How To Build Momentum In Your Language Learning

Slow start in your language learning efforts? Don’t throw in the towel just yet. Not all language learners take to a new language like a fish to water. Some need to warm up a little longer before their engines actually begin running.

Different people take to new language study differently. Don’t compare yourself to those who are able to get up to speed fast. Maybe you’re just one of those slow starters who need a little extra boost that diving straight into your language material just doesn’t provide. Here are some ideas for language techniques you can do to build the momentum necessary to get you moving at a faster pace.

Memorize A Song

Forget about memorizing individual words and phrases in the meantime. Instead, find a song you like in the target language and look up its lyrics online. Print out a copy of the lyrics and sing along while listening to the song. Do this over and over until you’ve memorized it. Don’t even bother trying to figure out what all the words mean — just memorize it enough that you can sing the song without looking at the lyrics.

After you’ve memorized it, you can start figuring out what the lyrics mean by simply using online translators or your language software dictionary. It’s a great way to learn a big chunk of vocabulary that’s likely to become entrenched in your active stock, especially with the melody of the song ready to assist your recollection whenever you get stumped.

Songs have a way of making vocabulary stick that other mediums just aren’t able to do. Music is extremely powerful. If you don’t believe me, take a look at any 18-year old kid from ANY country who’s been listening to American rap music for at least two years: their vocabulary is almost always laden with lingo that’s local to where their favorite rappers came from.

You don’t need to make a habit of this either. Think of it as a way to get a jumpstart in your lessons. Learn one song, gain a small working vocabulary and use that knowledge to help smoothen off your language training.

Take A Week Off

If you’ve been doing your language lessons a couple of weeks and not seeing results, maybe there’s just too much going on in your life that steals you attention. Unfortunately, that means you are likely going to see the exact same lack of results if you continue on the same schedule.

One thing we’ll suggest is to take a week off to focus on language learning. You can time this with your vacation if you want. The idea is to spend a week where your language lessons and language practice can be among your top priorities, instead of having it take a backseat to your work, your hobbies and your personal life.

A week isn’t too much to ask. Taking a week’s leave from work immediately frees up eight hours a day plus another couple of hours of commute time that you can put into other activities, such as your daily lessons. More importantly, it frees you up from having to think about troubles at work, which can occupy a whole load of your time even while away from the office.

Even when you use that week to take a vacation, it’s easy enough to squeeze in an hour a day to devote to your language lessons. While that sound like much, the fact that you’re not burdened by the pressures and problems of work means you’ll be able to actually give the lessons more focus, maximizing the likelihood of the training being really effective.

Work With A Tutor

While we’re huge advocates of language learning software around these parts, we’re not above appreciating the benefits of other methods of training. We’re especially fond of personal tutors since they give you that most ideal of resource — personalized one-on-one instruction and on-the-spot interactions with a fluent speaker of the target language. An experienced tutor can really point you in the right direction, especially during the early stages when you’re not sure how to approach your training.

The costs of a personal tutor will likely be out of reach for a lot of people. Let me tell you now: they’re not cheap. And the more skilled the tutor, the higher the rates they’ll command. If you can manage to pay a tutor even for just a week or two of regular lessons, though, a live one-on-one resource person can really jumpstart your language learning momentum.

More than the personalized training they provide, the quality of practice you can get with a tutor is simply hard to match. It’s just not something you’re going to get, even when you sign up for a language learning class. Instead of having to hustle looking for opportunities to practice a language, you can simply schedule practice time as part of your sessions with the tutor.

Travel

Nothing forces learners into acquiring a language faster than immersion and the only way to do that is to travel to a country where your target language is spoken. Not only are you surrounded by chatter in the target language, you’re thrust neck-deep in the culture.

Word of warning: immersion is hard. If you get anxious around social settings, you might get even more anxious in such a situation, since you’ll have to deal with being unable to understand what people are saying on top of all the anxiety. If you manage to persist through an immersion situation, though, you can learn a lot of things within a short time — much more than you’re likely to learn using other types of language materials.

Using That Momentum

Building strong momentum is only the first step, of course. After that, you’ll need to put in the effort to put that momentum to good use — draw up a regular language learning schedule, stick to it and practice as much as you can. We recommend embracing an organized plan of study, such as those that you can get from a formal classroom or a language learning software.