This is the second part of a series that started here. The first part dealt with why we should bother languages, this one will deal with how. There is also a third part, with some various tips and tricks that I have picked up over the years about language learning.

How to Learn

    Use your brain

    Have fun

    Repetition or not repetition?

      "The Multiple Track Attack" 

Things I Recommend 

    Audio courses 

    Friends

    Culture 

Things I don't Recommend

    "Natural learning"

    Vocabulary first

    Grammar first

    Natively Language Exchange 

Closing Comments

Use your brain

The most important thing to do when you’re trying to learn anything is to use your brain. This might seem fairly obvious, but is in fact not quite as trivial as one might think.

Our brain is a wondrous thing and it usually works with great efficiency. One very efficient thing that the brain does is to forget things that are unimportant. This is probably good for your sanity, as remembering every little detail of your day could be quite bewildering, but it’s not always as good when you actually want to remember things.

A textbook on cognition will tell you that your short-term memory will store somewhere between five and nine pieces of information for a short time (around 1 minute or less). After that you will forget it again, if your brain doesn't deem it important enough to store it in long-term memory. And that is how it will work if you just pick up a language book and start reading it like you would read a novel.

When you read a novel you will not remember every word you read, nor would you want to. You will only remember those things that especially triggered your brain; interesting pieces of information about the plot, funny lines and occurrences, character development and so on. Most of the words that are needed to tell you these things will be promptly discarded by your brain and it will only keep the bits that you really cared about. This is fine with literature, but when learning a language you will want to remember every word and every bit of information, so your brain need to care about everything you read.

The key thing we need to remember when we're trying to accomplish this is to really activate your brain. Our brain is very good at working without our mind being involved on much conscious level, but that is not a good way to learn. We need to resist the urge to just casually and passively listen to language tapes; that won't be an efficient way to learn, no matter how much we would want it to.

I will come back to how we can use different methods to activate our brains enough to learn effectively in almost every part of this text, but in general it is easy. It's just something we have to remember to do. Whenever we find ourselves just listening or reading without thinking much, we need to concentrate harder to make our brain realize that it is important things that should be remembered.

We need to engage the mind in thought about every new word, phrase and concept. Try using it in a sentence, make sure you understand it, look up alternative forms, ponder connections between it and similar things in another language you know... Do anything to keep your mind active and alert, and keep your brain actually working on what you're trying to learn instead of just looking at it. That is what will bring you swift results.

Have Fun

When you’re learning outside of a classroom environment it is very hard to motivate yourself if you’re not having fun. Learning a language should be a fun, enjoyable hobby; it shouldn’t feel like a second job. Even if you are forced to learn a language (if you for instance need it for work), you should still try to have fun with it and see it as an interesting hobby.

This also ties in a lot with the previous point. Having fun is a very effective way of making the mind keep active and making the brain work efficiently. If you are bored your mind will want to shut down and you will drudge through your text without making much effort to actually learn it.

Repetition or not repetition?

Anyone who has ever set foot in a classroom knows that any teacher will tell you that repetition is essential. You will also know that repetition is incredibly boring.

Unfortunately repetition is essential.

As far as I know, neuroscience still says that once we learn something we will never really forget it, so in theory we should just have to get new information in once. But we know that it doesn't work that way in practice; even if the information is in there somewhere it can be difficult to get it out of your brain and actually use it. But of course we can help make it easier.

The more we use some piece of information, the more accessible it will be in your mind. Consequently, the more you repeat something, the easier it will be to recall. So repetition can be important, but it is usually the worst chore of your language learning experience. So what can we do to make it less of a chore?

First of all we must realize that there are efficient and inefficient methods of repetition. Just reading a word is far less efficient than reading it and saying it aloud; the more brain processes we involve the less times we have to repeat something.

If you read a word or phrase and then write it down yourself and say it aloud, this will in all probability be better than just reading it repeatedly, even if you read it fifty times. It's even better if you also directly try to insert your new word (or whatever you might be trying to learn) into a sentence or other application. Regardless of if you manage it or not, the attempt itself will involve even more cognitive processes as your brain ponders the usage of the information you're trying to learn. And as previously discussed that kind of activation of the brain is a key to learning.

But aside from using tricks like that to limit the number of times you have to repeat something, there are things we can do to make the process of repetition less boring.

Barry Farber's "Multiple Track Attack"

I once read a wonderful book by Barry Farber, called "How to Learn Any Language Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively and On Your Own" and I would really recommend it if you are interested in learning languages, and also want a highly entertaining book to read. Unfortunately my copy of that book is long since lost and I don't remember much of what he said in it, except for one very important thing. Barry Farber is the one who introduced me to themultiple track attack.

The basic idea of this is that you should not limit yourself to one study course at one time. I would recommend that you get yourself at least one professional audio or video course, so that you can hear the language spoken. But beyond that I also recommend that you get more; as much more as you want.

This might sound expensive, and indeed it can be. But as I mentioned in part 1, it doesn't have to be all that costly. You can find some cheap language books, CDs and so on second hand, you can often find lots of material at your library, you can have luck when there's a sale at a bookstore and so on. And in today's world you can often have even more luck than that.

As I will mention again in part 3, we are lucky to be living in this modern world. The internet has provided us with great new opportunities to share our knowledge with others, and many take pleasure in doing so. Search sites like this and you will probably find many texts written by spirited people willing to teach you their language. Search YouTube and other video sites and you are sure to find at least some basic instructions in the language you want to study. Make yourself a profile on a site with international penpals, such as Interpals, and ask for help and you are sure to find some amateur tutors eager to teach you their language.

As I said I would recommend at least one professional course; that can be good for several reasons. If it is by a good and well-respected company it will most probably be very accurate, it will provide you with a study plan and some sense of direction to your studies, and so on. But beyond that you don't have to spend much (or anything) if you don't want to.

But OK, even if it now is so easy and inexpensive to find yourself several ways to study a language, why should you do it? Before I tried it I thought that it seemed very confusing and inefficient, and that might be what you're feeling too. But I highly recommend it.

It was a long time since I read Farber's book and I don't remember exactly what his motivation was, but my reason is clear: following several study courses at once really, really helps with the tediousness of repetition.

Even though the different courses you follow probably won't take the exact same route and won't teach things in the same order, there will be significant overlap. This will allow you to study the same thing several times, but without just repeating the exact same examples. That may still sound confusing to you, but it actually brings a number of advantages.

As you read the same thing over and over you will progressively get less focused. Your brain immediately recognizes the word, phrase or section of text that you are reading and if you're not careful your brain will take the opportunity to rest a bit while you just skim over the section that is familiar to you.

That won't activate much higher brain function and won't be efficient repetition. If you on the other hand see the same thing from a different perspective in some of your other material; the same word in another example, the same pattern used in a different phrase, another example for a grammatical rule and so on, your brain will still be alert because it seems new. But even though it seems new it will still involve the old, and that will let you repeat it and it will be reinforced in your memory.

f you repeat the same exact text over and over you will also lose attention to detail. This is something that most writers are intimately aware of: if you try to proofread your own text it will be very hard to catch any minor errors. You are so familiar with the text that it is hard not to just skim through it, and since you know what it is supposed to say your brain will assume that it actually says that.

That is bad when trying to find spelling errors in your text and can certainly be dangerous when learning languages. If you happen to to misunderstand, misread or mishear something the first time you read it, and then repeat it again and again, without paying too much attention, you'll just reinforce that mistake in your mind because that is what you think that you are reading.

On the other hand, if you read different examples you will likely pay more attention and catch the mistake you made in the beginning. This will have the added advantage of serving as a reminder for you; you will remember the mistake you made and how you corrected yourself and because of that you will remember what you were trying to learn too.

Of course the multiple track attack doesn't just protect you against mistakes you make yourself. Sometimes your study material may contain mistakes too, and of course that is difficult for you to know when you don't know the language. But if you find something different in another set of course materials you can look it up somewhere else (or ask someone who speaks the language) to find out what the correct version is.

So the multiple track attack has advantages over regular repetition by letting you keep your mind more active during repetition and by giving you much more chance of catching mistakes. It also has the advantage of letting you learn more efficiently by involving more higher brain functions.

All language courses will skim over some concepts. Some things they won't even mention at all; just use in examples without explaining anything. For instance, a language course can give you example phrases were a verb is in a different form in one of them, without explaining the grammatical rule that says why it's different. You'll have to learn such things by rote instead of comprehending why you say what you say.

But when you use the multiple track attack it is very probably that one of the other courses you're using will teach things in a different way, and maybe they will explain it. And that really activates your mind. When you get that "Aha"-moment, suddenly thinking "Oh, so that's why I've been saying that way" your brain will be working hard and you'll remember it much easier.

Audio courses

For the duration of this article I will call these courses "language tapes", even though they are rarely tapes anymore. Regardless of the media, people still often call them language tapes out of old habit, even if you will mostly find audio courses as CDs and digital files today.

Language tapes are generally not something I would recommend. Regular language tapes are bad for two main reasons.

First of all they encourage you to not involve your brain very much. Normally they just consist of phrases in your target language repeated once or twice, together with a translation in your native language. You listen and you repeat, using minimal interaction with your brain. In the worst case scenario the brain will just store the phrase in short term memory and forget it when it’s time to repeat the next phrase.

Granted, with enough repetition it will work. If you just repeat the same phrases a sufficient number of times they will stick, even if you don’t involve any higher brain function. But learning by simple repetition like that is horribly inefficient and even more horribly boring. It takes little effort but very much time.

The second reason that typical language tapes aren’t very good is that they don’t teach you a language; they just teach you phrases. This might be sufficient if you just want to spend a week’s vacation somewhere and want to know how to order a beer and call a taxi, but it’s the wrong route to take if you want to actually learn the language. If you want to form sentences on your own and say what’s on your mind instead of parroting a few phrases, different means are necessary.

There are however language tapes that are much better. The best example that I know of when it comes to these is the Pimsleur Language Programs.

Pimsleur's study programs are what is called "formatted" audio courses. These differ heavily from the regular "hear a phrase and repeat it"-type tapes that abound. The formatted courses work much more like education with a teacher does, and the little differences between that and just repeating phrases can work wonders.

I only have experience with Pimsleur-courses, so I can only say for certain that what I say applies to them. You might find some different formatted courses that are just as good though, but unfortunately I don't have any recommendations for that.

With the "Pimsleur Method" you will activate your brain a lot more than with classical language tapes. You will have an instructor speaking English and two people who are native speakers of the language you're learning, and they will work together to really engage you.

When you're learning a new word it will be the same old "repeat what I'm saying"-routine. But after that it works totally different. The instructor will be asking you questions, saying "Do you remember how to say [some phrase or word]?" and things like that, which will involve your brain in a whole other way than just saying asking you to repeat something.

They will also let you construct your own responses. Once you've learned a few things you'll get questions like "Can you guess how you would ask for a beer?" The questions are never hard; you'll have learned all the information you need recently, it's just a matter of putting it together. But this really activates your brain, since it involves some higher reasoning skills too, instead of just listening and repeating. And that really helps you learn quicker and better.

here can be other things you'll have to figure out on your own too. For instance, in Pimsleur's course in Japanese you'll learn that "this evening" is konban in Japanese and "dinner" or "evening meal" is bangohan. After you've repeated those two words the instructor asks you if you can guess what part of the words means "evening". Of course it is ban, the only part that is the same. Again it is very simple questions to figure out, but they serve to active your brain and it really helps the experience to be more effective.

Friends

Anyone will tell you that if you’re going to learn a language it’s important to have someone to speak it with. And this is true, for several reasons.

If you are learning a language on your own, you have the disadvantage of not having anyone to correct you when you are wrong, and no one to speak with. Most other things associated with classroom learning are very dispensable, but a teacher and classmates are really good things at times. They're still not totally indispensable though.

nce you have started learning the basics of a language it will do you very good to find a friend who is already fluent in that language. Maybe you already know someone from a country where they speak the language you are interested in, or maybe you at least know someone who speaks it as a second language. But even if you don't, there's no need to fret. Thanks to the internet it has become easier than ever to find friends from other countries, who speak other languages, and there are tons of sites out there where you can search for international penpals for free.

I will mention internet friends again in the next part, but if you want to find one Interpals, Polyglot and Pen Pal Party are a few good places to start.

Having a friend to speak with really accelerates your language learning experience. Once again it's all about activating your brain. When you speak with someone, trying to hold an actual conversation, there are more parts of your brain that needs to get involved. You need to involve a lot of higher reasoning and imagination to put together sentences and this will keep your mind active and your brain working effectively.

And if you have a friend that speaks the language you will of course have the added advantage of being corrected when you are wrong. That might not always feel good, but it is necessary. And you should always remember that we all make mistakes, no matter what we do. So it is important to have someone who can point that out at times.

Culture

When you’re starting to get a hang of a language I really recommend starting to read and watch some popular culture in that language. This will both be enjoyable (as long as you pick some sort of entertainment you enjoy, of course), give you a heightened sense of accomplishment when you notice how much you understand, and help you to keep improving.

Much of the improvement will come from hearing the language under more natural circumstances. No matter how good a language course is, the examples can always sound a bit forced. Hearing words and phrases "in their natural environment" will help you to learn them, and to use them in a more natural way.

Unfortunately it can sometimes take a while before you easily understand a feature film or novel in the language you're learning. I will talk more about this in part three, but the essential thing is to start with easier things and work your way up. Start with things meant for children; even if they seem inane they will work for you. And the faster you can start enjoying the language in real situations, the faster you'll be able to advance to more grown-up forms of entertainment.

“Natural Learning”

There are many companies selling language courses that they describe as “natural learning” or something like that. I can't say that I really care for that method of learning.

The theory is that you should learn like a child learns. Instead of regular language education where you get instructions in English (or some other language that you already know), everything is in your target language. You just listen to words and phrases in the language you’re trying to learn, and associate them with pictures and things, just like a child listens to its parents and slowly learns how language relates to the world around it.

This sounds good on paper. You learned one language like that, so why not another? And it seems fun too; instead of listening to a bunch of tedious grammar rules you just learn to speak the language and let the grammar come naturally, just like when you first learned to speak.

To be honest, it does work. It’s just horribly inefficient. You already know at least one language, why not use that to your advantage? If you are an accomplished piano player who wishes to learn how to play the guitar, you don’t start from the beginning learning what notes, chords and so on are. You already know those things and you use it to learn quicker and better.

If you already know at least one language you already know a lot about grammar and about how sentences are constructed. You can ask intelligent questions about the differences between what you already know and the language you're trying to learn. That is a much easier method to learn.

In "natural learning" you learn much more by rote than by understanding. You learn what you should say, but not why. That makes it much harder to construct new sentences on your own, which makes it harder to learn and use the language.

Still, it might work for some. I've tried it and didn't like it, but for some it might be good, at least as a complement to regular language studies.

There is for instance a series of computer language courses called "Rosetta Stone" that seems to be using mostly this method and it seems at least halfway decent. I've tried it out briefly and I can't say that it is something I'd really recommend; it definitely has flaws. But if you happen to find it cheaply or really want to use it I guess you could do worse. I still recommend that you have at least a grammar book and something else too, though.

Vocabulary first

There are some who think that a language is nothing but a collection of words. In extreme cases these people might sit down with a dictionary and just start learning a whole bunch of words, thinking that understanding of the language will follow.

Of course that doesn't work.

A big part of what makes learning a language so fun and interesting is the fact that languages have many more differences than how the words sound. Each language you learn will have a different structure; sometimes just slightly different from what you know, sometimes dramatically different. Just learning words won't give you any appreciation or understanding of that.

Grammar first

At the opposite end of the spectrum we find those who think that a language is nothing but a set of rules. They will sit down with a book of grammatical rules and learn rule after rule with just a one or two paltry example sentences for every rule.

This is slightly better than just learning words, but not by much.

The truth is of course that a language goes beyond being just a collection of grammatical rules and words. It is also culture, expressions, sayings, modes of speech and so on. There is no way to learn to speak a language so that it sounds natural if you just dig yourself into books of grammatical rules or dictionaries. More importantly it's almost impossible to have any fun that way.

The best way to learn is a little of all three things I've mentioned here, but nothing of it exclusively. A good language course will teach you some words and sentences first, then after you've tried them on for size you learn the grammatical rules behind them. Building on that knowledge you can then learn more phrases and more rules.

Natively Language Exchange

I've mentioned this before, in this hub. It is about something that I found rather amusing, so please feel free to read it if you want to. But for you who haven't/won't read it I will summarize why I recommend that you stay away from them here:

I have seen a lot of ads on the internet for a place called “Natively Language Exchange.” I have never tested their products, but I would still like to issue a warning about the company. Judging from their advertisements they do very little fact-checking and proofreading, and if their language courses hold the same standard as their ads they are probably not very reliable.

They also advertise that you will learn a language in an incredibly short amount of time (they have said in many ads that you will learn a language in ten days). To my knowledge such claims have never been substantiated. Learning a language will require an investment in time; pretending that it won’t is just dishonest. Worse yet, it will discourage people from further language studies. When people try something like that they will be very disappointed after the ten days if they believed the marketing, and they will probably feel as if they are failures and not good at learning languages since they failed to learn one in the stipulated ten days.

There is a lot of material out there for anyone who wants to learn languages. Not all of it will suit you and maybe my recommendations aren't perfect for you. But no matter what you do to learn, remember that you always have to actually use your brain for it to work. That's the most important thing.

If you want some tips and tricks regarding language studies I recommend that you continue reading part three of this series. I've tried to collect the most important things that I've learned over the years there.