How to learn a language

3 Four areas to master

As I look back on my own experience of taking a new language from complete beginner to fluency, I can identify four ‘buckets’ that I have needed to become good at, in order to learn with some efficiency and fast-track the process.

Those are:

  1. Linguistic – learning the language itself
  2. Cultural – understanding the culture
  3. Methodological – your language learning method
  4. Self – staying focused and motivated
Figure 2 The four areas to master.
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I have experienced both feeling a mastery of, and feeling utterly useless at, each of these four ‘buckets’. These ups and downs have shown me that if any of these go wrong, you will struggle to reach your goals. On the other hand, when you learn to master these elements, you unlock the secret to learning any language quickly.

OpenLearn - How to learn a language
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