How do you like to learn foreign languages

[Deleted User]

My method for learning Mandarin right now is quite simple. Listen to the audio from the CDs which came with my textbook on my phone, write down any new characters twenty or so times, read through the grammar explanations and go through some of the exercises then repeat for the next chapter.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Up to this day I am still to find even one way in which I would like to learn a "foreign" language.
What I've done in the past is go to a given lecture, pay attention, write down new vocabulary into flashcards, do my flashcard training once and again, look into grammar topics, exercise each grammar topic, try to write down a short text using the new grammar topics and words, look into idioms, try to use the idioms while speaking, rinse, repeat, die.

It also helps if you don't hate the language you are learning.

 

[VinsCool]

By being exposed to it all day long.
Forget schools, they suck at properly teaching languages.

I learned more English in 5 years simply by reading, writing and speaking English over internet.
As stupid as it sounds, it works. No wonder why people can "learn" a language by playing video games.

 

[sarkwalvein]

By being exposed to it all day long.
Forget schools, they suck at properly teaching languages.

I learned more English in 5 years simply by reading, writing and speaking English over internet.
As stupid as it sounds, it works. No wonder why people can "learn" a language by playing video games.

Well, I can say the same about English.
English is easy. English is nice. And perhaps I was also young.

But when I think of German... Hell, I live in Germany since more than half a decade, I am exposed to German all day, I of course can write and speak (awful) German..... but I can't learn it proper, heck, I tried to read Faust and my brain droped out dead due to complex German. (and I think the reason it's hard for me is perhaps I don't really like the language that much)

 

[ThoD]

As stupid as it sounds, it works. No wonder why people can "learn" a language by playing video games.

If anything, my English are good only thanks to video games, lol! When I started fourth grade, I hardly knew anything (just how to spell my name and say "hi"). A week later, I got a GBA SP with Driver 3 and Pokemon, played them a LOT, a month after I was already at PET/KET level! Almost all words I know are words I found in video games first and looked them up in a dictionary and I LITERALLY don't know English grammar even, yet I always get it correctly. For example, I don't even know half the tenses' syntax, but thanks to having seen properly formulated sentences so much, I've come to instinctively know what's the most correct way to convey what I want to say.

As for learning languages, school methods SUCK. Besides English (and Greek of course), the only language I'm at least decent in is Japanese, thanks to the countless hours I've watched anime or have invested in other Japanese media (video games, movies, etc.). So, speaking from my experience with that, best way for me is to combine visual and audio learning, like watching subtitled movies and stuff, but with subtitles that show both the translation AND how things are written in that language (eg: for Japanese, showing both the Japanese and English). Personally, I've reached a state where I'm literally incapable of learning through books, despite how good a thing that can be...

 

[SAIYAN48]

School did a good job teaching me Latin. I learned a lot online too.

 

[FAST6191]

I quite like this guy's method


As I tend to keep languages for fun rather than something I desperately need to know it is a bit more regimented than I go in for (I usually play with languages, or if I am about to say something/have just said something I will consider what I might have had to do if I needed to convey the same point to someone that did not speak the language actually in use) but I do similar things for other fields I play around in. Classic one is to be able to recognise bolts, resistors (the colour bands), connector types, fittings... like an old pro then get a bunch and leave them to play with on your desk each day, write on each what they are and test yourself on identifying them, challenge yourself to pick out the right one with a bunch of similar sizes sitting there, and so on and so on.

 

[AL_16]

I am russian-speaking ukrainian
Begin to learn English like many of us at school,later 3 month at academy.
Now i*m many years old but still learning..... Listening music, playing games , watching movies , talking here with U. Good exprience for me i think.
And sorry for my bad [eng]