Self-taught language learning

Learning a new language can seem long and painful. However, if you remain patient, rigorous and diligent, you can learn a language on your own.

Not everyone can take private lessons or go on a trip abroad. Even if having a teacher is very useful for receiving explanations and corrections, escaping school rules can allow you to build your own learning framework. Here are a few tips to get you started.

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Different memory types

Auditory memory

Don’t hesitate to put your senses to the test when learning a language, by turning to songs, for example. By singing, even if you can’t translate the phrase, you become familiar with the language. You even end up knowing how to construct a sentence without realising it; for example, when you sing in English, you use grammatical structures specific to that language.

Of course, you can also listen to films and TV series. It’s not always necessary to make a vocabulary list; some words are so recurrent that they are memorised. It’s best to avoid translating every word you don’t understand and try to guess what it means. The more you hear it in different contexts, the better you’ll know how to use it.

Visual and kinaesthetic memory

Visual memory is often better known. For kinaesthetic people, using their body, making gestures and interacting with objects or people helps them to better understand and retain information. For example, you can close your eyes and say to sleep, then open your eyes and say the opposite, to wake up.

In terms of visual memory, you can visualise, i.e. imagine or act out an event in your head. This helps to make information more concrete, right down to remembering small details. There are tests to determine your memory type, such as the Sherpa test.

Immersion

Learning with your senses

Immersing yourself in a new culture and being in frequent contact with another language drastically speeds up its acquisition. That’s why going abroad is a great way to learn. However, going abroad is not enough; if you don’t practise, you won’t learn anything.

It is possible to recreate this immersion at home. All you have to do is immerse yourself in the language. You have to listen to it, speak it, write it, so use your senses. You can do this on the internet, simply by listening to a youtuber whose native language is the one you want to learn.

It’s better to study for a few minutes a day than for two hours at the weekend. This is where discipline is important; sometimes you have to force yourself to study a little, even when you don’t feel like it.

What tools are needed to learn ?

To begin with, the phone, by changing the default language. You can of course download applications such as Todai or Memrise, which allow you to work on the bus or during a break. Some applications even allow you to practise speaking, which is essential. It’s not enough to be able to read a language, you have to be able to speak it.

Then there are the books. Starting a novel in a foreign language is extremely difficult, but it’s less so for a comic book. You can even start with children’s books, which contain basic vocabulary and simple sentence structures. Books like the Tip Tongue series move gradually from one language to another, which is also useful. Small actions can bring about big changes.