Learning a new language may not seem to be the easiest thing to do, but don’t worry- I will give you some tips today. While these tips will help, be sure to immerse yourself mainly in material that you like, or you won’t stick with it. And if you’re not consistent, anything you do learn may not stick for long. Now, let’s look at the different parts of language. 

• Vocabulary: The building blocks of a language.
• Grammar: The blueprint that explains how to put the blocks together.
• Proficiency: How well you can put the blocks together to make something meaningful.

There are four main parts to vocabulary that you have to deal with. Of all four, the last two are usually the ones that take the most time to get good at knowing.

• Pronunciation: The correct way to say words so that you will be understood.
• Spelling: The correct way to write words so that you will be understood.
• Range of meaning: The fact that different words can have the same meaning, and the same word can have different meanings, depending on what is meant.
• Context: The fact that a word can be appropriate and accurate for some situations, or with certain people, but be inappropriate or inaccurate in others.

Tips for learning vocabulary.

1. Lean on the easy words as much as possible.

Example:

The words acción, situación, and elevación along with cafe, carro, and sopa are all close enough to English that you could probably guess what they mean (action, situation, elevation, coffee, car, and soup). Words that are similar, or the same, in two different languages are called cognates. These kinds of words will be similar enough to be easily connected to English but will usually have some differences- like their spelling and/ or pronunciation.

Sometimes the same difference can be share by a group of words of words. When that happens, you can oftentimes simply guess how to translate a word- without even looking them up. For instance, as you can see in the list above, words that end in -tion in English all end in -ción in Spanish. Knowing that, you can now probably guess how to say similar words like reservation, abbreviation, occupation, etc in Spanish.

• Sites like SpanishCognates.org, for instance, and others like it are a great resource for such words. 

2. Focus more on words and phrases that are more common first.

Example:

Compare words like hard and difficult to words like strenuous and arduous. All of these words mean the same thing, but which do you typically hear most often? While it may be a good idea for a native English speaker to know strenuous and arduous, for a person just starting to learn English, it would be more useful to learn hard and difficult first, since they are used much more frequently. Strenuous and arduous can always be learned later on.

3. Try to learn words in a context rather than in isolation.

Example:

Think of the word book. Now think of what you can do with a book. You can:

• read a book,
• write a book,
• buy a book,
• sell a book.

The first two examples probably came to mind first. The point is that the verbs in those phrases naturally, and very often, go with the word book. So, if you were learning English and didn’t know what the word book meant, but knew what some of the verbs meant, you could use them to help you learn book. The reverse is true too, if you knew what a book was but didn’t know some of the verbs, the word book could help you learn them.

Here’s an example in Spanish:

• tener una idea
• tener un problema
• tener una oportunidad

You probably guessed that idea, problema, and oportunidad here mean idea, problem, and opportunity, respectively. Know this, what do you think tener might mean? If you guessed that tener probably means to have you were correct! Now that you have learned tener in a context with words that frequently go with it you are much more likely to remember it than if I simply told you to remember tener by itself. If you forget, the phrases could also help jog your memory.

Additionally, now that you’ve learned tener you could use it to help you learn other Spanish words that would frequently go with have- like:

• tener dinero (to have money),
• tener hijas (to have daughters),
• tener tiempo (to have time), etc.

Other ways of learning words in a context could be through pictures, conversation, and stories.

Tips for learning grammar.

Grammar simply refers to the rules that explain how to properly convey what you mean. When you don’t get grammar right people either won’t understand you or may misunderstand you. Fortunately, there are only three kinds of grammar rules really: rules that describe spelling changes, order changes, and adding words. Each of these changes can affect the meaning of what you say.

For instance, in English:

• Spelling changes can be used to make a noun plural, or make a verb go from one tense to another tense.
  Cup -> Cups
  Dish -> Dishes
  Get -> Got
  Pull -> Pulled

• Order changes can be used to make a statement into a question.
  You do know! -> Do you know?
  I am working today. -> Am I working today?

• Adding a word can be used to make a statement negative, or it can make a verb future tense.
  I speak Quechua. -> I don’t speak Quechua.
  I eat pizza. -> I will eat pizza.

To summarize, when you change words, you can change their meaning. All languages have their own ways of changing words to create different meanings, but don’t worry, there is usually a pattern to each change. So, once you notice those patterns, you’ll get used to them, and even be able to anticipate them. Plus, knowing that there really are only three kinds of changes will help minimize how overwhelmed you may feel with all the rules.

I hope you found these tips helpful. They certainly aren’t the only helpful strategies you can use. But they are very important if you want to save yourself some time and energy. 

In the comments below, tell me what has typically helped you to learn a new language, or what has seemed to make it difficult?

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