On Language Learning

Learning to speak a foreign language well is one of the most intellectually rewarding experiences that you can undertake, yet it is also one of the most intellectually demanding. As a young person who has learned eight languages (mostly self-taught), acheiving communicative competency to one degree or another, I am intimately familiar with the highs and lows of the language learning process.

In this post, I would like to address some of the struggles to improving speaking and ways to overcome them. I find "shyness" and/or low confidence to be a major road block to acheiving fluency. This is something I still grapple with at times with certain languages. This sort of hesitation to speak often undertows language learners progress, ultimately rendering all learning up to that point to be an utter waste of time. Another common struggle that stymies speaking progress (for some) is a lack of opportunities to speak the target language. In a perfect world, learning a foreign language would be easy as 1-2-3 and expressing yourself with ease and fluently discussing personal topics of interest could be attained in a relatively short period of time. However, that's simply outside of the realm of possibility for most people. The innability to achieve fluency within a fixed time frame can be demotivating to point of making you want to just give up. For most people, there are no shortcuts to acheiving complete fluency, but don't let that derail your focus and motivation.

It's not all doom and gloom! Here, I will share some thoughts and tips on ways to improve speaking.

I consider tutors and language exchange partners to be the most indispensable resources a langage learner can have. However, finding a good tutor and/or language exchange partner isn't always easy. To remedy any uncertainties, it helps to have some criteria in place. For example, I've had optimal results with tutors who fulfill the following:

Speak the target language to you for most or all of the session
Able to adjust his/her speech according to your level
Able to skillfully explain things that are confusing or cause misunderstanding
Utilizes additional tools as necessary (i.e images, objects)
Has patience
Is encouraging
Find a tutor like this^and you won't go wrong. When looking for a steady language exchange partner, whether in real life or online, I find that a person who fulfills the following criteria is a worthwhile partner:
A person you can talk to like a friend
Able to carry a conversation
Doesn't collapse into English when it's time to speak the target language
Maintains a good balance of talking and listening
Depending on your own needs and temprament, your criteria might be different.

Another important aspect of improving language skills is finding materials in the target language that interest you. Whether you're into motorcycles, cooking, gardening, or quite literally anything at all, you're definitely going to be able to find materials (i.e. publications, videos, etc) in the target language on subjects of interest. I find there to be two advantages to this. Firstly, when reading or listening to something of interest in the target language, you tend to engage faster, understand it better, and pick up vocabulary faster because it is material with which you are already familiar. Not to mention, this helps maintain your motivation to continue learning because you find that you're finally able to understand the target language and it's such a great feeling! Secondly, now that engaging with things you like in the target language, this allows you to connect with native speakers who like the same things. When you start building friendships and networks based on common interests, this can open so many doors.

The last thing I would like to highlight is having the proper mindest that is condusive for language learning. In order to become proficient, you need to learn how to be shameless (if you aren't like that already). The ability to be shameless, or lack thereof, will either make or break your progress. Just know that learning to speak a foreign language can be rife with mistakes, misunderstandings, and misuses of the target language that may amuse or confuse native speakers. Such instances might make you want to crawl into a hole or galvanize you to pay more attention to language use details so such embarrassing episodes won't occur again. More often than not, when you speak with confidence, you're more likely to be understood and speaking gradually becomes easier, but it won't happen overnight, so be sure to expose yourself to as much native speech materials as you possibly can.