How to learn a new language by yourself at your home: Part 3

Hello everyone again, this is part 3 of how to learn a new language by yourself at home post.

The last time we talked about the passive skills which are listening and reading. And in this post, we’re gonna continue by talking about the active ones which are speaking and writing.

So let’s get started.

Writing

Writing is a passive skill as we said earlier, you produce something, so it needs an effort from you, but when learned it’s not that difficult at all.

It’s important to note that writing is fed by reading, the more you read, the better you become at writing.

The other skills are also contributing to it because all of them are interconnected as we said in part one.

So how can you practice writing?

Writing journals and diaries:

This one may not be for everyone, but you may be someone who loves to write about his day or journal his feelings or write whatever-there generally no rules for some types of journals-, so if you’re that person, you can start doing this in your target language rather than using your mother language.

Don’t make my mistake and just journal, I enjoy journaling so much, but I believe if I have put a little more effort it will feed my writing skill even more.

What I mean by a little effort, is trying to find the words that you couldn’t know in your target language (I usually write them in my mother language and never check back, I’ll have the intention, but I regret not checking).

Also checking if your structure is correct, or finding a word in your target language that will be used instead of a long description you wrote in your journal, and also checking your spelling and grammar.

Obviously, you don’t need this little extra effort all the time, but as you can and as it does not feel overwhelmed do it-I’ll try to do it too, so let’s do this together:).

Writing essays or topics:

This’s more about writing a little bit in a formal way.

Here you can write about the topics that interest you in a notebook, in your social media, in a note app, or even you can start your own blog!

Also here you can try to make an extra little effort, and doing it here is more important than in the previous point, especially if you’re going to publish it. But don’t be so pressured to get things perfect-they are never gonna be perfect though-and don’t overthink other people's opinions-people will always have opinions, you too have ones, so just let the opinions be just opinions, not more.

Book summaries and reviews:

This is great because you are almost using the language of the book you read and getting more benefits from reading as we said when we were talking about reading, and also at the same time feeding the writing skill, a win-win situation.

Writing your own thoughts:

This may look like the first point of writing your diaries and journaling, but it’s a little bit shorter, those ones are more to share them in your social media, or just keep them in your own privacy form.

Also here don’t forget the extra little effort as possible and as much as you can and still enjoy the language.

Taking notes:

You can take notes from something you read, listen to, or watch, it’s a great way to keep the things you learn and train your writing.

Planning:

If you’re someone who plans his life or writes lists from any kind-like grocery lists-you can do them in your target language. By doing this you start to know the words you use in your life more and organize your life-see how learning a new language can always be a win-win situation!

Okay finally there are many writing exercises out there that will improve your writing, for example:

Paraphrasing: where you write something you read but by using different words than the one used in the original text as you can. This will improve your free writing skills and improve your vocabulary.

You can rewrite something you read, so you will pay more attention to the words and structure and notice things you don’t usually notice while reading or writing from your own mind. Notice this may be tedious and boring sometimes, so opt for short texts and do it from time to time, no pressure at all, remember language learning is supposed to be enjoyable.

Writing what you hear: you can listen to audio and write down what you hear, you can slow the audio and pause it as you go. Again as for the previous example use short audio and not overwhelm yourself.

Speaking

So we finally come to the fourth skill which is speaking, and it’s too as the previous one is an active skill.

Speaking for the most maybe is the hardest skill to be good at, and because it’s the one that shows if we are good at the language or not-as this is perceived by most of the people out there- it let us feel as we are knowing nothing in the language forgetting all the other skills we already know-reading, writing or listening.

This mustn't be the case, we already know it’s not the only skill out there, and we already know the importance of the other skills, so don’t let those thoughts dominate your mind.

Speaking is perceived as a hard skill to master, it’s pretty fascinating to know how little vocabulary you need to be good at it.

So the key here is to listen to native speakers as much as possible. Listening too much to native speakers will let you pick the words they frequently use, so you know which words to use.

Listening only is not enough-but it pays the most honestly-, so here too you can do a little effort to improve your chances.

How can you make this little extra effort?

By writing the words you notice coming a lot and the words you didn’t understand when listening to real materials, and I highly highlight the word real materials, as this is the key here.

By re-listening to the materials: so you make sure words are sticking to your brain.

By making videos or audios trying to say what you listened to: You can use their own words, word by word, or just use your own words, but including most of their words too. The word by word one may be a little bit intimidating, but it helps you pick the right structure of the words and train your tongue and brain to automatically say them. And using a mix of your own words is more practical and will help you to practice generating your own words based on your previous knowledge. Trying to do both will be so helpful.

Reading out loud: this is an extra effort for reading, but reading really aloud, with a clear voice will train your tongue to speak.

Exaggerated words: when you practice speaking try to exaggerate the words- you are not going to talk like this in reality, but this exercise will help to make you able to speak clearly and correctly when you talk. It may feel strange and uncomfortable in the beginning but those uncomfortable moments are the ones that pay true outcomes.

Okay, those are little efforts that you can do besides your passive skills to enhance your speaking.

**There are also speaking challenges out there, where you usually take a challenge to record something every day and then share it in your social media if you feel comfortable. They are really great because you do them every day.

Important note:

The feedback is important and while you can’t get it because you’re learning alone, you can look back and listen to the audios and videos you recorded, and hearing yourself will make it easy for you to identify what’s not right after all the other listening you have done. And then you either know the correct way to say it or you google it- google is great tbh.

Bonus

So I know the title of the post says learning by yourself and at home, but I would like to give a few suggestions that may get out of this criteria a little bit. Speaking to others is a little bit different than speaking to yourself or camera, so those steps will make you way in front, but the challenges of talking to real people will still be there but they will easily be overcome if you don’t keep avoiding them.

So these are some suggestions out of the title of this post:

Using the internet: there are great apps and sites out there for language learning that connect learners, teachers, and native speakers. There are different concepts for any app, but they provide you with an opportunity to speak or text in your target language. Your normal social media can be used for this too, but you just need to make a little effort to reach out for people or even accept others who are seeking opportunities to talk in your target language-but just be careful with this by not providing personal information to keep yourself safe.

If you can join a club for your target language then this is a great way to practice using the language in real life, which is so beneficial.

Also as for the language club, you can join a club or group or whatever about something that interests you, but the language used there must be your target language. So you do what you love and practice your target language-the the win-win idea:).

Other points:

Vocabulary:

Vocabularies are the building blocks for every language, so they deserve a little care from you.

As we said they must be real-a.k.a. Used by native speakers normally.

You can keep a notebook for your own vocabulary to return back to them, as reviewing is so crucial. You can use apps like Quizlet or Anki to test you in them and provide you with spaced repetition.

The pronunciation is so important here, you need to make sure you know how to pronounce the word correctly. Apps can be great for this. Obviously, you can use anything to know the right pronunciation but I believe hearing them from real people through YouTube for example is better than hearing the voice of a machine.

From where can you get your vocabulary?

The books you read.
The videos you watch.
The songs you listen to.
The words you need to write in your journal.
The movies and series you watch.
The podcasts you listen to.
The social media you look at.
Your phone language-if you turn it to your target language.
The objects around you which you don’t know in your target language- Here I suggest putting little labels on them, so that every time you stumble upon them, they stick in your mind.

Here I want to suggest not picking random words-but if that worked for you great, then don’t listen to me-, because there will be no context around it, so it’ll be hard to remember them.

Also, it’s important to note that, it’s more preferred to learn the vocabulary in phrases, sentences, and chunks more than learning them as individual words. This is great to know how to use the words in their true context, and how the structure is built. So here try to make sentences out of the vocabularies you want to learn, and try to get them-the sentences-from a real source, like native speakers or anything you trust.

Grammar:

Let’s talk about grammar, which is a conflicting and judgmental point to talk about, basically many people come out to tell how learning grammar is useless, they justify that by going back to how native speakers themselves talk and how they learned the language.

Basically, you don’t think about the grammar rules when you speak or write in your mother language, do you?

And also when you learned your mother language, no one came out to you telling you that to speak this language correctly you need to learn certain rules called grammar!

So you wonder how you learned the language?

Okay, they say our brain picks patterns, when we hear the language repeatedly-and this is the mean you used first to get the language-, your brain stores that pattern and as it repeats it becomes ingrained within you and you then use it unconsciously.

They didn’t stop there and said it is useless, they even say it’s destructive, they justify this by saying that for example when you speak, you speak slowly because you go from what you want to say to how to say it correctly -in your mind- to make sure it’s right and then to saying it( they say the same about translating). But if you didn’t learn grammar in the first place and let your brain pick the patterns, you immediately go from knowing what you want to say(which in most times happen without you realizing this-how the mind is miraculous!-) to immediately saying it.

So I agree with them, but even though I don’t want to be restricted about abandoning grammar at all, the thing is, just not using it as a mean to learn the language.

The thing about grammar is that it may be enjoyable for some people-I said some- and it may be a way to answer questions for many curious people who are wondering why this sentence is said or written in this specific way, especially if you’re just a starter or beginner. It also can be a way to assure it for the ones who always feel afraid if what they say is not correct. This is why I think it mustn't be abandoned completely.

But if grammar is working for you and doing you greatly, then go for it, always listen to yourself, there is no definite answer in this world.

Ok this's it, the end of all the parts of this blog post.
I hope you all find it useful.

Please comment below with any tips you know is working, and let's continue the process:))))

Bye..

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