Learning A New Language - Who Said It Was Hard

By: David McGimpsey
Submitted: 2007-01-17 11:29:57
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There are two types of people in the world, those who dream about doing things and those who do them. For most of my life I have been in the former group.

As a teenager I often thought about how wonderful it would be if I could speak another language. Imagine all the things you could do...

...make a whole new group of friends, impress your current friends, talk about someone in front of them without them knowing (okay, so I was a teenager).

The language that I wanted to learn most of all was Japanese. I didn't really know anything about Japan or Japanese culture, but I knew I wanted to speak Japanese.

What did I do about it?

Pretty much nothing.

I would pick up a text book from time to time and read a couple of pages. After those few pages I would lose interest, because I hadn't learned Japanese yet, and I would find other things to keep me busy.

This process repeated itself quite a lot and I reached adulthood knowing how to say “Good morning” in Japanese. Quite a feat, considering I'd spent six years on it.

Well, fate happens, and one fine day I met the lady who be my future wife. Nothing was planned, but I will give you one guess what country she was a native of.

Give up?

Japan...

...Fortunately her English is perfect, but can you imagine how I felt about those six well-spent years?

I now live in Japan and have since motivated myself to learn Japanese.

Let's look at the resources you need to learn a language.

I think you need one text book if you are learning a language. It is nice to have a hard copy of something to refer to. The mistake I made in six years of “learning Japanese” was thinking I needed twenty text books (especially if you only end up learning how to say Good morning).

You've got your text book, what else?

There is nothing more boring, when learning a language, than working solely from a text book.

You need to mix it up a little.

There are plenty of ways to do this, conversation classes, formal classes, and so on.

But most of all try remembering things differently.

If you can learn and remember twenty to fifty words a day, you will feel better than if you complete some exercises in a book that will soon be forgotten.

Just think differently.

Consider learning your lesson from your text book, or from the free Internet lesson you found, in a different way.

Use association to remember the words you learn.

Rather than repeating a word over and over in the hope you will remember it, associate the word to an image in your mind. Visualize the image when you are learning the word.

I will give you two quick examples.

The Japanese word for nose is Hana. When you are learning this word, associate an image to it. Imagine a girl called Hana wearing a dress covered with noses, or imagine a girl called Hana blowing her huge nose.

Next, the French word for bread is pain. Imagine an old man with bad teeth. Imagine every time he bites into a piece of stale bread he says, “That's painful.”

You will be amazed at the progress you make by studying language this way.

It's fun, really.

Give it a try the next time you pick up that text book.

Tomorrow, see if you can remember the word for nose in Japanese and bread in French. I bet you can do it!

David McGimpsey is the host of www.learn-japanese-right-now.com where learning Japanese is completely free for everyone.

Article source: Expert Articles

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