to speak a language from the first day

to speak a language from the first day -

This is a guest post by Benny Lewis of Fluent learn in 3 months.

This new year, many people made a resolution to learn a foreign language. However, experience has told me that if your New Year's resolution to be "speaking Spanish / French / Japanese," you're probably bound for failure.

But fear not! After learning and in many languages ​​to be fluent, though he only speak English until the age of 21, I have developed a few tips that will easily make it your goals with your target language to reach out and start from the first day is called:

have Definite objectives

you me now can stop and beat dispense, "learn" a language to your extremely vague resolution and have a specific goal actually aspire.

Ask an end-goal as

• conversation [your language of choice] within two months Speaking
• to end two weeks of 30-second chat in to have language
• able to .. calls until the end of the month.

What is different here is that you do something solid to aspire (to speak "perfect" instead of a vague final destination) and a very tight schedule it. If you want to speak in a conversational or fluent, then define these concepts in a real way.

, for example, fluency is not the same as bilingual, so it's all is in order, do not have an accent and to make occasional mistakes, though obviously both should be much smaller than from when you started. Conversational could mean that you can take part in one-to-one chat with someone, but have trouble keeping when natives under one speaking another.

Whatever it is, to define your goal, very special and an ambitious time to achieve this goal. Even if you reach only 0% of it, you will have made an impressive amount of progress in a short time! It will give you something to work with concrete and help keep you motivated to learn.

stop learning and start talking

Another important issue people with aspirations, a language is to speak that they waste too much time on academics, drown in grammar and vocabulary study and devote little time to actually language.

language is a means of communication between people, not a list of facts are stored. For this reason, you need exposure to humans (no books), if you want to progress quickly. As the saying goes, "use it or lose it."

One does not work because you are physically in a country, but because you use forced your language skills, no matter what the time. If someone is really immersed and excited about learning, they are always learn the language, regardless of "natural talent", age, workload and many other people excuses tend to fall on to. [ The editorial Note: This is very true. When I lived in Thailand, I just took a lot of Thai, because I had to. It was to be the only way for me to be able to communicate well with the locals. At the end I was in Thai very conversational, and I am probably one of the worst language learners in the world! ]

It's hard at first, but if you wait until you are "ready" You can never speak the language. The best way by far to let go of your doubts and just talk. make mistakes, but learn while doing it, so that you make less next time. The locals will be happy to learn the language and help you get better at it. This process to speak regularly and gain confidence in your abilities is the fastest way to fluency by far.

meet and talk

It is important to remember that the purpose of voice communication, and learning that it requires you to be social. If you are an introvert, try hard from your shell to obtain and meet with the people. There are many ways to do this that with a stranger on foot and as such are not accessible to the less extroverted among us.

It is easier to find speakers of large (and small) languages ​​than you think! Most places in the world, especially large cities, with people from all over the world who filled speak all kinds of languages, happy, you can learn to help from those to be few, and fellow enthusiastic learners at the same level as They. I have to practice to be able regularly each language that I choose in almost any location, the following suggestions with :. French in Bangkok, Italian and German in Amsterdam in Colombia

Some ways to meet other language speakers:

• Meetup.com: This aim of the website is to help people with similar interests to collect, to get pulled from the Internet, and indeed to share personally meet and discuss those interests. It has many regular meetings based on a huge range of interests, including language-specific meet-ups
• Couchsurfing.org :. If you read a travel blog, it is quite likely that you have heard of CouchSurfing now. But have you tried it in your own city with before the trip? There are regular meetings where you can meet the natives of many languages, and one of the most incredible unused features of the site is that you are looking for your hometown by language and simply send people meet directly. Of all the social networks participating in the world CouchSurfer are much more likely to meet with you understanding enough open and safe to be open, you with your target language to help
• Other social networking sites. Try Book [your city name] and [language name] and click events. You can usually find some speech events that way. You can also set an ad on Craigslist or even a dating site used to find language partners. I have to improve speed dating in Amsterdam to my Dutch I was there for the three months
• offline methods :. , Ask to see in the local library or city hall if it cultural events you could participate in or ask your friends, or go to tourists and trying to be helpful!

What? to speak

If you meet with native speakers for the first time only to know a few dozen words or phrases, you can feel for many months or years intimidated and want your books to retreat, but there are many ways to talk to them to get started! I have many ways found to conversations flow if my level is basic, that they do not always get bored with my indecision, and the use of certain expressions that encourage them to remain in the call without me making responses from a word freak out.

The problem with language is to speak in the early stages of a lot more about the lack of confidence as a lack of vocabulary. Keep on learning the vocabulary (a flashcard app and an active imagination can really help) and grammar, but to get out there and get the little you know now . Before you know it, you'll be sure to speak the language!

Benny Lewis is a professional "language hacker" is but gifted in languages ​​definitely not inherently. He spoke only English until he was 21 years old and managed to spend a whole 6 months in Spain to learn Spanish first without. Nevertheless, he discovered that just getting out there and talking to people, even when its level was easy, and he had to make a lot of mistakes to a rapid improvement resulted in his language skills. He blogs full time on his language hacking "mission" in fluentin3months.com. He recently started a video project how to speak from day one.

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