How To Learn A Different Language Without Going Crazy

I absolutely love learning other languages, but they're difficult to learn and frustrating to remember without constant practice. Here are my biggest tips!

Ditch the traditional way! Forget the traditional classes. I took two years of french in High School and couldn't even understand a French dubbed Finding Nemo by the end of it. It had absolutely nothing to do with my teacher. She was wonderful! The classroom way is just a very difficult one to pursue. When you learned your native languages were your parents quizzing you on vocabulary words or verb conjugations as an infant? Hopefully not! So why learn a second language that way when there are so many different options?

Rosetta Stone? Personally, Rosetta Stone didn't work for me. I used to work for an Italian company called Brandy Melville. My non-Italian-speaking co-workers and I would always get a bit annoyed when our Italian co-workers would mention our names while speaking in their native language in the same room as us. I would always joke to them that I was going to buy Rosetta Stone and become fluent in Italian without telling them to listen in on all their conversations. They were insistent, telling me I would hate Rosetta Stone and that they had all wasted a bunch of time on the English version when they moved to America. I was stubborn and dropped way to much money on it anyway. And, of course, I hated it! I felt like the program skipped completely over conjugations and then magically expected me to know them to pass the next level. Even worse, I had to put on a really really bad Italian accent to pass the audio parts. Definitely, NOT a good way to practice pronunciation.

Pimsleur I stumbled across this other learning platform called Pimsleur a couple of years ago. This program approaches language learning through audio, just like how we learned our native language. Even though English and many other languages have over a million words, we only use about 2,500 of them often and Pimsleur takes advantage of that. They are 30 minute sessions you do once a day. I downloaded them to my iPhone, and listen to them while in the car. Each day you are taught a handful of new phrases and words. The best part is the first time it asks you to answer a question that it has never specifically taught you how to respond to, yet to your surprise, you're still able to answer. Since Pimsleur focuses on teaching you the building blocks with a high focus on those 2,500 most commonly used words, you quickly learn to build phrases and sentences all on your own.

The other thing I love about Pimseluer if not having to focus on verb conjugations or accent as much as other language learning methods. You've only heard the words and phrases one way, so alternatives begin to immediately sound off. For example, if someones says to you in English, "I got take my dog walked," it simply doesn't sound right. The wrong conjugation or pronunciation becomes more obvious after hearing the correct form over and over again. Pimsleur also less expensive than other similar language programs and has just about every language you can think of: Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Farsi, Norwegian, Hindi, Icelandic, Danish, Portuguese, seriously just about any language you can think of.

Each language has multiple Levels made up of 30 Lessons each. You can buy an entire level or 5 lessons at a time. It also works with Audible if you have an account! If you don't have Audible, you can sign up here and get two free audiobooks which would let you get 10 levels of a Pimsleur for free.

Apps! There are now tons of fun apps that have made the activity of learning vocabulary into fun games. With language, if you don't use it you lose it, so these apps can be incredibly helpful when you don't have someone to practice with. To keep it fresh on your brain, try and make a habit of playing a few levels everyday! I like the apps Duolingo and MindSnacks.

Watch Movies And Read Books Try watching movies you've already seen dubbed in your newly learned language or, once you're feeling confident and want a bit of a challenge, reread one of your favorite books translated. Try and avoid children's books because, like our English ones, they tend to speak in rhymes and poetic phrases that aren't commonly used in day to day life and could get confusing.

Pod101 Check out podcasts and download some on your phone to listen to when you want to pick up a few extra phrases! The websites are awesome and extremely helpful! Pod101 also has a Word Of The Day e-mail you can sign up for as well.

Word Of The Day Instagrams Last but not least! Follow some word of the day Instagram pages like @frenchwords to learn an easy and useful new vocab word daily while scrolling through your feed.