In the last post you read the story. But the main question remains unanswered – how to approach the things. I, till now, have tried a lot of things – creating flash cards of my own, flash cards in my phone, writing things again and again, sticking hand-made fully decorated charts (wasted a lot of time in that) on walls of my room, downloading language learning apps, and what not. I did learn (and now, know) a lot of languages’ alphabets but then vocabulary remains weak. In that case, I can’t actually say I know the language, can I? (Yeah, in resumes, it looks good and if you write that you are learning the mentioned languages, you can answer if someone asks that yup, you do know the alphabets, at least!) Then I saw my juniors studying them in schools. Not the foreign ones but the common ones. And, I remembered how my mother used to teach me and how I used to help my sibling learn things.

Hence, the solution I found out was – Start From The Basics. In Indian system the procedure goes as follows (at least I did that).  Learn the alphabet. Start reading small small words, then larger ones. If possible arrange some newspapers in the target language and then start slowly. When you get a grip over reading, start with dictations. Obviously, you need some native speaker friend of yours or you can use your favorite dramas for that. For vocabulary, you can begin, like small children, with fruits, vegetables, colors, parts of the body, counting etc. Then you can go to the newspaper you started with and add to your vocab.

For writing part, you can start with short compositions like describing things in small sentences. Then go to bigger things like essays and all. Last remains speaking. First the pronunciation needs to be accurate. For that, native speakers are the best source. You listen to them and repeat them. In this regard, the movies and dramas can help too (but, no matter what, don’t get hooked to them!!) Even better, if you know some native speakers.

Ah! This is nostalgic. All the school memories ran through the mind. See, it isn’t that difficult. But this covers basic only. If you want more, you can read this book – How to Learn Any Language by Barry Farber. It not only tells this person’s journey of language learning but also how to learn, how to take out time when you don’t have any, but still want to explore new cultures through their mother tongue and the languages themselves. It’s a great resource for those who want to start anew as well as those who have become frustrated with variety and never reached anywhere (include me too in the category)

This brings me to the idea, that I can write reviews for the resources available online which I found useful! Hmmm…. I should go and find a good name if I want to do a series of reviews like that.