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November 21 - November 27, 2024
If you correct someone’s English entry every time you submit an entry of your own, your writing samples will consistently jump to the top of the correction pile, and you’ll get your corrections sooner.
By learning the sounds of your language, you gain access to words. By learning words, you gain access to grammar. And with just a little bit of grammar, you gain access to the rest of your language.
If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else. —Yogi Berra
To understand more, you can either learn a lot more words (90 percent comprehension takes approximately 5,500 words, and 95 percent comprehension takes 12,500 words) or you can start to specialize.
Not everyone needs to learn the same words, and you can save a great deal of time by customizing your vocabulary to suit your needs.
Where can you find these words? Get a thematic vocabulary book—the publisher Barron makes the best ones—and check off any words you want.
KEY POINTS • To learn vocabulary efficiently, begin by learning the top thousand words in your target language. • If you’re aiming for a high degree of fluency, then keep going until you know the top fifteen hundred to two thousand words. • Once you’re done building a foundation, choose additional words based upon your individual needs. You can find these words by skimming through a thematic vocabulary book and finding key words for every context you need—travel, music, business, and so on.
You can take these sentences, turn them into fill-in-the-blank exercises, add a few pictures, and learn a bunch of new words and word forms.
We’re going to use three tools: Google Images, self-directed writing, and monolingual dictionaries.
But if you want to learn a heap of grammar at the same time, write out your own examples and definitions. After you get your corrections, you can use the example sentences to teach you your words and use the corrections to teach you your grammar.
I like to write whenever I’m stuck on a long commute. I’ll finish my daily flash card reviews and then begin writing example sentences and definitions for new words. It’s an endless source of portable entertainment.
A dictionary adds an additional layer of depth and helps you figure out the differences between words like eat and devour.
KEY POINTS • Use Google Images to find quality example sentences and pictures for your words. It’s fast, it provides clear examples, and the combination of images and sentences is easy to memorize. • If you run into problems or you’re away from your computer, write out your own example sentences and definitions for new words. Get them corrected and use those corrections to learn both grammar and vocabulary. • Once you have enough vocabulary under your belt, add a monolingual dictionary to your toolbox. When you do, you’ll gain the ability to learn every word in your target language, and as a
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The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go. —Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!
as it turns out, we learn the vast majority of our words through reading, and we can do the same in a foreign language.
You can take advantage of this ability by reading as much as you can, as quickly as possible.
Even familiar words can sound different in the context of rapid speech, and audiobooks are the easiest way to familiarize yourself with real, spoken language.
This is yet another skill that will serve you in the future; you need the ability to skip over holes in your vocabulary.
KEY POINTS • Reading without a dictionary is the simplest, easiest way to grow your passive vocabulary. On average, a single book will teach you three hundred to five hundred words from context alone. By reading just one book in your target language, you’ll make all future books and texts of any kind much easier to read. • By reading in conjunction with an audiobook, you’ll have a much easier time moving through a long text, and you’ll pick up invaluable exposure to the rhythms of your language in action. This will improve your pronunciation, your listening comprehension, your vocabulary, your
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If you want to understand real-world speech, you need to listen to real-world speech.
Still, you’ll probably need some help. With subtitles, you won’t train your ears, but without them, movies and TV shows can feel overwhelming. You can dial back the difficulty in two ways: by choosing your first shows very carefully and by reading about those shows ahead of time on Wikipedia.
You’ll have a much easier time understanding a TV show or movie if you read a summary of it first, particularly if that summary is in your target language.
When you read one of these summaries, you pick up a bunch of the vocabulary used in each episode. This strategy can also help you handle films, since you can introduce yourself to the characters and plot ahead of time. It feels like reading a short book and then watching the movie adaptation of that book, which definitely beats staring at a movie screen and only figuring out the plot after the movie is over.
KEY POINTS • Listening is a fast-paced skill that can sometimes feel overwhelming. Take baby steps, and gradually ramp up the challenge until you can handle the fastest and hardest of listening challenges (radio, podcasts, ridiculous garbled train station announcements). • Start with an interesting foreign TV or dubbed American TV series without subtitles. You can dial down the difficulty by reading episode summaries ahead of time, in order to prepare yourself for the vocabulary and plot twists of each episode. • As your comfort level grows, wean yourself off of summaries and begin watching
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“I can’t do this,” I said. “I don’t know what to say.” “Say anything,” he said. “You can’t make a mistake when you improvise.” “What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?” “You can’t,” he said. “It’s like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another.” —Patti Smith, Just Kids
Fluent speech and the game of Taboo are practically the same thing.
Your first tendency will be to switch to English. Your friend probably understands English, and you’ll get your point across. Unfortunately, your German won’t get any better. If, on the other hand, you stay in German, a remarkable thing occurs: you begin to improvise. At that moment, you take a giant leap toward fluency.
Fluency, after all, isn’t the ability to know every word and grammatical pattern in a language; it’s the ability to communicate your thoughts without stopping every time you run into a problem.
WORD
Verbling.com is an instant gratification machine. You tell it what language you’re learning, and it pairs you up with someone who speaks your target language and wants to learn your native language. You chat for five minutes in one language, a bell sounds, and then you chat in the other language.
LiveMocha.com is one of many language exchange websites. Other notables are Busuu.com, MyLanguageExchange.com, and Language-Exchanges.org. They resemble dating websites for language learners.
If you’re aiming for efficiency, then pull out a word frequency list and discuss every word you don’t know in order.
Take notes on everything you learn. This is your chance to pick up all the slang that’s missing from your textbook.
So if you’re on a language holiday in a foreign country, arrange activities that put you in contact with locals. Go on museum tours in Italian; take cooking classes in French; go to bars, local religious services, or community events.
Seek out people who hate speaking English and hang out with them instead. Or just tell everyone you’re Albanian and you don’t speak English. No one speaks Albanian.
These programs can be expensive, but they offer plentiful, grant-based financial aid and their results are beyond compare. If you have the opportunity to go, jump on it. You’ll never forget it.
KEY POINTS • With the advent of ubiquitous, high-speed Internet connections, you can get quality speech practice anywhere. • Whenever and wherever you practice, follow the golden rule of Language Taboo: no English allowed. By practicing in this way, you’ll develop comfortable fluency with the words and grammar you know.
1. 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.
learn the first half of your grammar book. Make flash cards for everything you find interesting.
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.
Read your first book while listening to an audiobook.
Watch a full season of a dubbed TV show, reading episode summaries in your target language ahead of time.
Get a ton of speech practice. Get as much as you possibly can, either through an immersion program, a language holiday abroad...
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Note: even when you’re focusing on a book or TV show, never stop doing flash card reviews. Your flash cards get more and more useful the longer you use them.
I did my daily reviews, but I stopped learning new flash cards. It got boring fast. At least in my experience, flash card reviews are only fun when you’re learning new things at the same time. So make sure you always have something new to learn—even just a couple of new words a day makes a huge difference.
check my website (Fluent-Forever.com/language-resources)
Verbling.com (fast, in the style of speed dating) • Livemocha.com (longer conversations, in the style of general dating websites) • Also consider Busuu.com, MyLanguageExchange.com, and Language-Exchanges.org • italki.com (paid professional teachers and tutors)
If you’re looking for conversation topics, try: • Fluent-Forever.com/conversation-questions (a handy list of conversation topics) • ConversationStarters.com (What is one thing you miss about being a kid?) • YouRather.com (Would you rather always be naked or always be itchy?) • Gregory Stock’s Book of Questions (Do you tend to listen or talk more in conversations?) • Smith and Doe’s Book of Horrible Questions (For one million dollars, would you eat a human foot [with the bone removed]?)
With a bit more effort, you can steadily improve an advanced-level language. The most efficient way to do this is by writing on Lang-8.com and speaking with tutors (on italki.com).
Turn every mistake you make and every new word you want to learn into flash cards. Use a frequency list as conversation/essay fodder.
If you’re constantly speaking and writing, and you’re using your SRS to learn from all of your mistakes, then you’re going to improve at breakneck speed.
