Learning a language can be daunting. Whether you are starting out with some beginner’s French or brushing up your business English for an important interview you may find some of these techniques useful.
Every learner has an individual learning style that suits them best. While lessons and textbooks have to be designed to be beneficial to as many different learner types as possible, home studying providers learners with a chance to experiment, and find ways of learning that really work for them. All learners have ideas about ways to learn and remember vocabulary and grammar, based on how we were (or are still being) taught at school; repetition (written and oral), flash cards, exercises in text books and so on. These ways are not always the most effective for an individual. And the only way to find out what works best is to try out some other techniques.
One of the most successful ways to ensure something is remembered is to teach it. While just reading is likely to result in 30% retention, teaching will result in a 70% retention rate in just about everyone. If you are struggling to remember a particular or complex idea in grammar, teach it to a sibling, parent, goldfish even. The very act of explaining it, out loud, will mean you get a fuller understanding of the rule. If you can’t explain it, it probably means you need to go back and study a little more until you can explain it.
One of the best ways, which again works for most learning styles is called “Total Immersion”, the extreme of this method entails moving to a country that speaks that language. In less extreme cases nothing but the target language is spoken or written in lessons. It’s a little difficult to enforce during private study time, but, with the power of the internet to hand you can often find online content of favourite films and TV shows dubbed into the target language. Watching these provides a form of immersion, that doesn’t entail moving to a new country.
Some learners are visual. This can be a hindrance when what’s being learnt is a language, as it’s all about words, grammar rules and other aspects that don’t naturally click for visual learners. But language activities can be made visual by drawing. This doesn’t have to be as simple as drawing the object for the word being learnt; by using mnemonic tricks in the drawing it can become much more effective. The French word for rug or carpet is “tapis”, so a student might draw a carpet with a tap in its design, or a rug flowing from a tap. Using visual metaphors is a great mnemonic device, but works best when created by the student as an individual.
Another mnemonic idea is that associating objects with a room or town that is well known to the learner. Using a town is more useful than just a room when remembering vocabulary as each object can be put into a logical space. The word for book would be remembered sitting on library shelf. Active verbs can be kept in a sports centre, adjectives in a park or gallery.
The best learning techniques will always vary learner to learner, so try various techniques, so long as it’s fun and it works, it doesn’t matter how things get learnt.
This post was submitted by mb011085.
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