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You’ve heard that people who can speak at least one other language make more money, right?
According to the Pew Research Center, this fact not only explains higher income. It explains why some states in countries like the United States are more successful than others.
So why don’t more people learn languages?
There are a few struggles. People are time-starved, poor in effective resources and they simply have never been taught how to learn independently as adults.
Today, we’re going to change that with some of the best tips for learning a language on your own quickly.
Why Languages Matter For Career Development
Businesses are always looking for ways to improve the bottom line. Period.
One of the best ways to do that is to expand into new territories. The problem is, most of the world doesn’t speak the language your company is based in.That’s where learning a language makes you the star employee. You’ll be able to consult on important projects, or be the head of development thanks to your language abilities.
You also simply become a better employee overall. As Judith Kroll’s research has shown, bilingual employees are more productive. This is because you develop the ability to handle multiple ideas much more efficiently.
Finally, bilingualism has been shown to improve brain health, particularly in terms of cognitive longevity. This fact means that merely by learning at least one other language, you’re fortifying your brain against issues like Alzheimer’s and Dementia. This in itself makes you a much better asset for your company, but also ensures that you’ll be able to enjoy your retirement better when the time comes.
How to Learn Any Language Fast
There are a number of steps to follow, all of which anyone can do.
Yes, some time management comes into play. But rest assured that even with just 30-40 minutes a day, you can make great strides in most languages. You just need to optimize the actions you’re taking and maintain your focus.
Here’s how:
Step One: Combine Media Input & Output
Before language learners get into things like memory techniques and mastering grammar, it’s important to understand what your brain needs in order to learn a language.
As we know from the rules of active recall, your brain needs variety above all. To do that, prepare yourself to engage in a mixture of:
- Reading
- Writing
- Speaking
- Listening
- Memorizing
These activities are called the “Big Five” of language learning.
Different teachers and theorists place different amounts of emphasis on which activities you should get in the highest dose. But the reality is that you need to combine them all. As you go through each week, you can vary the amounts. It’s the variety of exposure and different forms of output that matters most.
Now, you might be thinking: “How do I speak and write if I don’t know any words yet?”
Luckily, the next step tackles this issue directly.
Step Two: Limit Your Input Sources
A lot of language learners slow themselves down or utterly frustrate themselves by constantly gathering new learning materials. They’ve got shelves packed with language learning books and spreadsheets filled with links to YouTube channels and free learning blogs.
This harms your progress because you’re spending too much time hunting for materials and too little time using them.For this reason, you should limit yourself to:
- One textbook
- One audio program
- One video course
Then, when it comes to speaking and writing, even before you know any words, mimic the audio program to get some speaking in. Write out by hand the material covered in the lessons you’re learning – even if you have to start with the alphabet (or characters) used by the new language.
Step Three: Learn to Associate
By far the fastest way to commit new words and phrases to memory is to use association.
This means that you turn your brain into a kind of “Human Search Engine.”
For example, let’s say you want to learn “bonjour” in French. (I realize it’s a simple example you probably already know, but that’s so it’s easier to learn to associate.)
Using association, you look just at the “bon” part. Then you think about who or what you know that sounds just like that.
In my memory, “Bonnie” was the name of a character from the TV show Knight Rider. Or I think of Bon Scott who sang for AC/DC.
Because “bonjour” means “hello,” I will see this deeply familiar person from popular culture waving hello to a jury in a courtroom. Since “jury” sounds like the “jour” of “bonjour,” it’s now going to be much easier to remember.
There is no word or sentence under the sun that this technique cannot help you learn faster. The trick is to make sure that you’re specific when making the associations. So in this case, rather than think of a generic jury, you might want to imagine someone like Bon Scott waving to the jury of a famous trial you’ve read about in the news.
Step Four: Scale with a Memory Palace
Now that you know how to associate, in order to scale, the Memory Palace technique helps you memorize dozens of words every day.
A Memory Palace is a simple tool that comes to us from ancient times. It is a simple mental reproduction of a building you’re familiar with. For example, the ancient Romans used this technique to memorize their speeches. Ancient Aboriginals used their “Songline” version to remember thousands of medical plants by name, effect and location.
In other words, if you can imagine Bon Scott waving hello to a jury in your fridge, you can use the Memory Palace technique.
With a small amount of planning, you can create a Memory Palace for every letter of the alphabet. If you were to commit just 10 words to each of these Memory Palaces, within a week, you could have a vocabulary of 260 words.
After that, just rinse and repeat and eventually add entire phrases using the same technique.
Remember, basic conversations can be conducted in many languages with a vocabulary of just 1200 words. But you won’t have to settle for that amount of vocabulary, certainly not if you’re using the Big Five as you memorize.
You see, the more you use the words you memorize while reading, speaking, writing and listening in the target language, the more you’ll naturally absorb through context.
Step Five: Learn with a Teacher
The four steps we’ve just covered will get you a long way on your own.
But to truly accelerate the process, you’ll want to speak with a language learning teacher, ideally 2 times per week.
To show you how I myself engage in the process from scratch, I recorded this video with one of my teachers. It’s amazing how much you can get done in less than 30 minutes.
Step Six: Embrace the Ultimate Teacher
If you watch the example video I created for you, you’ll see that I make some mistakes. My memorization is not always correct, particularly when it comes to pronunciation.
But making mistakes is not a problem. It’s the path to the solution.
Provided that you’re relaxed about it, your brain will observe the mistakes and use them to make a map filled with points of comparison.
And the more you speak in the full willingness to make mistakes, the more observations and course-correction you’ll experience.
It’s a win-win, though admittedly, it can be hard to manage the ego. For that, I suggest always showing up to any learning session, solo or with a teacher, in a state of relaxation.
To do that, meditate and perform some Qigong or other simple stretching exercise. Some people also find that a simple gratitude journaling exercise helps to calm down the “monkey mind” chatter that gets in the way of progress.
No matter how you get yourself relaxed, it’s worth it because learning a language is a journey. There is no destination as such.
And, assuming English is your mother tongue, if you ever look through the Oxford English Dictionary, you’ll soon discover that you probably don’t know most of this English.
In every language I’ve ever studied, most native speakers agree that they could spend their entire lives just learning their own languages. So it truly is a journey without a destination.
And the people who will be hiring you throughout your career? That’s exactly the spirit they want to see:
Someone who’s all in and doing what it takes to succeed.
So what do you say? Are you ready to pick a language and start learning it using this simple set of strategies?
Anthony Metivier is the founder of the Magnetic Memory Method, a systematic, 21st Century approach to memorizing foreign language vocabulary, dreams, names, music, poetry, and much more in ways that are easy, elegant, effective, and fun.
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