5 Unusual Tips to make radical progress in your target language
I am often told that I have a talent for languages.
This is not true.
I was told how I should learn a language at school.
I then spent the next decade doing the exact opposite and saw completely different results.
So, now that you’ve avoided the pitfalls I listed in my previous article , let me share with you the five unusual practices that I have used to make rapid progress in record time in five different languages.
Follow the President on Instagram
Not your President, their President.
Now, not every language learner is lucky enough to have a persona as ballsy and as active a presence on social media as Volodymyr Zelensky to follow.
I lucked out on that one — but the point can be applied across the board.
These state leaders are likely to be speaking on issues that are directly relevant to the culture, politics and economics of the country that intrigues you so much.
The clips are short, the same words pop up (cementing them in your knowledge) and there is even a direct translation feature below for you to check your understanding.
It will also tweak your algorithm so that you get suggested similar content from other like-minded souls.
What more do you need?
If politics really isn’t your thing then find someone more in line with your own interests; Venezuela’s top crocheter , Nigeria’s answer to Gordon Ramsey , the winner of the Turkish apprentice — whatever floats your boat.
2. Shadowing
This is the holy grail of accent reduction,
Yet most people won’t do it for more than five minutes.
It is a discipline not a novelty.
Nevertheless, as a discipline it’s one of the most sure-fire ways to upgrade your skills through independent learning.
Websites like lingq.com are purpose-built to allow you to shadow speech in live time, with the correct intonation, pace and native expressions for you to emulate.
There are hundreds of short-medium pieces of content on a range of topics and through the use of inversion and negation you learn grammar not by endless drilling but through comprehensible input and logical interaction.
At the time of writing there are 40 different languages available to chose from including Farsi, Icelandic and Catalan making this the most comprehensive site for shadowing.
Additionally, using podcasts when you’re on the move at 3/4 speed as you repeat out loud helps to fill those gaps in the middle of the day and guarantees that passers by give you a wide berth.
If the phrases are not spilling out of your mouth like a nervous tick, then you haven’t been doing it for long enough.
3. Find someone who speaks 0% English
This is not as far-fetched as it might sound at first.
There are literally billions of non-English speakers worldwide but from a cursory glance on the internet you would be hard pressed to find them.
Apps like tandem and Wechat are purpose built to connect language learners and enable you to filter out the people who speak your target language and don’t speak English.
If you want face-to-face interaction go to your local backpackers bar and start up a conversation with a stranger.
If that sounds mad to you then maybe you’re not thinking expansively enough.
What’s the point of learning an additional language if not for a few dangerous, out-of-character adventures…?
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world — Ludwig Wittgenstein
I’ve even claimed that I don’t speak English by feigning a terrible accent and pretending I come from a third party nation
When I was living in Lisbon this helped me befriend some Brazilian businessmen and led to a spontaneous, immersive linguistic experience in the bars of Bairro Ato… It has to be done.
4. Take an Airbnb or TripAdvisor Experience in your target language
Once you get to an early intermediate level you need to absorb the language through real life stimulus and one of the best ways to do this is by exploring a new city or location.
Your lack of specific vocabulary is irrelevant because you have genuine prompts in front of you to show you what is being talked about.
Again, it comes down to comprehensible input and exposure to more stimuli that bring the language to life — how can I use sight, smell, touch, taste to understand more without a translator?
Whether it is a cooking class, architecture tour on bike, make-your-own craft workshop experience or wilderness retreat — you’re creating an associative memory and using the language practically not theoretically.
Skill stacking also gets those synapses firing and wiring together increasing your ability to build new neural pathways in the brain.
The experiences become intertwined thereby strengthening the association you have with the new words and moving the knowledge acquired from short-term observation to medium-term memory.
5. Translate a short, snappy listicle (like this one)
I remember having to translate dense pages of text at school and university. It’s not fun for anyone involved…
The books are outdated, the vocabulary is obscure and the grammar is fiendish.
When you translate a short-form article:
- you use the language the way that it is actually being used by real people.
- you can zone in on the topics that interest you
- you will feel a sense of achievement more regularly..
- you would be reading these articles amidst random scrolling anyway.
There are no sponsors of this article. All apps and companies listed are resources that I genuinely use myself to see results that outperform traditional language learning methods.
Freddie Kift writes about language, communication, flow, collaboration and technology
