How Not to Get Discouraged When Learning a Foreign Language, and Tips for Useful Platforms
How Not To Get Discouraged Learning A Language
Have you been trying to learn a foreign language over and over again, yet you did not succeed? We all know how tough it can be to acquire a new language. But sometimes you just need to know how to not get discouraged when learning a language.
First, you need to be motivated and dedicated enough to keep going. Having a result in mind can help you achieve your goals, such as the first language of your foreign partner, a job that requires new language skills, studying in a foreign country, traveling, or just taking up a new challenge.
Making your language learning a versatile experience is crucial to keep your interest high. How can you do that? Find the content, and type of learning method that sparks your curiosity, and makes you willing to engage with the language more. You must ask yourself what are the things you enjoy and could help you advance your language skills? It could be videos, podcasts, documentaries, apps, games, cards, group learning and practice, language circles, or movies
Perseverance and Setbacks in Language Learning
In my experience as a language teacher, students not only get easily bored with coursebook material but can be discouraged with a busy schedule. When they find it too overwhelming to learn the new language, they come up with excuses to quit. Sticking to learning a language in the long run usually doesn’t have anything to do with average language skills. Of course, this is not the case when students have learning difficulties, who should choose a specialist school.
In comparison with similar services for instance life coaching, language teaching isn’t too highly-priced. Raising your language tuition prices can also discourage students from continuing, even if it is a small amount. It is somewhat understandable because learning English on a high level in an Easter European country for instance, with lessons twice a week could be quite costly from the same country's salary. I found the most tenacious students won’t give up even with a slight price rise.
What Could Support Your Language Learning
Besides the old books, you can get faster results with the myriad of audiovisual materials available online. Listening to stories of your interest could help if you do the extra work of looking up words and phrases, also trying to memorize them. Watching series and movies in your choice of language, seeing the story and the acts together with the subtitles could bring you the best results. Hearing the expressions repeatedly sink into your subconscious more.
Rather than listening to podcasts and talks that don’t come with the parallel act. Series and movies could also work better because the more you can feel the language, the quicker it could sink in. When you emotionally relate to things they stick into your memory stronger. You could watch movies on Youtube, HBO, Netflix, or the news channels, even if you don’t understand much of it, it is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with pronunciation and feel the language.
When you keep watching the series, you could also develop an emotional bond with the actors and actresses, looking forward to the next episode. This wouldn’t feel like forcing your mind to learn something new! Familiar things create a safe atmosphere to improve your language skills, meanwhile, you are entertained with the outcome of the story! Of course, this is best when done with subtitles, which you don’t always get!
Modern Ways of Language Learning
1. Zero to Hero
Videos could have the disadvantage of requiring your presence. You could also create your lessons from YouTube or Netflix, read and listen to them wherever you prefer. There are several online platforms you could use to support your studies. Zero to Hero offers you to pick from many languages, to watch movies with closed captions of your language and gives you a great choice of phrases, etc. It is with the check this program.
2. LingQ
When you have closed captions with movies, you can import them as a lesson to LingQ. The problem with Netflix is that it doesn’t allow you to capture the audio, even though you can capture the videos and subtitled dialogues. Without the audio, your language learning motivation could fade, as sometimes all you need is hearing the foreign language, even without a video. So Netflix content could be used as a reading exercise, to read words for your visual memory.
3. Language Reactor
Another powerful software is Language Reactor, which can help you learn from native materials, making your self-study more enjoyable and effective! This is the former Language Learning with Netflix. This extension offers dual language subtitles, a popup dictionary, precise video playback controls, as well as other features when you watch movies or series on Netflix. This tool can help you to go through the chosen video step by step or subtitle by subtitle to grasp the context!
You can also use the software with YouTube videos to enhance your comprehension of authentic language in context! If you enjoy reading books, Language Reactor can help you import text, and add a machine translation in your language as well as read the text with super-realistic text-to-speech. The Language Reactor extension runs on Google Chrome, you can use it both with Windows and Mac OS on your PC or laptop.
4. DownSub
A free application that enables you to download subtitles directly from YouTube, Netflix, VIU, Viki, Vlive, and more. It supports downloading subtitles/captions formats in SRT, TXT, VTT. This app doesn’t force the download or installation of any type of extensions or third-party software.
5. Amazon Prime
You could also learn languages by adding foreign language captions and dictionary functions on Amazon Prime Video. You can watch your favorite tv shows, films, and animes in 79 languages! This platform offers a multilingual subtitle display, extra subtitle reading function (not only Amazon’s), dictionary function to 79 languages and by character function, the option to translate one sentence with Google Translate, playback speed change function, opening and closing function of subtitle viewer.
Endnote: How to Get Great Results
Like with anything, you cannot get great results by paying a private tutor once a week, just to relax your mind feeling like you did something for your learning.
Nor can you get amazing results in group classes that don’t advance too much, and you are stuck on a certain level. You must put in enough extra effort to advance your language skills. First, it can truly benefit you to understand what works for you.
While one language learner enjoys listening to videos and talks the most, others can learn more from reading various articles, or like to learn from written news (on higher levels especially). As for the grammar, try to learn it in context, together with useful phrases so it doesn’t get too dry!
By making language learning a fun and effective daily habit (or every second day), you will inevitably realize your goals and be quite proud of yourself. Good luck!