What's the best way to learn a foreign language?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m about to embark on learning a foreign language, specifically German. I’m only working part-time at the moment so I have plenty of time to devote to this. What is the best and quickest way to learn a foreign language? I know most people’s first inclination would probably be to suggest actually spending some time in Germany, but for financial reasons that’s not feasible at the moment (though, hopefully, it will be in about six months or so). Failing that, what should I do instead?

P.S. - I’ve heard some good things about the Rosetta Stone program. Is it any good? Cheers.

2

The details will depend on the person: for example, methods which assume the student doesn’t know any grammar will be horrible for students who do and who have an analytical mind, whereas methods that rely on students being able to apply their existing knowledge of grammar to the new language will fail for those who either don’t know grammar or don’t have that analytical mindset.

Wow, that was one long sentence.

It will also depend on your objectives: if you want to understand spoken German, you need access to spoken German, preferably from people you can interact with rather than only from media (which nowadays and thanks to the internet will be easy to get). OTOH, if you only want to read and write it you don’t need to bother with movies or with a speaking environment.

My advice is to pick a “main method”, either self-taught or with a teacher (I generally prefer to have a teacher at first, JoseB goes for self-taught; different strokes for different people), and complement it with different media. For the media, remember that you can’t read Der Spiegel on your first day of German any more than you would have been able to read The New York Times on your first day of kindergarten. Children’s books, adaptations of novels to younger ages, and YA novels (in that order) aren’t exactly high lit but they’re a good way to build vocabulary.

3

I echo Nava’s comments about personalisation of style.

However I want to recount my experience of learning Italian at a relatively late stage in life. It hasn’t been easy and I suspect the mistakes I’ve made could be useful for others.

I started off with the grammatical framework: in particular I got hold of the Michel Thomas course, which is excellent for giving you the scaffolding on which to hang the rest of the language. I listened to the lessons and started compiling my own notes, over the course of two or three months.

Then I look classes for three months. Quite a few - at one point I was doing 12 hours a week.

And at the end of it all, I couldn’t speak a word of the language. Hopeless.

Partly because most of the classes were conducted in Italian, which is theoretically the correct way to teach a foreign language, but didn’t work for me at all. My Portuguese and Spanish classmates were all rapping away in Italian after a couple of weeks but me, the other British guy, and the Russian guy in the class were screwed.

This teaching method meant that that complex Italian grammar and vocabulary were used to teach simple grammar and vocabulary. Rather than accelerate my learning as it was theoretically meant to, it actually retarded it because the words spoken by the teacher just washed over me as a blur of unfamiliar sounds.

But the main reason it didn’t work for me was my error: there was a significant lack of vocabulary on my part. In retrospect, to communicate it’s more important to be able to go into the grocery store and say “Pineapple. Want.” than “Good day to you madam, I would be desirous of that [oh shit I don’t know the word for pineapple]”.

Three and a half years on, and actually living in Italy, and I can get by. Just. I can read the newspapers and watch movies with Italian subtitles, and I can have a really simple conversation with strangers if I ask them to speak slowly. I don’t think I’m even at an intermediate stage (perhaps on paper, but not spoken). I can’t join in a conversation with my Italian friends unless they start speaking as if I’m five years old, or switch to speaking English, which makes me feel guilty. It’s pretty isolating.

So my advice is do things in this order:

  1. Learn the fundamentals of how to pronounce the language - this is very important because it will prevent ‘fossilisation’ of pronunciation errors, where they get fixed in your brain and can’t be altered when you’ve started speaking the language.

  2. Go to Memrise and find a vocabulary course in your desired language (for me it was the 1,000 most common Italian words). Do it religiously.

meanwhile

2a. Learn the basics of the grammar.

  1. Get a teacher to reinforce the grammar, the quirks and nuances, and to speak it with you.

  2. Speak and listen as much as possible.

I really think if I’d have paid more attention to step 2 above, I would be a lot further on with my learning than I currently am. It would have unlocked steps 3 and 4 far, far quicker.

4

A love muffin that speaks your target language and is patient and willing to tutor you will work wonders. :slight_smile:

5

Note that those classmates had the advantage of Itagnolo and Portuliano. That is, their original languages were similar enough to their target in vocabulary and grammar that a lot of it works out without a lot of thought. With a little bit of care, they’re mutually understandable (not 100%, but I’ve seen people with very different dialects of English have more of a problem).

14 weeks in Italy, I was perfectly capable of having a cussin’ contest in Italian after 8 of them; the Italian was using more Spanish cusswords than I did. 3 months in Germany… I think the sentence I uttered most commonly was hundert gram bitte while pointing at the item of which I wanted 100g.

6

jjimm did you learn Latin at school?

7

Well yes, that was pretty much my point: in my case, speakers of Latin languages were already at a huge advantage. Which leads me to think that ‘immersion teaching’ only works if the entire class begins with the same (dis)advantages and progresses at the same speed. In a context where more than half the class already had half a clue what was going on, it was pretty much useless for the rest of us.

At age 13 I had the choice between Latin and German and chose the latter because it was theoretically more useful, being a living language. Alas at no point in my life has it ever been the slightest bit useful, not even during my recent visits to Germany (apart from having already gotten over laughing at the word “fahrt”).

8

It also needs some way other than the target language to communicate. Several of my language teachers tried the all-target approach without any kind of supporting picture, schematics or whatever and all they managed to produce was a lot of confusion. We students were all at the same level - and that level simply wasn’t high enough to understand whatever the hell the teacher was saying. This included teachers for English, French and German.

9

I’m relieved I’m not the only one for whom that method doesn’t work. So to what do you attribute your amazingly good English?

As for me I made the fastest progress with an Italian teacher who spoke English to me and explained various nuances and grammatical quirks. So I wonder where the principle of the ‘target-only’ methodolgy comes from, and if it is based on anything other than hypothesis.

10

It’s different for everyone. I learned French and Mandarin through 10 weeks of total-immersion competency-based conversational class- very little grammar or other structure, just a focus on learning how to do things like buy train tickets and discuss your job- followed by living in a country speaking that language. . Took me about six months to get confident in French and a year to get good at Mandarin.

I’ve never managed to learn anything by focusing on grammar or doing normal classwork. The only thing that works for me is talking to people.

11

I took four years of German in high school and four semesters of Italian in college and learned to communicate better in Spanish by working weekends at a restaurant with a majority of native Spanish speakers. My Spanish at the time was shit, but I was way more comfortable actually using it than I ever was with German or Italian, and they actually understood WTF I was trying to say.

I’m finishing an online certificate in Spanish for Business this weekend, and have taken seven Spanish classes in total (four at the community college and three online). Honestly, I feel that my conversational skills always regress while I’m taking classes until they’re finished, then I can dedicate more time to just speaking extempoaneously with my friends or in conversation groups.

Using a private tutor one-on-one for four hours a week helped a lot in improving my speaking skills, but it was very expensive.

12

I mastered French by dating a woman for two years who spoke very little English in my 20’s. She spoke it, but my French was better than her English. So French it was. I work in French and English so I get to practice it every day, and watch hockey games broadcasted in French.

13

At that age I had to choose between German and Ancient Greek: I chose the latter because I already knew some.

14

Absolutely not. You will not learn to speak a language with Rosetta Stone’s method. There have been many threads and posts decrying Rosetta Stone, many by me (full disclosure). A few of my posts on the topic are below. If you don’t want to click on the links, basically, I am saying not to waste your time and money on something that doesn’t work and will not teach you to speak and understand a language. Rosetta Stone is good at one thing, marketing Rosetta Stone.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13154602&postcount=8
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13155791&postcount=14
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13351209&postcount=23

15

Duolingo is a free online tool that uses the same method, and is very similar. If you want to try it out, spend some time with Duolingo.

16

Take a German lover. The only way to learn a language is in bed.

17

To Micaela. Well, lucky genes too, but Micaela mostly. Excuse me, I need to go /worship the uncanny teaching skills of Micaela and /pray for her continued good health. If you run a search for her name in posts by me you’ll find me singing her praises time and again.

Here and here I recount our first encounter with her. Short of the ceiling opening up and chubby angels with strategically-placed cloth strips coming down with harps, sitars and lutes, nothing could have shocked us more.

There is also being at it for over 30 years, 5 of them in the US and 2 in Scotland, and lots of international projects with English as the working language, and… but if it hadn’t been for Micaela, I doubt I would ever have understood not just English but as much about the underlying structures of language as I do.