7 Fun Ways to Learn a Language

Congratulations! Only by clicking on this article, you have already proven you are on your way to become a brilliant linguist. It also means that you are fun.

Learning whatever language is always a good idea but everyone knows it is not easy.

It is also known that people learn best when they enjoy themselves doing it. So, here are some tips.

1. Watch Shows with Subtitles

This is probably the easiest and most comfortable way to learn. You just have to sit back, relax and watch your favourite show. Meanwhile, the language knowledge starts jumping into your brain without you even realising it.

Therefore, do it as often as you can. Watch movies, YouTube videos, news, talk shows... anything in the original language. Binge watch TV series and after you finish, watch them all over again. Maybe, next time you watch an episode of your favourite sitcom, you will get that joke you didn't understand the last time, or you will learn a new phrase. Every time, you will learn something new.

You can watch movies with subtitles in your mother-tongue, or even better, with subtitles in the original language, which will help you learn the spelling as well.

2. Do Crossword Puzzles

Living in London, I usually grab a copy of the morning paper on my way to work and the evening paper on my way back and recently, I got hooked on the crossword puzzles. I am sure you can find some material too, so why not give it a go? Solving problems is one of the best ways to learn.

Cheat! By all means. The best thing you can do is to use a monolingual dictionary and try to look for synonyms that would fit into the little boxes. This way, you also learn how to use a dictionary effectively. Apart from that, there are also online crossword solvers that can help you. After a while, the words in the puzzles start to reoccur and you will soon be able to recall them without any help. There is no better feeling than to be able to solve a crossword puzzle all by yourself!

3. Read Out Loud

If you can't actually do so, pretend you are a teacher who is reading to a class or a parent who is reading a bedtime story to their children. You can imitate a famous actor doing a dramatic reading, or even record your own audio book.

Children's books are best for such practice, because they do not use too complicated vocabulary and they tend to play with the sound and rhythm of words which is great if you want to improve your pronunciation.

4. Play Games

Parlour games such as charades are an awesome way to activate your passive language repertoire, because you want to express yourself quickly and accurately in order to win. It is best if you play them in a group of friends who don't share the same language, so that you are not tempted to slip back into your mother-tongue.

If you don't have anyone to play with, you can always play against your computer. Games like Scrabble or Letter Soup are great as a vocabulary and spelling practice.

5. Quiz Yourslef

OK. I admit, doing quizzes is a bit geeky, but hey — you are learning a foreign language. You are a geek already!

Anyway, you can find quizzes on practically anything on the internet from naming all the US states to Harry Potter trivia, and they can become quite addictive—which is not so good when you should be working, but it is perfect if you want to broaden your knowledge and, provided you pick quizzes in your target language, broaden your vocabulary as well.

You can compete with your friends and see who gets the best result, or you can compete with yourself and try to improve your scores.

6. Sing Songs

Is there anything more fun than karaoke singing?

Try to imitate the voice of your favourite artist, practise over and over again and nail that song you love!

Listening to songs alone is a tremendous help with your language learning, because thanks to the melody, the lyrics will stick in your head and you will memorise new vocabulary and phrases more easily. If you sing the songs out loud, you can also improve your pronunciation and let's face it, you will feel amazing pretending to be a pop star!

7. Compose Your Own Stuff

...Like I am doing right now, since English is not my first language. I can tell you, it is so much fun!

By writing your own stories, songs, poems, Facebook posts, or anything else you can think of in the target language, your skills are improving by leaps and bounds (very quickly). The reason is simple. When composing your own stuff, you are looking for words you need, and you are more likely to remember vocabulary you actually want to use than some random lists of words provided by a textbook. Also, if you spend quite a long time working on your piece of art, it is pretty hard to forget the lines you wrote.

Don't worry about grammar! The most important thing is that you have fun playing with the language.