Quarantined: Why Now is the Best Time to Learn Another Language
Open yourself up to a new world.
The era of COVID-19.
You’re stuck at home, possibly still working remotely, but with a greater amount of free time at your disposal. The easy thing to do to pass the time is binge-watch TV, scroll aimlessly through social media on your phone, or play video-games.
But why waste so much of your free time when you could use it as an opportunity to finally indulge in some activities for which you’ve longed but could never “find the time”, such as that language you’ve always wanted to learn?
We’re presently living in an unpredictable time and really don’t know for how much longer we’ll be cooped up at home. It could be a few more weeks, possibly a few months.
Why not take such an opportunity to develop new skills and habits that will evidently last a lifetime? Right now is the best time to finally take that step and begin learning a second (or another) language.
A little bit about my language journey: I speak English, Italian and Spanish and I’m currently in the process of learning Romanian, while dabbling in some Catalan at the same time, and I plan on learning more languages in the future.
I’ve also had practical experience in guiding others in their language learning process, having taught in a university setting as well as having done individual language tutoring.
I wanted to write a short piece to answer three common language learning questions that I’ve received from multiple people (mostly monolinguals, but not always) based on my own experiences that will hopefully assist you in beginning your independent language learning process.
1. “Which language should I learn?”
To start, never feel the “need” to learn a language, it should be something that you truly “want” to do, otherwise the process will be gruelling.
You’ll always find people who say things such as “Well you live in the U.S. so you should learn Spanish”, “You should learn French because you’re from Canada”, etc.
Don’t give those comments the time of day.
I’ve always learned/looked to learn languages that truly interest me and of which have some particular relevance to me personally, whether I have good friends who also speak that language or I have an interest in a particular country/region of the world in which that is the predominant spoken language.
Both of these are true for my current Romanian experience, as a close friend of mine is Romanian and I plan to visit Romania one day (Romanian is also a truly interesting and underrated Romance language different from the rest, given Romania’s unique history).
You should never feel pressured to learn a particular language, the language of your choosing should come from some internal desire.
2. “What is the best resource to learn a language?”
Tons of articles outline a number of different resources for language learning, from language learning apps such as Duolingo or Babbel to YouTube language teachers to old-school university textbooks.
The truth is that you can use any resource. After choosing your target language, do research on the different resources that you could utilize and then choose a few that best fit your particular needs.
The internet has provided us with an infinite amount of resources and makes the search process that much easier. I would not, however, recommend sticking to one or two resources entirely. Duolingo alone will not make you fluent in every aspect of the target language.
It’s absolutely fine to have a primary resource and then use various “secondary” resources to fill in the gaps. For example, if you do choose to use Duolingo as your primary resource, then it would help having multiple online resources/books dedicated to thoroughly outlining verb conjugations or grammar/linguistic aspects of the target language to assist in the learning process.
3. “How much of my time should I dedicate to the process?”
That all depends on you! It’s important to outline a timeline for your language learning and what your exact goals are for the target-language.
Are you looking to just learn the basics? Do you want to be able to hold an intermediate conversation in the target language, or become fluent?
Your target language goals affect the time and commitment to learning. With a few resources and not that much time, you could learn the basics of any language.
But if you’re looking to become fluent, you would need to create an immersive environment as best as possible, learning about the culture itself (which I can’t stress enough as culture and language go hand-in-hand), listening to music and watching interviews, TV shows and movies in the target language (not mindless binging), reading books in the target language, and even changing the language on your phone.
Practice is absolutely key.
Learning a language is a lot of fun (if you do it right), but more importantly, it is a life-skill that you can hone wherever you go and that you can utilize in anything that you choose to do.
I hope that you found this to be helpful and use the extra free time presently at your disposal to get started on your journey to learning a new language (and then maybe more).
🌍🌏🌎
