Learning a Language
Its a task many are familiar with, whether its for school or a trip to another country,
Everyone has atleast a little experience with it, but how come it is deemed as something
excessively hard to do?
Learning a language is a question of dedication and environment, perfect examples are the
differences between the first
and the second foreign languages you learn in school, regardless of what the second foreign
language you learn is.
English is something we grow up with, be that the similarity in vocab and grammar between
English and German or the many English loanwords
we use on a daily Basis, which is contrary to the environment of the second foreign
language, where you in most cases dont even hear
anything about until you have it in school.
If you ever tried to learn a language by yourself or failed miserably at the one in school you
probably turned to the internet in
hopes of discovering the hack to learning it easily, you will find sites like RosettaStone,
Duolingo or Babbel that try to tell you that
just half an hour a day can eventually lead you down a path of fluency in your target
language.
The reality is that learning such miniscule amounts will not let you remember a language.
Do YOU remember your second foreign language or could you even go as far as to dare say
you speak it?
I doubt it. The reason why you for the most part cannot learn a language in school is the
biggest key part, repetition.
A lot, and i really mean a lot of repetition. A good example that some may be able to
recognize is again, English.
The more you consume English Media and talk in English, especially online, the easier and
more intuitive the language becomes, for some
languages a method like that is harder because the entrance barrier to understanding the
basics of a language are higher, obvious
languages like Chinese, Japanese or Korean come to mind.
Before we move on to the last part i want to share how YOU can successfully start the
journey of learning a language.
While learning a language isnt easy by any means, its not anywhere near as hard as a lot of
people tend to assume, while the barrier
to entry differs from language to language, the basic concept of how to start learning stays
the same.
At first before you even touch anything else you search up a basic grammar guide and learn
that, right after or maybe even simultaneosly
you want to start building up vocabulary with the help of digital flashcards.
After youve done that its time to start the key part, immersion. You need to immerse yourself
in the language.
Now that the basics of why many fail to learn languages and how you can successfully start
learning one are done i still want to
talk a bit about the benefits of learning a new language.
Learning a new language opens up communication to a whole different culture and the
possibility to connect to many more people than
you were previously able to, as well as being able to enjoy media in the respective language
or being able to travel to the respective
country and talk to the locals.
There are also some other benefits that have been shown to improve cognitive functions
including Problem-Solving,
Verbal and Spacial Abilities, Memory Function, Creative Thinking Capacity and Multitasking
Capability.
I hope you were able to maybe learn something about learning a language!
