Learn a Foreign Language at Home - Part Two

You’ve started your course to learn the basics but there are some gaps that you need help filling. Read on below for some advice about how to make your learning experience as successful as possible.

Useful Resources

A good bilingual dictionary and grammar book are essential. There will be times that you don’t understand how something works with the language and without a teacher, a grammar book is your best friend. There will be words you’ll want to know beyond the confines of the course you’ve picked to follow and a dictionary will serve you here.

A third book which I would recommend is a verb table, it is always handy to be able to look up the correct verb conjugation you need when in the learning phase. A good dictionary will have a small section dedicated to this, but it’s worth investing in a separate verb table if you plan to become proficient in the language.

If you decide to go for a physical book check reviews and have a look inside the books if you can. These books tend to be expensive, particularly the dictionaries and grammar books. Some publishers (e.g. Collins, Routledge) make quite a lot of language dictionaries and/or grammar books but the level of the grammar inside will vary so a little research will be required.

My two favourite online dictionaries are Wordreference.com and Collinsdictionary.com. They both provide in-depth word entries including idioms and colloquial language. The Collins dictionary has a grammar section on the website.

Wordreference has brilliant forums which I’ve used to get cultural references explained and a great feature where you can click on a verb and get its conjugated forms, essentially an online verb table.

I prefer using Wordreference since it has more languages and I find the entries easier to navigate. You can also download an app version which is just as good but still needs internet connection.

Repetition

I was tempted to put this at the beginning of the series, but you have to start before you can repeat…

This is important. You have to set aside a little bit of time, regularly (3-4 times a week) if you really want to make steady progress. If you have the time to practise a little every day, it will go a long way. You might think you don’t have the time but read on to part three and you might be surprised at how you can integrate this into your life.

Repetition is important if you want to get words into your memory. You can learn words quickly and they will be in your short-term memory, but if you don’t see those words again for six months, the likelihood is that you won’t have a clue what they mean. This doesn’t mean that just because you practise every day, you’ll remember what every word you see means. It does mean that you’ll grow your vocabulary more quickly because you come across the same words more often.

For example, on Monday you learn the word ‘dog’ for the first time. You recognise it on Tuesday but can’t remember what it means. On Wednesday you remember that it’s an animal and on Thursday you’ve got it. You see it again on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and understand it without a problem.

For this kind of repetition to take place, you need to make sure that you’re working with the right level of learning materials. Part three will give you lots of ideas. I should also add that you won’t be adding to your vocabulary one word at a time either, the process above will be happening with several words at a time in different stages.

Next Steps

Once you’ve got a good grounding in the basics, you’ll need to practise listening, reading, writing, and speaking with increasing difficulty to keep growing your vocabulary. To find out how I’d recommend you do this, read part three in this series.