How to learn foreign languages
How I did it: In one word? Perseverance! Methods and goals will vary from person to person... and I guess I have an out of the ordinary trajectory...
I've been exposed to foreign languages since I can remember… or even before that. I was born in France while my parents were studying. When we moved to Brazil I was only two, but i realized that everybody spoke only portuguese, so I refused to speak the baby words I'd learned in french. At age 4, some italian relatives took me for a ride at the Sugar Loaf (the hills featured in every postcard of Rio de Janeiro) and on the train ride up, I was so scared of the height that some hidden instinct urged me to say it out loud - in french! At age 5 I was alphabetized in portuguese, and being the first born child, grandchild and great-grandchild, my italian great-grandmother sent me books so I’d grow closer to my family up there (I'm pretty grateful to my dad, who teached me every night before going to bed). At age 10 I started learning english at school, and my mum signed me up for classes at the Alliance Française...
Reading! As a child I loved reading (still do!) so I devoured everything i laid hands on, in different languages. I read american classics such as The Adventures of Tow Sawyer and Little Women... in italian! Growing up I moved from comics and detective stories to more grown-up reading, as well as Economics textbooks and articles. Varied reading material helps you to get the wider picture of the language and culture you're trying to know.
Traveling! I've been lucky enough to travel a few times to Europe and the US, only for a month or so during vacations, time enough to make a huge difference in my learning. The most time I’ve ever spent abroad was 4 months at Quebec, where I picked up a new language: quebecois (that ain’t french, I assure you…). Even though I haven’t acquired (not yet) native speaker fluency in any of the foreign languages I know, it helped me learn how to function full time in them, experiencing different contexts (scholar, sarcastic, casual...).
I’m on the right track, I’m still young yet experienced, there’s plenty of room (and time) for improving my skills… until i turn 100 I'll be quite good at this!
Lessons & tips: When you begin to get contact with a foreign language, don't try to learn the translation of the things you want to say. Instead, try to soak up in the new language, figure out how it feels, the music it has (all languages have a musicality) and listen listen listen - a lot.
I believe that the more active and open is your listening, the more you really learn - that's why kids learn so fast, they're like sponges! After you've done that for a reasonable amount of time - let's say 2 years - you just have to let it all out, passing to the active learning phase: expressing yourself as a native speaker would. Again, children and their complete lack of self-consciousness provide a good posture to copy, since you can't be afraid to make mistakes. Everybody does, and only by saying complete non-sense sentences you'll have a chance to be corrected and get it right!
Learning a language requires a long steady effort. Once you get to a certain level - the confortable "I won't starve to death if I land all alone in the country" one - it feels like you're making too little progress - or none at all. Yes, it gets harder to notice improvement over hours and hours of studying when you're trying to gain a more polished and ellaborate style. But it will come.
Resources: - read a lot, all kinds of things - even the little print of medicine packages!
- listen, get exposed to the language - nowadays there's no excuse, podcasts and ipods will take you anywhere you want.
- don't be shy to speak up - as you were learning your mother tongue, I bet you sounded silly too. Singing songs can improve pronunciation and phrase structure (but not intonation...).
