Learn Foreign Languages | How To & Tips, Advice

My Story

Greetings! I'm in my mid-thirties and now have four foreign languages under my belt - in order from most fluent to least fluent: French, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. I can also communicate on a basic level Italian and the local Chinese Fukien / Taiwan provincial dialect of Hoklo (Minan Language).

My love of languages and ability to learn them stems from childhood. From as early as pre-kindergarten I was already somehow imitating other peoples' accents. While my ability to learn languages fast might be partially genetic as my mother is a speech therapist and has a great ear for sounds and accents, I strongly believe my abilities today come more from my personal efforts and passions.

My eagerness for learning foreign languages started when is was around 12 years-old in junior high school. We were given the choices of French or Spanish. I picked French. On a class trip to Quebec City I noticed that I was totally obsessed with trying my newly learned French with the local people and trying to listen to them while my classmates were less enthusiastic. This led me to spending my junior year of high school in France and later studying Mandarin Chinese in college.

While I've never lived in a Spanish-speaking country I've reached a level of fluency in Spanish by studying for three years in high school and college and simply by watching a ton of Spanish TV on Telemundo. The Portuguese comes from my own personal efforts while traveling in Brazil. The Hoklo comes from my personal efforts while living in Taiwan. The Italian comes from studying Italian verb conjugations on the Internet and watching Italian television programs.

As I get older I have a strong desire to take on new languages and continue learning and discovering different ways to learn new languages. Below I'll list the benefits of learning new languages. These are well documented on the Internet and I'll provide links to related articles at the end of the article. Also, I'll attempt to provide my personal tips and suggestions for learning languages below, so stay with me!

1. Children's development: It's well documented that learning foreign languages enhances cognitive and critical thinking skills. Kids studying foreign languages do better in other subjects including English, mathematics and science. Also, later in high school students do better on college acceptance exams such as the SATs.

2. Benefits for English speakers: A huge percentage of the English language is heavily influenced by vocabulary from foreign languages. I cannot count the number of time's when I've automatically known a new word of English vocabulary thanks to my French studies.

3. Finding a job: If an employer needs to fill a position (s)he will be much more likely to pick the candidate who knows a second language. Foreign language speakers are cultural liaisons and have to ability to bridge the link between a company and its customers. Employers in all fields ranging from the US State Department to Silicon Valley companies all need employees which are proficient in foreign languages.

4. Making new friends & dating: I have met so many friends and nice people around the world with whom I would not be able to communicate with if it was not for my foreign language abilities. The ability to speak a foreign language offers unique opportunities to make new friends and enhance one's dating and social life.

5. Travel: When visiting other countries the ability to speak in the peoples' native language not only makes the trip more convenient, but also much more enriching.

6. Family ethnic and cultural background: The United States and many countries around the world such as Australia, Canada and even England are comprised of populations who's grandparents immigrated from other countries. Often our ethnic culture and language gets lost with immigration. Learning the languages of our ancestors can help us to connect with them and their culture, which is truly enriching. My personal tips & suggestions

1. Pick a language that you like: I cannot stress the importance of this first tip. I prefer to study languages that sound nice to me. If a language sounds ugly to my ears I will resist it and when trying to learn I'll resemble somebody who's "bad at learning languages."

2. Listen, listen and listen some more: Let the sound of the language sink into your ears and brain. One can spend months doing this. This is how babies learn languages and it works. The more you listen the better your pronunciation will be when you attempt to speak.

3. Pick a language that is useful for you: When deciding what language to study I recommend you strongly consider your goals in life. While studying one language might be fun it may have no relevance to your career or other plans.

4. Start with the "big" languages: Languages are grouped into families. For example, there are the Latin-Based languages like French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese and Germanic-Based languages such as German, Swedish & Norwegian. Within one family pick one language and master it. Then, the other languages within the group or family will almost be like freebies!

For example, the reason I learned Spanish and Portuguese so easily was because I already mastered French. If you want to learn Cantonese Chinese (the Chinese dialect spoken in Hong Kong and Canton Province in Southern China) you might want to learn Mandarin first as Cantonese is strongly related.

5. Time factor - don't get discouraged: Learning foreign languages is hard. Even though I seem to learn easily and fast I never said it's effortless! Also, some languages take longer to learn than others. Although I consider myself fluent in Mandarin Chinese I don't think I'll ever reach a level of being 100% bilingual.

6. Make friends with native speakers: This tip is overlooked by so many people. I'll share my experience. I started learning Mandarin Chinese in college. I tried so hard to make friends with native speakers on my campus. But, the problem was that they all wanted to practice English and my Mandarin did not advance. So, when I arrived in Asia I made it a point to make friends with people who did not speak English and who took little to no interest in learning languages. The results far exceeded my expectations.

7 Take advantage of the Internet: There are so many sites today which connect speakers of foreign languages with people who want to learn them. Use the technology! Also, there many websites offering great podcasts for learning languages. I like Praxis Language as they offer excellent podcasts for learning French, Spanish, Italian and Mandarin Chinese. Also, for learning Mandarin you can check out my webite, freechineseblog. There I offer entry level Mandarin video tutorials. By using the Internet you can study languages at your own pace and have more fun learning.

8. Just do it! If you have been thinking of learning a new language and procrastingating it for years why not just do it! We are never to old or too young to start learning something new and learning languages is no exception. Try using some language learning materials such as audio CDs and phrase books and you'll be well on your way to knowing a new language.

Update: I've recently launched a site where you can learn French online watching tutorial videos. Visit us today and start learning now!

I hope this article helped you and good luck with your language studies!