If you expected only post on IT topics on this blog, I am sorry :( Today I’ll share you my experience in learning a new language. I am practicing these techniques and tips for mastering Español, but I am sure that you can apply them to most of the other languages.

Gamification

If you are only starting to learn then this will be helpful for you in double. Most of the people give up learning after several weeks or even days after they begin. It’s because of their motivation. It becomes lower with time. And in the beginning when you know almost nothing and understand that you should work hard and work a lot to learn. It really demotivates. And I think elements of gamification will help to increase motivation and turn learning process to habit. You can gamify your learning in any way you want. I recommend:

• Duolingo or Linguoleo - good for learning the basics of the language
• Tinycard - for learning/memorizing new words

Listen

As soon as you have learned basics, start listening to podcasts. There are some free audio podcasts oriented for beginners. For example, in Spanish, it’s a Notes in Spanish.

Create a playlist with up to 20 songs you like on language you learn and listen to them regularly. And keep listening until you will understand what a song about. You don’t have to translate all the words in each song. In fact, It is not very useful. But opposite, when you learn new words from textbook, tinycard or from anywhere else and you hear this word while you are listening to your playlist you learn better.

– Oh, wait. I know what this word means …

Watch

If you are fun of TV-shows, you can start watching them in the language you learn. With subtitles or without them. Of course, it requires some basic knowledge. If you care that you will miss some key points of the story and prefer to fully understand it, you can watch sitcoms which don’t have almost anything in common between series.