I often see people asking how to learn a language in the shortest possible time. Besides having taught Spanish as a foreign language for almost two decades, I’ve learned several languages: French, Italian, Romanian, English, and Turkish. On my language journey I had seven years of English classes in public school that didn’t even get me as far as asking the time. Then I studied French, Italian, and Romanian at university for five years, but I never reached a satisfactory level of fluency. It was only when I learned Turkish to a fairly high level—without ever setting foot in a language class or taking a private lesson—that I understood what I’d been doing wrong for the previous fifteen years. I’ve always been passionate about this topic, and I’m about to finish a PhD on second-language acquisition. I’d like to share my experience and knowledge about how to learn languages, to save you years of suffering and thousands of euros in your learning process. Of course, I know everyone is different, and some people genuinely enjoy going to language classes (especially mine), so this method doesn’t have to work for everyone.
What do you need to speak a language?
Although there are many
theories about this, we can sum it up in four elements, which I’ve very
loosely adapted from Paul Nation’s book, The Four Strands of a Language
Course:
— A sufficient level of vocabulary (no need to explain this one)
— A basic understanding of grammatical rules (this is usually overrated)
— Productive fluency (how easily you can produce utterances by combining the grammar and vocabulary you already know)
—
Receptive fluency (how easily you can process and understand utterances
given that you can decode their vocabulary and grammar).
It’s worth noting that the two fluencies (does this word exist in plural?) are different because you can’t produce utterances with vocabulary you don’t know, but you can understand them from context.
Unfortunately, most language courses—or at least the twenty years of courses in five languages that I’ve attended—focus on an initial acquisition of vocabulary and an explanation of grammar, while skipping over fluency training and realistic strategies for retaining the vocabulary learned.
If that’s so, why do people go to language classes?
People go
to language classes to offload responsibility for their own learning.
This may be because they don’t have enough knowledge to take charge of
the process—just like going to a restaurant to have a dish you don’t
know how to cook. It may also be because, in our capitalist minds,
paying a certain amount of money equals getting the expected results
without having to put in much effort, like those who sign up for a gym
in January and don’t set foot in it all year. Many people also enjoy
learning languages in a social environment, which is completely
respectable—and, for a very long time, paid my bills.
So, how can I learn a language without taking a course?
Let’s suppose you know nothing of a language.
The
first step in learning a language has to be learning words. A
researcher whose name I’ve forgotten said something like, you can speak
in a language without knowing grammar, but you can’t say anything if you
don’t know any words.
Etch this into your head: you have absolutely
no business being in a language class if you don’t know a minimum of
words. In fact, the first thing a teacher will do is teach you some
words—most likely those for personal introductions—so the class can even
start. Those words are in the first unit of any coursebook and you
don’t need anyone to teach them to you. Also, unless you’re learning an
extremely minority language, you’ll be able to find YouTube videos that
teach them to you.
And here’s where things get a bit crazy, because unless you do something, you’re going to forget everything.
Ninety
percent of what’s learned in class is forgotten before the last student
has walked out the door and the teacher has rushed off to make a
coffee. Hundreds of studies say this (including mine), but it’s an
uncomfortable reality teachers prefer to ignore so they don’t have to
take responsibility for students’ long-term learning.
Therefore, the
only option is to repeat and practice the words you’ve learned. That’s
Ignacio’s first law: what you don’t practice, you forget. Thank God
(sorry—thank science!) there are lots of techniques, programs, and
mobile apps that help with memorization. The best of all—the unicorn—is
Anki, a flashcard app. If you’re lucky, someone will already have
prepared a deck at your level; if not, you’ll have to write them
yourself as you learn new vocabulary. Every time you learn a new word
and the demon of pride whispers that you don’t need to put it in Anki,
remember Ignacio’s first rule and add it. If the language you’re
learning is Chinese, you can use the HSK levels to learn in stages. If
you’re learning English, Paul Nation’s own lists are quite good, and
there’s a dedicated book, the General Service List. Unfortunately, very
few languages have coherent vocabulary lists. Other repetition
strategies include vocabulary notebooks, the Leitner card system, and
Quizlet.
How many words do you need to know?
To speak a language
fluently, according to Paul Nation, you need to know about 3,000 word
families. Five thousand is enough to start reading YA novels, around
7,000 to watch television, and about 15,000 to understand educated
speakers when they’re being pedantic.
However, my answer is that to speak a language fluently you only need… about 10 words!
This
is Ignacio’s second law for language learning: no matter your level,
you can always speak, even if only a little. And whatever you say, you
can do it fluently. Which brings us to the next topic… what is fluency
and where can I buy some?
Fluency and how to acquire it
As I said earlier, productive
fluency is the ability to produce utterances with ease, comfort, and
speed, using the lexical and grammatical resources you’ve already
learned. Receptive fluency is the same but for receiving messages,
although you can potentially understand words you don’t know through
context.
Theoretically (and in practice too!) it’s possible to be
fluent from day one. You just have to practice a lot what you learn.
Practicing a lot has an extra advantage: vocabulary practice counts as
the spaced repetitions that keep you from forgetting what you learn. So
if you’re practicing a specific set of content, besides increasing your
fluency, you’ll be fixing your vocabulary in long-term memory and
preventing forgetting.
How to achieve receptive fluency?
The key to receptive fluency
is listening to or reading content that is comprehensible for your
level. This means that although there are some words you don’t
understand, you can grasp the general and literal meaning of the text;
in other words, you can infer the unknown words from context. For graded
readings this means that between 95% and 98% of the vocabulary must be
known, and this probably applies to listening materials too. That is,
you need to read and listen to easy content, without trying to learn new
vocabulary. Fluency is a jealous lover: when you practice fluency, you
have to practice it—forget about learning (almost any) vocabulary, even
if you incidentally pick up the odd word, especially if you ask what it
means during a conversation.
Now, this is obviously easier at
intermediate and advanced levels than at beginner levels. How can I
practice fluency at the start? Luckily, in the 21st century we have the
help of thousands of volunteers on YouTube and other platforms creating
comprehensible-input content. Here’s an example of how I would do it
(and have done it): find low-level comprehensible-input content and use
it first to learn the vocabulary. Write down all (all) the words used in
the video and memorize them with Anki. You can do this by copying them
directly from the video transcript. You can use ChatGPT to make you a
list with the translated equivalent of each word, or do it by hand with a
dictionary. When you’re confident you’ve memorized all the words, go
back to the video and try to understand everything it says. The first
time you won’t understand anything. Try turning on subtitles and
reducing the speed. Once you manage to understand it, turn off the
subtitles and increase the speed, making it progressively harder. When
you can understand it all, find another video and repeat.
To practice
receptive fluency in its reading variant, you can do the same with
adapted texts—if they exist in the language you’re learning—trying to
read faster each time. However, I find reading less important, since you
normally have all the time you want to read, but not to listen to what
people say to you in the street.
How to achieve productive fluency?
The only way to improve
productive fluency is to produce utterances. Who would’ve thought! Of
all the ways I’ve tried, there are two you can do on your own. The first
is the famous drills of the audiolingual method. If you’re not familiar
with this Spartan method—developed to teach languages to U.S. soldiers
after World War II—let me explain. Teachers using this method had large
classes repeat sentences in which they only had to change one or two
elements. The goal was to repeat the same sentence hundreds of times
until it was seared into the brain. This method works very well when
your students are soldiers who can be sent to the brig if they skip your
lesson, but it’s unbearable for anyone paying for a language class
after eight hours in an office; hence it’s not widely used in today’s
commercial educational settings. However, it does work for building
productive fluency.
How do you do an audiolingual drill? Write a
simple sentence, like “I want to go to the train station,” and next to
it a list of words that can replace one part of it, such as “the
university,” “the bus stop,” “home,” etc. Then repeat the sentence,
substituting “to the train station” with each of the words you’ve
written. This works best if you have a partner who asks you, “Where do
you want to go?” This is just one example of the exercises you can do—if
you’re interested, look online. The public FSI books have lots of drill
examples, though they’re quite dated (but they’re free!). You can also
ask ChatGPT to create drill exercises and cross your fingers that it
produces something consistent.
A more modern-style drill could be to
try talking about what you did during the day: first give yourself 5
minutes to speak, then 2 minutes, then 1 minute, reducing the speaking
time while repeating the same task. The spirit of the exercise is the
same: use what you already know, but faster each time.
Another
exercise to improve fluency is (brace yourself) talking to people. If
you live in a country where the language is spoken, simply study a topic
you can talk about with natives. For example, if you’ve just arrived,
try to learn food expressions like “What’s your favorite?”, along with
food names, or street directions. It doesn’t matter if you lie through
your teeth or ignore people’s recommendations—the important thing is
that sentences come out of your mouth. But be prepared, because in
uncontrolled environments people tend to ask their own questions like
“Where are you from?” and “What are you doing here?” or even “You’re not
a spy, are you?” If you’re a bit lucky, you’ll make friends as well as
practice the language.
If you don’t live in the country where the
language is spoken, try to find native speakers in your city (immigrants
and tourists), or online (HelloTalk).
Technically, we’re talking
about practicing in controlled environments (drills) and progressing to
free environments (the street). Your goal should always be the free
environment. With drills alone you’ll never achieve sufficient fluency.
Private lessons? Groups?
In my humble opinion, groups are very
ineffective in terms of time invested versus gain provided. I say this
as a student but also as a teacher of such groups… That said, I think
both private lessons and groups offer a very good opportunity to create
communicative situations in which to practice fluency. I don’t think
class time is useful for anything else, especially for learning
vocabulary (though I myself end up teaching vocabulary now and then,
pressured by the syllabus).
Classes are good insofar as you can use
that specific context (talking with other students, talking with a
native) to your advantage—usually to gain productive fluency. That’s why
it’s important that a group class follow a strictly communicative
method and that your classmates be willing to speak in the target
language. If it’s a one-to-one teacher, it’s easier: you just have to
ask them not to try to “teach” you things while you’re together—just to
talk about topics you more or less master and let you practice what
you’ve learned on your own (technically this would be a semi-controlled
environment, halfway between drills and talking to people on the
street).
Of course, this assumes your vocabulary is growing outside class.
What about grammar?
I don’t think there’s a language with a
more difficult grammar than Turkish; if there is, I don’t know it. I
never set foot in a class to learn it. Fortunately, the world is full of
grammar books, and coursebooks are packed with grammar explanations,
since writing about grammar is every self-respecting teacher’s hobby.
Once you grasp grammar theoretically, using it falls under fluency. If
you learn a grammar structure but aren’t going to use it, it’s useless.
Learn grammar in exactly the same way you learn vocabulary: in order to
use it in fluency activities.
If you don’t understand something, you
can ask a teacher, or ask in a learners’ forum, or any native speaker on
the street. Just say a sentence and ask if it’s correct. By the way,
that’s Ignacio’s third law: any speaker is a potential teacher.
Grammar is extremely overrated.
What about pronunciation?
In languages with very difficult
phonetic systems—such as Chinese, or English (if you’re reading this and
you’re a native speaker of English, let me tell you that your language
has a phonetic system forged by Sauron in the fires of Mount
Doom)—you’ll need to put in some work on pronunciation. However,
pronunciation isn’t especially different from fluency, in the sense that
the hard part isn’t pronouncing well—it’s pronouncing well and fast,
especially in a real communication context. Practice it within your
drills, just like you practice everything else.
Beyond that, on my
language journey I’ve realized that pronunciation—even when it’s truly
atrocious—usually isn’t too big an obstacle to comprehension. Try to pay
attention to it, and if someone doesn’t understand you, try to
pronounce more slowly or use other words, without getting nervous.
Nerves and embarrassment are the enemies of language learning.
That’s all—good luck on your learning journey. Let me just sum up everything I think:
1 — You can speak without grammar, but never without vocabulary. Vocabulary comes first.
2 — Anki is your best friend. Repeat and practice.
3 — Comprehensible input to practice receptive fluency.
4 — Drills and repetitions to practice productive fluency.
4 — Talk to people on the street. That’s what you’re learning for.
5
— If you have friends or a teacher, talk to them. Don’t give them the
chance to explain grammar or vocabulary to you. Don’t waste time.
6 — Use books to learn grammar, and if you don’t understand, ask. But don’t forget grammar is overrated.
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