As someone who has taught languages for over 15 years and who has studied them for even longer, I often get asked how to learn efficiently and how to stop running in circles with a language.
In school the goal is to pass a test, and the class is meant to teach various students with various strengths and weaknesses in a standardized way, and the results are ALWAYS underwhelming unless the student is self-motivated and energized.
After we grow up we get rather stuck in a routine and it is hard to learn anything if we don't either change that routine or make what we want to learn part of our routine.
There’s also a lot of opinions floating around and a lot of trying to solve different problems with the same solutions.
Many people say it takes 5 or 10 years to really learn a language but what does proficiency mean? There are classifications of proficiency that I’ve seen B2 C1 whatever whatever, and I don’t know anything about that.
What i know is that my first goal in a language is to be able to have friendly, useful or meaningful conversations. For that, depending on the topic and speed and precision you hope to speak with, it could take anywhere between 2 days and a few months if you are focused and know what you are doing.
No it doesn’t have to take years.
Just remember, you won’t sound like a native, and that’s totally fine. How many times did you hear someone with a cute, intelligable accent and think “Idiot! Why don’t they get rid of their accent?”
Never. People don’t care about accents or tiny mistakes if they can understand you and if they aren’t too jarring.
You can worry about fixing these things and becoming more perfect once you are functional, because once you are functional everything builds on itself.
So yes, there are nuanced conversations to have about language but if you want to simplify a perfect formula for learning a language it goes like this:
STEP 1: Find reasons to get interested and excited
STEP 2: Use that as fuel to study grammar patterns and useful vocabulary
STEP 3: Put yourself in situations where you have to use what you learn
You can repeat these steps as much as you want but it’s really important to do them all and to know which one you are lagging in and which one you are engaged in.
Most people focus on one (or at best two) of these steps.
People often get lazy with #2 and try everything they can to avoid or replace it.
They also think they are doing one of the steps when they aren't.
Going to a language school or having a conversation partner doesn’t count as study unless you are actually learning the grammar rules or memorizing vocabulary in the process.
Practicing speaking doesn't count as using what you learn unless you actively practice what you’ve studied recently. Have a grammar target in mind.
Watching TV and learning a word or two is step 1, unless you are studying the show the same way you would a textbook.
Let's look at each of these:
1 Interest
Ideally you spend as little time on this as possible. This is purely about hyping yourself up and the faster the better but it is necessary. If it’s not working, seek something else that excites you within the different ways you could interact with the language. It's ok to spend a little more time with this in the beginning but once you find something that works, use it sparingly.
I find that in Japan people skip this step because they feel they should learn English, all the while knowing that they don’t REALLY have to learn even if it will benefit them. Meanwhile most of the world spends way too much time and energy on this.
Yes, if you enjoy a TV show, watch it. If you like people talk to them. But don’t mistake this for helping your studies. Once you feel energized about the language, anything after that is for fun, not for study.
2 Study
Everyone hates this part except for the few people who get addicted to it and forget part 3.
It’s not always fun to study and that’s why step 1 is so important. You need to use your excitement about the potential to use the language as fuel to want to study. You also have to believe that study will pay off and if you skip part 3, it won’t. So all 3 steps are vital unless you want to put yourself through a hell of 10x more study than is necessary.
I focus on a useful grammar pattern and just try to use it as much as possible. In the beginning this is way more fun because almost any basic pattern you learn will be very useful and let you say all kinds of things. Learning how to ask directions uses some of the same patterns that you need to find a lost item. Learning how to talk about your own likes and dislikes will make it easier to talk about other people’s likes and dislikes.
So for the basics I focus on grammar patterns and learn vocabulary in the process of my grammar studies.
I think textbooks are great insofar as they give you a checklist of necessary grammar and present it in a logical order (not all of them do). Everything else is fluff to me and I don’t need it. Some people prefer more wordy explanations that go deep into nuance but for me, I read that kind of explanation once I can already start speaking.
Speaking without another language to help you is the big gap you want to cross as soon as possible.
Now that I am trying to understand TV and novels in Japanese and Mandarin, I use games to study. I STUDY the games, I’m not just playing them. I watch the dialogue many tomes on YouTube, analyze each sentence, write down each new vocabulary word and sometimes the context I find them in.
I study the vocab as flashcards, ideally for an hour a day although sometimes much less, but I don’t progress until I am relatively confident with the vocab. In an hour you can get comfortable with anywhere between 10-50 words, depending on their difficulty and how good you get at remembering the context.
After I feel really confident about the vocabulary, I play through the game for review. The Tales series and Shin Megami Tensei have proven really good for practice for idioms, and semi-common verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. I am sure there are others.
Of course not all words are useful when we use fantasy, sci-fi, or historical stuff but that's ok. As long as 65% are useful, that's good enough.
You can do the same with books or movies, whatever is fun for you and whatever you can see yourself doing more of once you are more fluent in the language. I wouldn't recommend this to beginners though.
Conversation comes first.
3 Practice
What I think a lot of people mess up is this: just randomly trying to use a language isn’t focused practice. It’s not meaningless and it can be fun but focused practice speeds things up exponentially.
Focused practice means using what you have studied recently. For the first few years it usually revolves around grammar patterns or useful sets of vocabulary.
So when I am still a beginner and I just finish learning “I am..” “This is…”, I’ll spend a week just asking “who” “where” and “when” questions to solidify these important question words in my mind, along with the grammar that these questions use.
Repeat until the phrase comes out naturally. If you want to move on to new patterns, make sure to go back and review regularly.
It only takes a few weeks to be able to have a conversation. It may not be about politics or religion, but you can get to know someone fairly well with a few basic patterns and check a dictionary app whenever you don’t know the word.
That’s really it.
I think most of everything else about languages is just a trap to avoid doing the work, or to get you to spend money. There is a lot you could say about subtle nuances and its fun just to analyze languages and compare them and share experiences so I don’t want to discount the language learning communities or influencers who make videos on language learning. They have their place.
But even as a teacher, without worry that my job is at risk I insist that you don’t NEED a teacher to learn. It can make it easier, its great to have them as a resource, but really the learning process is entirely in your hands, and how well you make use of the teacher is more important than the decision to have a teacher.
I see my job as a teacher as identifying weak points, finding what needs attention, helping to develop good study habits and identifying what grammar and vocabulary will be the most useful for a specific student, and helping them sound more natural.
I often use all three steps in my classes to try and get students into a habit of studying and then using what they learn after getting in the proper mindset. I think it’s more than worth the money.
So there you go, you can start immediately. If you don’t know a good textbook you can download Duolingo and as you play, write down the useful phrases and make your own examples, checking a dictionary along the way.
I could easily charge for this information, but I feel I offer enough value in my classes and in many other ways that I don’t have to. If you are interested in studying with me please reach out here or on twitter or Instagram (ipluseverything). I am open to tips or donations, and I have lots of other work, which isn’t all about languages (fiction, culture podcast or music), but is all approached with a similar mindset that I can get more into another time.
じゃあね！
If you are interested in blogging here and earning some change while sharing ideas and making friends, send me a message on Instagram or Twitter (@ ipluseverything)
ブログで自分の思っていることをシェアしながら小銭を溜まったり新しい友達をできたりすることは興味あれば、InstagramやTwitter（@ipluseverything）でメッセージを送ってください。 英語のオンラインレッスンの興味ある人もどうぞ、メッセージをください^_^
Novels/music/merch/social media/patreon:
https://linktr.ee/selfhelp4trolls
Untangled Knots podcast:
Japanese Upbringing Explained (interview my Japanese student)
Join us in the Deep shitdiscord channel to talk about deep shit, art and culture differences
Confessions of the Damaged 1.1-1.3 on Amazon
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