Tips for Learning a Foreign Language
Reading
Are you a compulsive reader? Do you read the cereal packet over and over every morning, even though you know exactly what it says? If you see words do you have to read them? If so, and most adults are like this, don't shut down just because you are in a foreign country.
There are words everywhere:
- road signs
- shop windows
- restaurants
- adverts
- safety instructions on planes, trains and ferries
- information signs washing instructions
- manufacturer's instructions.
Some of these signs may be presented in many languages and often visually as well. This is good for helping you to understand. You gain a subconscious knowledge of these words and phrases. A good trick is to make an effort to use and learn a few. Some may end up in your note book. You will find it useful to set yourself a target of how many you want to learn a day.
Some of this material is available in your own country. You may like to set yourself a target of how much to learn a week.
Eavesdropping
Become a language detective. Listen to conversations on the bus, in the supermarket queue, and in the bar. Then there are those train and airport announcements. Or the tanoy system in the supermarket, asking for cleaners or supervisors, or telling you of the latest offer. Of course, these are often difficult to understand even in your own language. But when they are clear enough, they are easier to understand than ordinary conversations, because you know roughly what to expect.
If you are a relative beginner, you may find it hard to understand anything you hear. But don't worry. Let the rhythm and intonation of the language wash over you, and when you do speak, using something of which you are sure, try to use the patterns of language you have heard.
A good source of 'free' listening material is the car radio. As you go along the motorway, signs usually tell you where the local radio channel is found. Often these will be like our own local channels and like our Radio 2 and Radio 5. In other words a good mixture of music and speech. The speech will include short news, weather and traffic reports - just as you'd expect. When the music comes back on, you have time to mull over what you have just heard.
Then there's television and the cinema. Watch something with which you are familiar that has been dubbed. Like the soaps. It might be quite a joke listening to Harold Bishop speaking fluent French, but you'll understand him. It's likely to be an old episode anyway. You get most of the meaning from the visuals and what you remember, but the language is going in at the same time.
And even watching the soaps produced in the country of your stay is good. Soaps are very predictable and quite visual.
