If you talk to a person in a language that he understands, you are talking to his mind. If you speak his native language, you speak to his heart.
We have written more than once about the benefits of learning a second, third or tenth foreign language. This is an excellent exercise for the brain, improves cognitive abilities, allows you to better concentrate on tasks and protect yourself from external stimuli, is the prevention of Alzheimer's disease.
But we are all busy people and the standard terms of learning a foreign language (4-5 years) do not suit us. The pace of life has accelerated, and everything else has accelerated. And a huge number of methods have appeared that allow you to cope with this task in 3 months.
In a guest post on Zen Habits, Maneesh Sethi, author of the Hack The System blog, shares his methodology. He has been studying foreign languages for four years and now speaks English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German. It took Manish 3 months to learn Italian, 2 months to learn Spanish, and about 3 weeks to learn Portuguese.
Manish Seti believes that in order to successfully and quickly learn a foreign language, first of all it is necessary to change the approach — to become an active student who not only allows himself to be taught, but also takes part in the process and constantly asks questions.
The only "but" in this system: in order to learn a new language in 90 days, you must spend at least 3-4 hours every day on training and at least the first month to study with a teacher. If you do not have such an opportunity, then the deadlines are stretched, but at the same time there are still much less than the standard deadlines for learning a language.
This is a period of intensive language learning and working with a tutor. According to Manish, group classes relax and allow you to be lazy. One-on-one lessons with a teacher boost language learning and constantly keep you in good shape. Every day you have to learn 30 new words.
Why exactly 30? Because in 90 days you will know the language by about 80% and your vocabulary (a little less than 3,000 words) will be quite enough for free communication.
After the first intensive month of studying, you are already quite able to communicate with native speakers. After all, it is communication, and not completing tasks from a textbook, that allows us to memorize new words and phrases well.
The ideal would be to visit the country whose language you are studying. But I think that, if this is not possible, visiting conversational clubs will be enough.
For the third month, your estimated level of language proficiency should be enough to watch movies and read books. At the same time, you should learn 30 new words every day for the entire period.
Manish also thinks that if you don't have a couple, it would be great to find a partner who is a native speaker. Once he met a man (an American) who spoke Russian fluently. Manish asked how long it took him to learn this complex language. To which he replied: "Two wives."And now the most important thing: resources and applications that will allow you to cope with the task.
You can use special applications to memorize words. If you prefer Apple devices, then you may need the Genius app. The app carefully selects questions or words using the interval repetition method. The more often you make mistakes, the more often the program will ask you questions. Manish recommends making the program offer a word in your native language that needs to be translated into a foreign language. Then it will be better remembered, because it is always more difficult to translate from your native language into a foreign one. And we are not looking for easy ways.
For PC users, the Anki program is recommended, which allows not only to learn a foreign language, but also to prepare for various exams.
In addition to the familiar "Google Translator", you may find it useful WordReference.com (to work with most Romance languages) and dict.cc (for learning German).
For conversational practice, you can look at The Mixxer — a resource that allows you to find interlocutors for conversational practice via Skype.
If you are not familiar with the service yet Couchsurfing.org , read this article. In the same piggy bank goes and Meetup.com .
I want to add a few words from myself. I understand perfectly well that such a forced way of learning a foreign language is not available for many. After all, 4 hours of classes every day for a month is much more expensive for many than the monthly cost of classes with a tutor.
Unfortunately, we cannot download a software package with languages directly into our brain. But if you study with a teacher at least two or three times a week, replenish your vocabulary by 30 new words every day, read books, watch movies and try to think in the language you are studying, then you should definitely succeed. And of course, to talk, talk and talk wherever possible.
