How to learn a new language by yourself at your home: Part 2

Hello, this's part 2 of how to learn a new language by yourself at your home post, if you haven't read the first part, here it's, you'll understand a lot better what's going on in today's post.

In the last post, I said I’ll talk about language aspects, and we have got two kinds, passive and active ones, in this part, we’ll talk about the passive ones, which are reading and listening.

Reading

As I said above, reading is a passive way to learn the language, in the form that you do nothing but only absorbing what’s written in front of you -but never estimate the power of this.

As it’s passive and requires little effort from you if compared to active skills, you’ll need to do a lot of it -but yeah look it’s not going to be that hard.

Here are some points about reading to notice when you’re practicing it:

Extensive reading:

As it said, it’s extensive reading, a.k.a. You don’t dig deep, but you read a lot.

For example, you pick a book and you read it without stopping to look out the meaning of most new words for you in the dictionary, you don’t analyze the grammar, you don’t pay any attention to the structure of the sentences, you just aim to know the general gist of what is written in front of you. It's exactly reading for fun.

This’s a method of what’s called language acquisition, where you immerse yourself in the language you’re trying to learn, you can search more about it, but for the purposes of this post, I wanted to mention that there are a lot of studies that have been done proofing its effectiveness, and as a matter of fact giving an assurance for extensive reading.

But the point here, your brains start to pick patterns, new words, structure, grammar, and different language angles as you expose yourself to a lot of materials, thus fulfilling the purpose of learning the language.

Intensive reading:

It’s the exact opposite of extensive reading, you do exactly what you don’t do there, you look for the meanings, you analyze the text, you look for the grammar.

And as intensive as it is, you only apply it to a small amount of text.

It’s recommended to go over the text again and again-everyday if possible- until you fully get it.

Here’s a video of the person I first discovered these two methods from, he has great insights about them and he also talks about learning languages.

Books:

Ok if we are going to talk about reading, we need to talk about books. The key fact in using the books to learn a language is to use them according to your level in that language.

There are many sites out there that will test your language and tell you your level, and you can then search for recommendations for books at that level.

You don’t even have to know what your exact level is to pick a book at your level. You can just look over the book and start a few pages or lines-most of the times it’ll be obvious from the beginning- and notice this:
If you can get the gist of what you read easily, then it’s your level, and if not, then you will say not yet for this book, but you’ll promise it you’re gonna meet soon.

It’s important to note that you mustn't be so comfortable and only stay with your level for a long time, as no learning or improvement will happen from such a practice. So make sure that there are value and improvement added to you from what you read.

Interest

The last thing I want to talk about due to the reading aspect is as it’s important to read in your level, it’s important to read in your interest field too.

For example, if you’re interested in fashion, you can read about fashion, if you’re interested in cooking, you can read about cooking, and so on.

Reading in the field of interest will make sure you stick to reading and always be willing to read more, you’ll be so enjoyed while doing it, and so much information and words will stick more easily to your mind. it’s a win-win situation>.

Ways you can make reading active:

As I said before reading is a passive way of learning the language, but there are many ways to make it active.

The purpose of making it active, isn’t because the passive one is useless, we already talked about why it’s important-are you with me?- , ok making it active is to maximize its benefits, to let us stay engaged while reading, and to help us better retain what we read.

Of course, active reading requires more effort than the passive one, so just don’t let it be your permanent way of reading, so you give it all up.

Now let’s see some of the ways you can read actively by:

Making summaries:

You can make them for the whole piece you’re reading, you can do it for parts and sections of it( for example if you’re reading a book with four long chapters, you may summarize each chapter and/or summarize the whole book)

Tips for summarizing:

• Look at the title, think about what are the relevant info leading to this title.

• Omit examples, explanations, and all the details from your summary( of course this mustn't be compulsory if you see something worthy of being included in the summary)

• Summarize around a specific question: Exactly as essays are built- but it’s not an essay you’re just doing it for fun remember!                                                                                                    So for example, if you’re reading about relationships, your question may be what are the types of relationships? Or what are the characteristics of a successful relationship?

Highlighting or underlining:

By highlighting or underlining You can emphasize a lot of things, you can emphasize what feels interesting to you, you can look for quotes or you can look for the key information.

If highlighting and underlining is not possible you can take notes in a separate recording tool.

Annotation

I already wrote a post about annotating you can check it here, but basically, the annotation will help you get engaged with what you read and kinda making it as a personalized copy for you.

Reviewing

Lastly, you can write a review of what you have read, telling your point of view about it so that you will be more likely to pay attention while reading.
Goodreads is a great site to write book reviews.

Listening

Okay, we come to the listening skill here, which is a passive way to learn the language too.

Listening is your way to pick the right pronunciation and all the auditory aspects of the language, it specifically feeds your speaking, as reading feeds your writing, but whatever they creep to other aspects of the language as language are interconnected.

There are many things you can listen to, but there are general rules you need while picking what you listen to learn the language from:

• Listen to original materials spoken by native speakers or those who are fluent as you can.

• Listen in interest filed as we said about writing because it’ll make sure you stick to listening and keep you engaged and make you want to listen more.

• It’s important to note that there are different accents out there in any language (for example the British vs the American accent in English), you may want to learn a specific accent, this is the one you’ll listen to the most of the time, but make sure you let your ear practice listening to other accents too, to be able to understand them also.

• As we said in reading-there are a lot of similarities as they are both passive skills- you need not to only stick to your field of interest- I know I’ve said that, because learning will not happen if you only stick to your comfort zone- so from time to time listen to something out of your comfort zone, it doesn’t have to be something out of your interest at all, remember we need to keep the process of learning enjoyable as it has to be.

• And as we said about your level, you will want to listen to something at your level, but again don’t get so comfortable so that you can really improve over time.

• A thing to note about the previous point is that, if you’re listening in a way of a visual form-as in videos- you can listen to more difficult materials because the movements and all the visual elements are going to help you to understand better. I highly recommend this way.

• You can combine listening with reading by listening to something then reading it if you have a script for it. This way will help you with pronunciation more before you associate a wrong pronunciation in your mind to a word, you listen to it first and get the right pronunciation first. But don’t worry if you spend all your life reading only without listening to anything, things can easily be corrected and there is always room for improvement- this is why we say it’s important to learn all aspects of the language not only one, as they are interconnected.

What can you listen to then?

There are many things out there to listen to, here are a few suggestions:

• Listening to the news:

What an amazing way to be educated about what is happening in the world and learn the raw professional language.

But don’t suck yourself into them unless you’re really not easily affected, as news is filled with negativity.

• Listen to songs:

Who doesn’t love songs! They are a great way to boost your mood and get the language in and make it stick too. And you can listen to it while doing many things in the background (like doing the chores).

But here I recommend as you can try to check the lyrics as many times it’ll be hard to get the right word due to the nature of how songs are made and how these words are melted in the melody of the song.

• The visuals:

Movies, series, YouTube (I can’t tell how YouTube is a blessing for me!) and whatever you come across are so so beneficial for your listening skill, as we said before, it makes you able to listen to harder contents with all the visual elements that will help you understand better, and stick the language into your brain.





We come to the end of this post, in the next post I’ll talk about the active skills, vocabulary, grammar, and other points concerning language learning.


Until then peace:)