Learning a new language as an adult is difficult. But while you may think developing fluency in a foreign language is impossible, it is possible. In addition, being bilingual will open doors for you and make travel easier.
Although there will be times when you get frustrated, you can still advance your language skills through effort and determination. There are many valuable tips to learn a new language quickly. For example, if you have even a little bit of experience with Machine Learning, you understand that the human brain is, in fact, an extensive neural network. And if it is so, then you can work with it according to algorithms known in ML. So I found a universal way to learn any foreign language to an average level in a reasonable time. You can even learn the language by playing a foreign online casino website from your home.
When you are tired of false promises
Unfortunately, those who know best how to learn a language prefer to tell you about it in their courses and for money. So people come to open lectures hoping to get sound advice and leave with nothing. But there is a working method that can help everyone.
What to expect from this method?
The fact is that until recently, this method was as labor-intensive as traditional methods and was available to very stubborn or capable people. Fortunately, the development of modern technology has reduced the amount of effort required and made it more exciting and straightforward.
The method does not require you to have special abilities in languages – I, for example, do not have them at all. The only thing is to be able to concentrate on one task and work on it independently for an hour or two.
The proposed algorithm has two advantages: learning speed and a guaranteed result. First, if you study on schedule, it is enough to six months to reach the “about average” (if it’s one of the typical European languages). Then, after a year, you will know the language better than you need in life if you are not an interpreter or live in another country.
The method works best in the beginning stages and up to an advanced level, but you have to think for yourself about how to move on. But 99% of people are enough to know the language is mediocre, i.e., read your favorite books in the original, watch movies or TV shows, talk to the locals on vacation. So this level is not difficult to achieve.
The peculiarity of the approach is that you first need to make a serious effort for a brief period (three weeks). But the further you go, the less you have to exert yourself.
Problems with the standard methods of learning
If learning a language is not very difficult, why do many people fail? The reason is the wrong approach to organizing the process.
A person decides to learn a language and is full of enthusiasm. He enrolls in courses, buys a self-teacher, or starts a semester/quarter at school. The person does not skip classes; he honestly does the exercises and writes out the words. It is incredibly dull, and his enthusiasm gradually wanes. Nevertheless, there is some progress.
Some time passes, and suddenly an event distracts him from his studies for a few weeks. It could be a vacation, a jam at work or a freelance job, a break, finally. But, almost inevitably, something happens in a person’s life in six months that strongly interferes with his studies.
After a few weeks or a month, this person manages to return to study, but it turns out that he forgot a lot during this time. So he has to start from where he was not a month ago but two or more months ago. It takes an iron will to start all over again in such a situation.
It may seem like some silly juggling of numbers, but it becomes a new reality for the student in practice. If you don’t forget much, then learning a language turns from a feat into a simple chore. Your learning function becomes virtually undiminished: the more time you spend, the better you know. Finally, you get bored or don’t have time – you stop learning, and a year later, you start again from almost the same place.
So, the sum of knowledge is the product of the rate of knowledge acquisition over time. One variable, time, is strictly limited. To overcome this barrier, there are a couple of months, six months at most. The amount of knowledge required cannot be reduced. The only thing that remains is the speed of learning. We must increase it enough to be able to overcome the potential barrier in a few months.
So, the main problems that prevent you from learning a language are
A time-consuming process that requires a lot of diligence. Any inevitable interruption leads to forgetting the material and backtracking significantly.
- The student has few positive and many negative stimuli, and he constantly forgets everything, is confused, makes mistakes, and does not understand a living language.
- It would seem that a person without special abilities or an iron will is doomed. But there is a nuance.
Why taking the barrier is not a problem
Is it possible in principle to overcoming this barrier in a short time? Surprisingly, yes. We can demonstrate this with another analogy: neural networks. Learning a language, especially at the beginning, is like training a neural network. Each of us has a speech center in our head, and it can be trained to “see” another language just as you can train your brain to see some object. It is our innate superpower, and learning happens by itself.
Once the brain recognizes structure in another language, the linguistic information is given high priority and almost ceases to be forgotten.
It happens so quickly that it would be more correct to call it enlightenment rather than overcoming a potential barrier. One minute you are in the dark; the next, you realize that you know the language.
As with the neural network, the brain needs to be introduced to as many different examples as possible. With traditional teaching, on the contrary, students encounter only very simplified, always correct grammatical forms, which leads to slow progress. So you can even play Blackjack online with a native speaker.
The essence of the method
The method is based on the approach of the famous archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who spoke at least 14 languages. When he wanted to learn a new language, he took a book in that language, found its translation, and read them in parallel. Then, since it was difficult to use a dictionary in those days, he read the book several times to memorize all the words.
Another key to success was the regularity of study: an hour every day. He also wrote essays in a new language, read them to the teacher, and memorized all the corrections.
Nowadays, there is no need to compare parallel texts: an electronic translator can translate any passage quite decently. Also, there is no need to read the same thing many times because you can quickly look up the meaning of words in an electronic dictionary. And there is no problem with listening to texts when there are e-books, videos on Youtube, and word dictionaries.