My first post is going to be around my top tips for language learning…

  1. 1. Firstly, be clear about your motive for learning. This will help both your teacher (if you have one) and you. Are you learning for fun or for business? Or is it because you have a second holiday home abroad? If you know your reason for learning your tutor or teacher can tailor your learning around you.
  2. 2. Try to immerse yourself in your target language from an early stage. I recommend listening to TV or radio online even if you don’t understand much at first. This will help with your accent and will help your vocabulary too and will give you so much confidence as you start understanding more and more.
  3. 3. Get yourself some cue cards/post it notes and either put up new vocabulary on your fridge or bathroom mirror or carry the cue cards in your bag/ handbag. Practice new vocabulary regularly and review older vocabulary frequently.
  4. 4. Make sure you buy a notebook for recording new words, verbs, and phrases. Don’t forget to record genders with nouns and prepositions with verbs and an example of usage.
  5. 5. Get a tandem language partner. Putting a Gumtree advert up is ideal for this. Offer to share your native language in exchange for English/French/Spanish/Italian conversation.
  6. 6. Don’t be embarrassed to make mistakes. That’s how you learn and it’s a natural part of the learning process.
  7. 7. Ask to be corrected by native speakers. Otherwise mistakes will become ingrained and it will become hard to unlearn them.
  8. 8. Make learning fun. Play games, hold foreign film nights with popcorn, use coloured pens to write up vocabulary, sing songs in your target language (YouTube is good for that).
  9. 9. Recognise your preferred learning style and tailor your learning around it. For example, are you are a more visual learner? Why not include more pictures when learning vocabulary?
  10. 10. Take every opportunity to speak in your target language. For example, there is a Colombian Café near me where I can speak Spanish with staff. You could also use recipes in your target language.

I hope these tips help you.

All the best

Lauren