Intro
I always wanted to learn more languages and be a polyglot. I have tried to learn spanish as a child and soon dropped my classes, I never passed the basic level. As an early teenager I took an expensive German class and again, ended up dropping it in less than 2 months, I could not even introduce myself in German.
I did learn English, but it took me 10 years of classes and one exchange semester in canada. Even after that I struggled a lot with grammar and spelling.
Another episode that stayed with me: After my 4’th year of English classes, my teacher had asked me to watch an episode of Friends, and I simply could not grasp a single dialogue!
In Jan 2021 I was inspired by a French person, who learned Portuguese in only 2 months, and who taught me about spaced repetition in language learning, so I got the motivation to give it one more try.
Last year I passed the b2 certification in Goethe institute in 8 months of self-study, and I didnt just study the whole time, I had a job and took courses. I did study every single day, but on most days I would study just 1 hour by the morning and be done. I am happy with my results: After one year of German I am reading Sapiens, a quite advanced book in vocabulary. I read my first book of english (kite runners) after 5 years of classes and by far had many more problems to grasp what was going on there.
So what Happened? What turned young me into the current me?
Here are my top tipps on what worked for me, I hope you can find them useful.
Anki looping
The single best tip is the Anki desktop app. If you can implement only one of these, go with this one. It does take a while to fully learn all the functionalities of this app and take the most of it, but I guarantee you it pays off.
A common mistake is to believe that Anki is an app to learn. It’s not!
Anki is the most popular implementation of SSR(spaced repetition systems) which is the most optimal way to memorize things in general. Basically, anki is an application that guarantees you wont forget what you learned from other sources.Whenever you learn a new word or grammar rule, add to anki you will remember it for longer, maybe forever.
It means it should be used alongside other methods, and you should not rely only on this. In other words, it is still important to consume content in your target language: read, speak, watch films, and whatever you can get. Your brain needs to make connections between these words in several contexts, instead of just remembering it’s translation.
An efficient way to quickly build your initial vocabulary with ANKI loop through these steps:
- Find a list Most spoken words on target language.
There are a few lists on mesmerize. I used the vocabulary B1 list from goethe institute. It also already comes with the sentences, so I got to skip step 2.
- Search for sentences with each word
For this I use reverso context. Try to choose easier sentences with only one unknown word whenever possible.
- Add to anki
Add the sentence in the target language on the front of an ANKI card with audio, and add the target word in bold. on the back you add the translation to your native language. I prefer to use google translations, as they are more reliable.
- Practice your Anki every day!
Between 5 to 20 new words a day, depending on your availability. It is important to do all your reviews every day. Remember to set your limit of reviews/day to a high number, If you don’t the app will automatically limit you to 50 and the method will not work..
This loop is specially suited for beginners. After you pass initial vocabulary you can rely on the content you consume and stop using lists of words.
Anki tips:
The easier and more automatic you make it to grasp new sentences the more likely you are to actually stick with the habit. How many habits you know are useful but you dont implement on your daily routine? I have also many moments when I dont feel like adding a word and end up forgeting it, but ANKI is only as useful as you make it to be. So here is a few ways to make it easier:
- Easily grasp sentences from videos and netflix is this chrome extension: Language Reactor S you don’t need to rewrite the subtitles of your movies and can instead copy and paste from netflix and youtube.
- Automatically grasp words while reading with Readlang website that also has a chrome extension
- I coded a file parser that turns your Readlang file into a better ANKI formatting(requires that you use python). It is available in this github repo. have more tipss? reach out for me! I like to always improve on my method : )
Credits to this method:
Like many things in life I did not compile this method from scratch, instead I learned to implement someone else’s and made modifications to better suit it for me. People I need to give credit to are Mairo Vergara and Tim ferriss
Couchsurfing
Couchsurfing is a paid Travel application. It is mainly used to request a free host when traveling and meeting locals.
A less common use of couchsurfing is to use it as a language practicing tool. It is way more efficient than tanden apps (in my opinion) because you can get to meet people in person more easily, at least when you live in a big or touristic city. In São Paulo it was perfectly suited. From my experience it works also better than paid tutoring apps, such as italki or preply. The prices in those apps start around 10 USD range and most of the cheap teachers are not so good. On couchsurfing you can casualy meet a native, and have autentic conversations, and for free. Couchsurfing has a search filter that includes languages spoken, by adding your target language you can see both travelers or locals who declared to speak this lanugage. Then text everyone who you find with a friendly message and ask them to hang out.
Some people will ignore you, but you can reduce the probability of being ignored if you write an appropriate first message, by appropriate i mean, customized and that raises interest in you.
By customized I mean, in your presentation message you should include something that shows you have read the person’s profile. People like to think you have interest in them as people, so do not send the same message to everyone.
It is also important to present yourself as an interesting person they would like to know. One way to do it is to offer to give something in return for their time. For example, “I can show you the best restaurants in this city”, or “I can teach you another language that I know”. Another way is to comment on an interest you two have in common, if they like soccer and you are into soccer there you go, your ticket to an interesting conversation.
It is normal to be shy if you haven’t mastered the language yet, but the sooner you can overcome initial shyness the better. One way to avoid awful silences is to prepare a list of interesting questions you often ask when meeting new people, translate them to the target language and add them to your Anki. Prepare also your own answers to those questions and add them too, same for commonly asked questions people might ask you. If your speaking partner answers something you do not fully understand it is okay, your main goal here is to keep the conversation flowing.
Learn genders and plurals from the start
One severe mistake I made when learning German is to procrastinate the genders and plurals until I was almost fluent, and most of the grammar. I thought I would learn them naturally over time, but in this specific language the words can change gender according to case. So for example, the feminine article die</die> becomes the masculin article der on dative case and genitive case.
As a consequence I came to learn several words as masculine, when in reality they are feminine! Now I made a gender and plurals Deck to reeducate myself and am slowly getting better, but it did cost me a lot of time.
So whenever adding a word to your vocabulary add the gender and plural. If you are adding a new verb, add to the same card information about its conjugation, is it a regular or irregular verb? Or in the case of German, is it a treenbar or untrennbar verb?
Keep the reading habit with Kindle
One important habit in order to become fluent in any language is reading. It is important to read something you are actually interested on, otherwise you can hardly keep motivated.
For me what worked is filling my kindle with german books. I can take it with me anywhere and have little bites of german practice on the go, on moments I would usually have nothing to do.
Kindle comes with an integratd dictionary, so it is way more convenient to read in forengn languages than needing to open the google translator just to check for that word, specially in comparison to reading on the paper.
On top of that, Kindle allows users to read 10% of each book for free, which is often enough if you jump from one book to another. If you do buy the books, there is a way to change your address on amazon website, and pretend you live in your target country. By doing this you get to buy the books much cheaper. You can also convert downloaded epubs and pdf’s, or buy old books, those tend to be cheaper.
The only flaw I see on the method is, there is no easy way to add the new words to ANKI, if you read on the web you can easily copy and paste sentences. Nothing is perfect I guess.
If you have any questions reach out by e-mail (see on footer).