Created: 3rd of April
Updated: 13th of May
Everything started with English, when I was in high school. Of course, French high school isn't the place where I actually learned English. It certainly provided me with a good foundation, but I couldn't rely on it to get fluent. I certainly remember quite enjoying it, and thinking I was pretty good at it.
Then I started reading Harry Potter, which I had already gotten into in French, and I realized how many words I didn't know1, which was kind of a shock. We had been studying English for probably four years at this point, and I couldn't easily read young adult fiction?
My reading pace went from painfully slow to acceptable, in the course of reading the first book. I continued with the others, and began the somewhat harder activity that is listening. Listening is time-constrained, and pronunciation in English is—as you know—a mess. First with simple things like beginner podcasts from the BBC, and progressively moved on to native content. I discovered Radiolab, which shaped a curiosity and wonder for the world that stay with me to this day.
On the Internet, understanding English is like opening pandora's box: you have so much stuff, basically any content you could dream of. Lectures from first-class universities, books, tutorials, fiction, movies, and so much more.
What I discovered with English is that the most important factor when learning a language is how much input you receive. I never learned more than when I filled my brain with content in the target language. Can it be this simple? I'd say... almost.
Here are the three tools I've found the most effective for language learning. I'll state them in the abstract and go in more details for each of those.
This step is all about the minimum you need to start consuming content. I'd say the amount of work here is highly dependent on the language. You can get this foundation from school (as I did with English) or from any other course. You could also figure it out yourself.
By foundations, I mean the 20% that get you 80% of the way. Knowing the alphabet, and how to pronounce words (which can be easier said than done, looking at you English and French!), everyday grammar, common structures, basic conjugation in the usual tenses, and of course essential vocabulary.
That's might be the hardest stage: it can be overwhelming when you realize how much there is to learn, and you're reminded of how little you know every time you look at native content.
A ressource I have found incredibly valuable is Language Transfer, which makes available free audio courses in a few languages. That's how I started learning Spanish, and it also helped me, to a lesser extent, with German.
(Beware of apps like Duolingo, which promise to teach you a language without doing much effort, using pretty pictures and multi-choice questionnaires. The easier it is, the less engaged you are, the less you learn.2)
That's the most important thing. Find any content that you enjoy.
Something that I've found works well in practice is to create a new YouTube account specifically for my target language. I start to find a couple of channels I like, and the recommendation algorithm then does most of the job! It's useful to have a whole different account, so as not to be distracted by another language.
Other input: - Reading: books, news, reddit... - Podcasts (especially if you can get the transcript3). - Movies and series.
The point is to find content you enjoy and want to understand. That's it.
You learn words eventually, after having seen them used a couple of time in context. But as you progress, some words might come less and less often, and you know you've seen it, if only you could remember...
For those, I think using a Spaced Repetition system, like Anki (a bit dated) or Mochi (on iOS) or just simple paper cards, provides a speed-up. It's not strictly necessary, but if you can bring yourself to do it, it seems worth it.
I personally use Mochi, and some help from GPT-4 to make the cards for me. In the same spirit, I also made a simple quizz to practice finding the gender of common nouns.
Large Language Models (think ChatGPT) are fantastic tools for any sort of task, nowadays. There's a lot to explore there, although I haven't significantly used them for language learning yet. Some idea: - Use it as a teacher, to help you understand concepts, grammar, the use of words, practice some specific situation. - Use it as a language partner. - Use it to translate, rephrase, simplify texts.
Two caveats though: LLMs come with absolutely no guarantee of accuracy, and usually perform worse in languages other than English. I'd say GPT-4 and Llama-3 70B should be pretty helpful most of the time.
Find a way to learn solid foundations. Try to do it quickly, as it's the most demotivating stage. Then, as soon as possible, find good content in your target language. Enjoy.