What I've Learned About Language Learning

March 10, 2025 - Writing WIP

I'm not really a language expert, but I sure have studied a lot about them! Over the years, I've dedicated months to learning Spanish, French, Japanese, Esperanto, Polish, and more, while picking up language learning tips along the way. I wanted to compile these tips for anyone who doesn't really know how to approach language learning, or for those who have tried picking it up before dropping it. While language learning can be a tough journey, it's something that we can all learn to enjoy and improve at.

#1: Choose a language you like

On pretty much any discussion online, you'll hear this come up eventually, and it's with good reason! If you choose a language you enjoy (whether it's due to the way it sounds, the culture, the uniqueness, etc.), it will make it WAY easier to learn. This is for a simple reason: when something is fun, we will willingly spend more time on it, and this extra time makes a world of difference. Like, how many hours is your most-played game on Steam? Did it feel like you spent that many hours on it, or did you just happen to end up with that many hours by being absorbed in how fun it was, and improve at the game just for the experience?

There are situations where you may learn a language because you literally have to, but in that case, the motivation is already set up for you. This point is specifically for the people who use unproductive reasons to learn a language -- for example: a sense of obligation, peer pressure, the language being "easy," the language being "useful," etc. You can absolutely learn a language for these reasons, don't get me wrong, but they'll usually start to work against you in the long run.

I learned Spanish because it was considered easy and useful, but how is that an actual motivator? It might be helpful in a hypothetical future, but every Spanish speaker I know now speaks fluent English, and I don't have any plans to visit any Spanish-speaking countries any time soon. It might be "easy," but it's still estimated to take 600+ hours to reach working proficiency -- and this is with a professional classroom setting in mind! A language being "easy" isn't really a strong reason for pulling yourself through difficult learning for 600+ hours.

If you're learning a language for fun, then you should choose a language where the very act of learning it is fun to you. This should be obvious, but it's something that's very easy to forget!

#2: Make a plan

You don't need to make a detailed plan, but having some form of direction or set of expectations will help avoid feeling discouraged or burned out. 

If it takes 600+ hours to be fluent in your language, do you actually want to be fluent? It's perfectly fine to just want a basic understanding of the language, or to just reach a conversational level, which will take significantly less time. Will you be able to dedicate an hour to learning every day? Is there a good spot in your schedule to do that consistently? Or will it be more like 5-10 minutes?

Learning over a longer period of time (i.e. shorter study sessions that are consistent over days/weeks) is proven by multiple studies to be better for retention than cramming large study sessions into a single day, so don't feel bad if you can't dedicate that much time per day! 

#3: Use multiple methods of study

There will be many products online that claim to be "the one true easiest way to learn a language." Of course, this is almost never true. While most methods of study will eventually get you to learn the language, using just one method will never be the most efficient way to learn a language.

Language learning is often split up into 4 categories: Writing, Reading, Listening, and Speaking. You can tell that 2 of these are about input, and the other output, 2 of them in written form while the other 2 are spoken. Learning how to read your language is very different from learning how to listen to it, and learning how to listen to it is very different from learning how to speak it. 

Form your plan around this -- which parts should you prioritize out of importance? If you're like me and will mostly be using your language for online texting, then listening might not have to be as strong of a priority. Search up language learning apps and websites, and use the ones within your budget. While general apps can help (LingoDeer is a favorite of mine due to how in-depth it teaches the language), the best apps you get will probably be language-specific. For example, WaniKani was essential for me to learn Japanese kanji, but most other apps would not be as in-depth in teaching all the nuances and tips since it has so many features unique to Japanese.

I'm sure you already have at least some grasp on these types of apps, though (Youtube has been one of the absolute best resources for me to learn vocab and grammar, but I don't think I need to tell most people to search up a Youtube tutorial), so I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about immersion.

#4: Use immersion

Memorizing a language is hard. We all know that the school method of studying usually leads to completely forgetting 90% of what we learned about a month or two after we learn it. While hitting the books is important for learning basic grammar and vocab, it's not sustainable for the sheer amount of language you have to learn. For example, how did you as an English speaker learn what phrases like "hitting the books" mean? It's definitely not from a textbook, but probably from someone using it in daily conversation, you getting confused, searching it up or asking about it, and having the memory firmly implanted after hearing it a few more times.

This is essentially how immersion works -- rather than studying things like in school, you take a massive amount of input (whether it's podcasts, videos, TV shows, games, real life people, etc.), listen closely, and gradually try to figure things out based on context, only searching things up when they're really confusing. For people not actively trying to do this, I see it happen most often with people learning English (who have such a massive number of video games and Youtube videos to watch they just eventually learn English), or people who watch anime. 

While the latter rarely leads to fluency, it usually leads to an understanding of many basic terms and an intuitive feeling for how certain phrases/intonations "feel right" while being able to recall things more easily, [INCLUDE SOURCE] which are the main things you should be looking for through immersion. Many people will claim that immersion is the sole method or "correct" method to learn language, but while it's a very important tool, using it as your only method will probably take a very long time. 

It is also not as helpful for learning to read and write, since immersion takes advantage of our innate human ability to understand language, while reading and writing was an invention that requires active study in many languages (you're probably not getting fluent in Chinese writing through immersion!). 

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