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I encountered three basic keys to language learning: 1. Learn pronunciation first. 2. Don’t translate. 3. Use spaced repetition
Once you start making flash cards, Forvo will become your best friend. If you’re using Anki, put recordings from Forvo into your flash cards.
we’re really good at remembering images, particularly when those images are violent, sexual, funny, or any combination of the three.
kids need to understand the gist of what they hear in order to learn a language from it.
Every kid can take in sentences from their parents, chew them up, and automatically spit out perfect grammar by their sixth birthdays.
developmental stages in order (He eating carrot He is eating a carrot Yesterday he ate a carrot He eats carrots daily).
Grammar rules, too, are worth learning; studies show that you’ll learn a language faster when you learn the rules.
Once you have enough vocabulary under your belt, add a monolingual dictionary to your toolbox.
passive vocabulary will grow every time you research and memorize a new term.
we learn the vast majority of our words through reading, and we can do the same in a foreign language.
Every novel-length book you read—whether it’s Tolstoy or Twilight—will automatically increase your vocabulary by three hundred to five hundred new words and dump buckets of grammar into that language machine in your head.
The Harry Potter series has been translated into a bajillion languages (or at least sixty-seven), and you can find trashy romance novels or detective stories in every language. Choose whatever you find most appealing.
You won’t have the time to get bogged down with unknown words, and you’ll pick up the rhythm of the spoken language.
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.
