Language Study Tips

When I was in China, people often asked me, "I want to improve my English, how should I study?" I thought, why would you ask an American how to study languages? People often criticize American foreign language education. There actually do seem to be very few Americans who can speak a foreign language fluently. Maybe it's because most foreigners have studied English, so Americans think there's no point to studying a foreign language! That's not my thinking though. I've always loved studying languages. Starting in middle school, I studied eight years of French, and starting studying Chinese my sophomore year of college. Since I've always loved studying languages, I think I might have some useful suggestions for language learning. This is my method:

1. Study authentic language materials. The writing and speech of native speakers are best. If you want to learn Chinese, I would advise you not to take my bad writing in Chinese as a model (though the Chinese learning materials I post on this site are always checked by native speakers). On the Internet, you can find articles and broadcasts of any level on any topic, in almost any language. If you can't understand harder texts, search for 儿童文学 (Children's Literature), for example. In China I saw several "English Magazine" type publications, filled with bad English. Why study these when so many authentic materials are available on the Internet and elsewhere?

2. The Internet can be a good language environment. It's best to go to a country when you're studying its language, but many people don't have this opportunity. I started studying French when I was 14, only had a French teacher from France in college, and went to France for the first time at 22. When I was in school I wanted to improve my spoken French, but didn't know any French friends to talk with. Once my family bought a computer; I searched for "forum" and "talk radio program", and this became my language environment. If you want to study the spoken language, reading books isn't necessarily best. You can only learn the spoken language by studying natural conversation.

3. Use a textbook and teacher as guides. The best model is authentic language materials, but you at least need a dictionary. Children don't need a guide to learn their mother tongue, but we're not kids, studying languages isn't as natural for us. My favorite way to study is to read and listen on my own, and for parts I don't understand, consult a textbook or ask my teacher. This also works: do a web search for the sentences in your textbook—you'll find plenty of natural examples in context.

4. Study linguistics. Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It's a very useful tool. Once you know the phonetic transcription used in your dictionary (Pinyin is good for Chinese), you don't need to hear a new word to know its pronunciation, you just need to look it up. Linguists can also use linguistic terminology to accurately describe your pronunciation and grammar errors.

5. Study hard. This might seem obvious, but some people seem to think there's some trick to learning languages. Study for a few hours every day, and after a few years you'll make great improvements.

If you'd like to suggest another way of studying or criticize the ones above, feel free to respond in the "Comments" section below. The post above is my Chinese translation of this post.