by Sir Garlichad

Learning or knowing a language is a skill and not just knowledge. It should be practiced regularly to increase your familiarity and exposure to the new words/phrases you learn. Sometimes you may want to learn the new language in an environment where there are few or none of the Natives speakers near you. This makes the challenges even tougher; but with these guidelines you can ease your way through. Language study requires self discipline and determination especially if it is a self committed training. The basic or common challenge you will face is to forget. This is absolutely normal as you are trying to get acquainted with the words you have never known before or maybe never heard in your Life time. Therefore, holding fast to the words/ phrases learned is equally as important as grasping them. So, you have to find ways to be a good retainer, not just a good receiver.

Psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus was one of the first to scientifically study forgetfulness, using himself as the subject. His results plotted in what is known as the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, and from this curve, the following theories were deduced.

•You forget information most rapidly, within the first one hour of grasping, and an estimate of more than 50% of the information you get can be forgotten within this short time limit.

•Another very interesting deduction from his curve is, the more repetitions, the more a long- term memory is established. 

From the analysis above, we will begin our tips with strategies to make the new words or phrases stick into our long- term memory, and then continue with other tips that can help us.

 1. Do not learn so many words at a time. You could pick 10 to 20 a day to learn.

2. Do not spend a long time practicing your new words or phrases; instead, spend a very short time, maybe 15 words in 30 minutes. This has proven to be more effective as the fewer words enable you to go through them time and time again.

3. Review these words, 6 to 10 times before you can effectively have a long term memory on them. For example, you take 20 words a day, review them 5 more times, after your first practice, then twice more, the next day, once more that week, and at least twice more that month.

4. “I decided to use my three months summer holidays to learn German, considering the free time I would have, but I did not have time for it after I started. I just couldn’t avoid the distractions”.- Mary john, a student of mathematics.

Really! Language study does not recommend a fixed period of time everyday. We are in a busy world filled with activities, and the best way to do an activity is to create time for it and not to wait for a free time to do it. Sometimes, fixing a particular time could be ineffective, because other activities considered as more of a priority to you than learning the new language could take its place. 

Partition your time into smaller fragments during the day. This also helps you to review the words over and over again as earlier explained in the last tip. You can practice during Lunch time at work or during breakfast in school. Also, while in the elevator, in the bus or waiting for the train; ten minutes before seister, or 10 minutes before your night sleep. Overcoming distractions is a major step in learning a new language and if you can achieve it, you stand a great chance of learning.

5. Never procrastinate. As earlier said, Language studies requires a great deal of discipline and you need to be up for it. Once you have started, do yourself a favor to continue at all cost. Procrastination creates a break in your training and this might increase your tenderness of becoming discouraged. For example, due to great Enthusiasm, you started and for a week, you kept up the pace. Due to procrastination, you did not practice for the next three days, and then procrastination again prevented you from practicing in the next four days. As this is going on, your tendency to forget some words increases, then you begin to fluctuate on old words treating them as new again. This may get to a stage where you become frustrated and finally give it up. Be consistent, only in this way, you will be able to improve on what you are learning.

6. “In my French class, I was the best student. I learnt lots of words and my lecturers were highly impressed. But right now, after seven months my colleagues speak fluently while on the contrary I cannot even make a complete sentence”- Victor James a high school teacher.

The fact is, knowing all the words in the Dictionary will not make you speak a fluent language- even with perfect grammar, Even if you want to impress, this route is not the way to do so. Your ability to sound like the native speaker should be your priority and target. Also, heavy accents and bad pronunciation could become unnecessary challenges to you thereby making the whole process a complicated one for you. To sum it up, you may want to speak about an interested subject but you end up easily stranded at any time.

7. Do not be shy or afraid to speak to the natives. You can never speak well until you speak and know your mistakes. Sometimes, you read information and forget it or part of it. But by the time you fail a question (maybe in an exam) relating to that piece of information, it sticks to the brain permanently (especially after been corrected). Feel very free and confident in speaking, even with mistakes, but do well to know your mistakes, learn your corrections and try to improve in subsequent interactions.

8. Each language has its own technicalities. Try to know them because some of these rules are what make up the basis or concept of some specific languages. For example, as in Latin- the Russian language has lots of declinations. These are changes in verbs or even the nature of the sentence (be it past or present). This is very important because sometimes you get misled when trying to know some new words as you interact with the natives. For example ‘will’- used for future tense in Russian is “budete”. Knowing this word alone is not sufficient. As a beginner, I was talking to a Russian friend and he said “on budet dumat”- meaning he will think. The word has changed in respect to the subject “He”, likewise it will change if the subject is a first person pronoun (I), or we, or they, or you as well as will change when present or when past. Unlike in English (he will, I will, e.t.c). It still remains the same, only in cases of present and past tense. Knowing the grammar is very important. In essence, when learning the Russian language, the dictionary words are not enough to know the language to a certain level. For every verb and adjective you learn, you will still have to know their declinations as in most cases, it is the declinations that are been spoken when you communicate. Using this example, we can apply it to other languages. When you know the major rules affecting the whole concept of the language then practice it alongside learning your new words and phrases, even if it means making it a little extra exercise asides your normal one ( just in case you are tutored).

9. On the contrary to point 8,when now speaking, you should not force yourself to follow the rules on grammatical know-how. Remember, you only did this to know how the words are expressed, but do not be obliged to follow the rules in speaking. Have a random approach to learning the language and just speak. With your consistency, the corrections you get and your knowledge of the rules, perfection would be easy to achieve. So know the rules for perfection sake and start applying them comfortably, after much conscious training. If you are also learning through reading, do not read word for word. Sentences in most foreign languages are not constructed in the same manner your language is and hence reading word for word makes your memory assimilate very slowly thereby interpreting the sentence in a much difficult way, even if you know the meaning of each word of the sentence. Read a complete sentence as a complete package in a normal speed. Your brain combines the meaning of each word and then you can easily have a clue of what the sentence is saying in a short possible period.

10. Different languages have their different ascents been spoken with different part of the mouth. The German language most often uses the front part of the mouth while the Arabic mostly use the middle portion of the mouth just near the border of the hard and soft palate. In this case, the tongue joins to this portion to make the frequently sharp “K” sound heard in almost every pat of their speech. On the other end, Hindi sound comes from the back of the mouth.

If you want to know how to get the ascent of the native speakers, then imitate them when they speak yours. As I study in Ukraine, we the international students imitate the Ukrainian lecturers in a mockery fashion when ever they speak English. Sometimes they speak English as a direct contextual translation of the Ukrainian version of exactly what they are saying. This also gives us clues to how we can say such sentences in the Ukrainian language. After about a session, the next set of lectures were impressed by the way we spoke the Ukrainian language even though we were just average in standard. 

You may be learning a foreign language in an environment where there are no native speakers and hence may not be able to apply most of the tips explained above. You can do the following;

•Register into any internet social network which has lots of the native speakers in it.

•Find friends to chat with in the language. Oh! Your computer might not have the language keys. Well, there are a lot of internet translators and the most popular is the Google translator tools. As you type and translate, read and take note or even write down new words/ expressions. Since it is a chat, there is the tendency of repetition of such words. This enables you to master them well.

•Complement your efforts by using e-books for the language of your choice. Note that a good e-book should be able to provide live web links that will take you throughout the internet for more in- depth information. And should also be able to have tools for fun, puzzles and games and templates to help you create your own language- learning aids.

•Finally, extend your chats into video chats with the natives so that you hear how they speak and as well learn. With a web cam; you can chat through msn, yahoo, skype e.t.c.

Diligently follow these tips and you will stand a good chance in learning a foreign language with ease.