5 secrets to language learning success

Speaking with a friend is a good way to keep your language. Flickr CC: Florian Seroussi

Mastering a new language takes a lot of commitment – and there aren't any short cuts. Make the most of your efforts with these important tips, and take your language skills to the next level.

1. Embrace your mistakes

Everyone makes them and only by making mistakes in a language can you improve your awareness and accuracy.

Experiment and play with new language. Try out your new words, structures and sounds whenever you can.

A great way to improve your fluency is to remember small sections of language that go together, rather than just a single word. So when you learn a noun think of the adjectives that support it, and the same with a verb – which adverbs will support the verb? This way you can begin to build small pieces of language and start to remember word collocations, or words that go together. 

2. Practise

Speaking with a friend or a native speaker is always a great way to keep your language skills, but if you haven't got anyone to talk to you can still speak a little to yourself at home.

Pronunciation is a challenge in any language so the more experience you have listening to authentic speech, the better you. Find a radio station in your target language and download podcasts of news, or choose a news channel where you can access authentic language. These will all help you form the unique sounds of the language you are learning.

Songs are an excellent way to learn new vocabulary as well as to practice your stress, rhythm and intonation, so pick a song each week to sing along at shower time (or any other time that won't annoy the neighbours).

Remember your words by using palm cards or flash cards. Flickr CC: haagenjerrys

3. Remember your words

Palm cards, or flash cards, are a great way to help revise vocabulary. Write the translated version of the word on the back and whenever you have a spare minute run through the words in your first language and try to remember the foreign word.

If you carry a pocket dictionary you can revise words whenever you think of them. Once you understand the meaning of the word, form a sentence with it and then (if you are alone!) say it out loud.

If you don't mind writing in your dictionary, highlight the words you look up so you can find them again quickly when you revise. For more advanced learners, challenge yourself to look up unfamiliar words in a native dictionary. You can also read books and magazines in your target language, look up the words you don't know and keep notes on the new vocabulary and grammar.

Stay balanced and practise the English language as often as possible. Flickr CC: Moscas

4. Stay balanced

Make sure to devote time each week to reading, writing, listening and speaking and be sure to revise the topics and vocabulary that you have learned. 

It might help to keep to a schedule where you focus on a particular skill each day, or at a certain time of day, and try to balance all skills rather than focusing only on your favourites.

Have a source of content for each skill; for listening use the radio and podcasts. For reading, perhaps find a website or textbook with graded texts that you can study. For writing, try to link a writing topic in to your reading or listening. And for speaking try to find a partner, or a time where you can speak aloud to yourself.

Set realistic goals as you learn a new language. Flickr CC: m4tik

5. Set realistic goals

A native speaker on average knows around 20,000 word families, but if you are studying a second (or third) language you don’t need that many.

In order to watch and understand the spoken English in a popular family movie like Shrek you would need to know around 1,100 word families – a much more achievable aim!