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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, Croeso and Welcome.
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about…
Some Ways to Learn a Language by Yourself
How you go about learning a language by yourself will probably depend on what you want to use it for. If it’s just to go on holiday, it won’t need to be as difficult, or intense, as if you want to learn everything possible about the language. So, first, think about this. What do you want, or need, to learn to achieve your objective? Then, you can get started. This will also partly depend upon whether you’re starting from scratch, or refreshing a language that you may have learned at school.
I believe the easiest way to start learning a language is to use an app that teaches you. Which one you use, depends on several things. Can you afford to pay, or do you need an app that’s free to use? What kind of lessons do you prefer? The best way to decide which app to use is to try out a few and see how they work. Most will offer a free trial of a week or two before you have to pay. Using an app will generally be easier to keep the motivation going, too, because you’ll get reminders, even though you might curse them after a while. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use a language course book. You’ll just have to set your own reminders - maybe some kind of alarm on your phone to say STUDY NOW!
Another benefit of using an app is that it will give you an approximation of how the language is spoken. Yes, they’re AI voices, but those have improved tremendously over the past few years and you do have to start somewhere. That is something that’s much more difficult to get from a book. Some might use the IPA Symbols (the International Phonetic Alphabet) to determine this, but if you don’t know those, and I don’t, you’ll have to use some other method.
There are many resources that will let you listen to speakers who’ve spoken the language all their lives on YouTube, news broadcasts, podcasts and in songs. Choose the type of content you like to listen to and listen to it in the language you want to learn. You might not want to do this right at the beginning of your journey, but you should start doing it fairly soon after you start. Then, you can ensure that you are pronouncing things correctly and you’ll start to understand what the language truly sounds like. You really do need to understand the basics of pronunciation before you get too far into a language, because it’ll be difficult to change your habits if you leave it too long.
If we go back to books, there are some kinds of books that I would definitely recommend. Novels and non-fiction in your target language, preferably contemporary, because that will be most relevant to your language learning. Listening to media can, when you start, be too fast, but reading you can do at your own pace and there’s no slurring of words. What there is, though, is lots of colloquial language, especially in the novels, which you won’t get in your study materials. Yes, this language is, even then, perfected, with no uhms and ahs, just like it would be in English, but you will see lots of useful phrases that you can use, or at least store in your passive vocabulary so that you’ll recognise them when you hear them.
And … what about using AI to help? Well, I’m not yet in a position where I want to talk about that, but … soon. However, in the meantime, you might want to check out my videos on YouTube about Microsoft Word’s tools to keep you going.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, adiós, hwyl and bye for now.