Re: How to Learn a Foreign Language in Six Months to a Year.
Posted: October 29th, 2019, 11:57 pm
ladislav's method requires high motivation, much higher than I have.
In my experience, after getting past the basics, best things is get recordings with transcripts (podcasts with transcripts, ebook plus audio recording), then listen to recording, read transcript and look up unknown words in dictionary, listen to transcript again. Then go on to the next recording. Try to get like 50 hours of recordings by native speakers with transcripts. If you listen for 10 minutes, read and look up words for 40 minutes, then listen again for 10 minutes, 50 hours or recordings will take 300 days. When you finish, do it all over again, except now the reading phase will go faster. Then repeat a third time. Listening comprehension is the hard part of any language, by far. Speaking can be learned in a few weeks if you can excellent listening comprehension skills.
As for improving your accent, be sure to record yourself then play back the recording. You should be able to notice if your accent is terrible. Listening to yourself as you speak, without recording, doesn't work, because sounds from the mouth pass through the jaw bones and interfere with same sounds reaching the ear through the air.
In my experience, after getting past the basics, best things is get recordings with transcripts (podcasts with transcripts, ebook plus audio recording), then listen to recording, read transcript and look up unknown words in dictionary, listen to transcript again. Then go on to the next recording. Try to get like 50 hours of recordings by native speakers with transcripts. If you listen for 10 minutes, read and look up words for 40 minutes, then listen again for 10 minutes, 50 hours or recordings will take 300 days. When you finish, do it all over again, except now the reading phase will go faster. Then repeat a third time. Listening comprehension is the hard part of any language, by far. Speaking can be learned in a few weeks if you can excellent listening comprehension skills.
As for improving your accent, be sure to record yourself then play back the recording. You should be able to notice if your accent is terrible. Listening to yourself as you speak, without recording, doesn't work, because sounds from the mouth pass through the jaw bones and interfere with same sounds reaching the ear through the air.