already done so, learn the first half of your grammar book. Make flash cards for everything you find interesting. 2. Learn the top thousand words in your target language. Write out definitions and examples whenever you’re not entirely sure what a word means. About halfway through, you’ll find that you can understand a monolingual dictionary. Use it to help you learn the rest of your words. 3. Go back to your grammar book, skim through it, and grab any remaining bits of information you’d like. 4. Read your first book while listening to an audiobook. 5. Watch a full season of a dubbed TV show, reading episode summaries in your target language ahead of time. 6. Get a ton of speech practice. Get as much as you possibly can, either through an immersion program, a language holiday abroad, or through teachers on italki.com. If you get a private teacher, talk about the next thousand words from your frequency list and add specialized wo...