By Dhwani Desai
I speak two languages and am trying to learn two more, Spanish and ASL. They take a while to learn but are not impossible to understand. Luckily, I have a great Spanish teacher who knows four languages fluently!! I've learned all the tips in this post from him and his class.
The beginning- learning the words
The central part of any language is the words. Learn a few keywords that relate to you. For example, we did a vacation activity. Part of this activity was to write down any buildings/places you'd visit on a trip and translate them into Spanish. If the words connect to you, you're more likely to remember and apply them in the future. After learning some words, relate them to their past and present tense, but this is a minor step at the beginning. Do this whenever you feel comfortable with the language.
Connecting words to make phrases
After learning some words, connect them to make phrases. For example, hola, como, and estas combine to make "hola, como estas." which means "hello, how are you?" Individually, though, hola means hello, como means how, and estas means are. Combining phrases helps you develop an understanding of how words flow in the language you are trying to learn, as compared to your native language. For example, in English, the sentence structure is subject, verb, and predicate, however, in Spanish, the sentence structure is predicate, verb, and subject. Knowing the sentence structures of the language you are trying to learn will help a lot in developing fluency.
Pronunciation
When you read a language, you aren't learning how to pronounce it, you only learn how to read and write it. (At least, in the initial stages.) But if you are interested in mastering every aspect of the language, whether it be oral, written, or reading, you need to know how words are pronounced and how fast things are said. For example, if a non-English speaker was learning a greeting, such as "what are you up to," they would pronounce each word individually, or not catch on to the slang. One way you can fix this is by watching TV shows or movies in your desired language after learning a few common words or phrases. This way, instead of a person sounding out each specific word, they can combine two words into a commonly used phrase. (Instead of saying "what are you up to" you can say "whatcha up to?") Now, this technique is not meant to ruin the originality of the language, but knowing slang will help you understand and interpret the more modernly converted language.
Practice is key
When free and have nothing to do, review a few phrases or make up a few sentences in your desired language. That way, you will remember it because you refresh yourself daily. As mentioned before, songs, tv shows, and movies are excellent ways to practice pronunciation and learn new words.
Bloom's Taxonomy
My teacher taught me that memorizing and remembering work, but not in the long run. He introduced me to Bloom's Taxonomy. This pyramid shows the level of learning a student should go through to know a subject. My Spanish teacher follows this pyramid and allows us to experiment with being on track and following the district's criteria.
Learning a language- at first thought, the task seems impeccably hard. New words, accents, dialects, phrases, and commonly used slang are all crucial parts of learning the language and achieving mastery. But with this article, we hope that the process to start learning a language seems less difficult! Remember, all it takes is a start. If you give just a few minutes a day to learning different parts of a language, before you know it, you will have another method of communication under your belt! As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments. We are not experts, but we can definitely help to make the process smoother.
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