How to study a language

Study deals with the first step of the learning process: gaining knowledge of new facts, namely phonetics (sounds), morphology (words), and syntax (grammar). Only then you can start learning how that knowledge is used and how context modulates it all.

A common issue with language study programs is that they introduce a lot of information with more detail than needed, earlier than needed.

The golden rule to make study truly valuable is that it has to arise from a personal need. It could be because you need to make a presentation of yourself but don’t know the words, or because you are listening to a podcast that don’t understand, or because you are getting lost in a classroom, or you are reading a story to your kid but don’t know how to pronounce a sentence. Any excuse is good for as long as it is relatable.

Learning to learn

It is important to understand a bit how the brain deals with information in order to avoid useless study routines like re-reading and highlighting passages in a book.¹

The main idea is this: information is welcomed in the sensory memory. Through a process called attention, that information moves to the working memory, and through another process called encoding that information moves to the long-term memory.

You want useful language information on the long-term memory so you can access it at a later time when you need to use language.

The first hop is obvious: when you are studying or practicing a language, simply pay attention to what you do. The second hop, encoding, is a bit more evasive as it is not so easy to control, but you can still actively influence it. The main techniques are these:

• Invest yourself emotionally. That is why it’s important that you cultivate a growth mindset and a genuine curiosity for language, that your study topics come from a personal need, that you practice regularly, that you explore areas that interest you, that you don’t forget to produce output, etc.
• Understand deeply how a sentence is constructed and pronounced, what nuance carries, what formality register it belongs to, etc. Trick: pretend that you have to teach it to someone else.
• Connect everything you learn with something you already know. There are no rules other than it has to make sense for you. This applies to words, sounds, grammar, idioms, etc.
• Group bits of information that tend to go together, and learn them as atomic chunks. You can find them in set expressions, popular sayings, conversation openers, and frequent constructs (often involving auxiliary verbs, e.g. would-you-like-to, i-am-going-to, etc).