We all have major goals we want to achieve in our lifetime. Some are big hairy audacious goals and some are tiny little brittle just-in-the moment goals. So if one of your goals is to learn a new language within shortest amount of time, you’re not alone. There are many who would like to do that and would grab on the opportunity if they’re given one.
In this article, you get that opportunity to learn to master a new language in four easy steps. And if you follow the process well, it would not take you more than 20 good hours to master the basics.
Are you ready?
Let’s jump in.
- Deconstruct: This art is applicable for any skill you want to master. The first thing is to deconstruct the whole language. You need to know what you need to learn, how many words you need to master, how they are pronounced, how you should speak it, how the construction of sentences should be made and more. In this step, you need to spend few hours to know what exactly you need to learn. In simple terms, you can call this step as “cutting everything to see what’s inside.”
- Apply 80/20 rule: If you have never heard about 80/20 principle, here it is for you. It says 20% of effort creates 80% of the results and vice versa. So once you deconstruct all the material in new language, it’s time to apply 80/20 rule. You need to identify what 20% of things you need to learn so that you can get 80% of results. For example, 20% of all the words that are there in the language are used 80% of the time. You need to find out the words and learn.
- Listen in your ears: The best way to learn a new language is to listen to it as much as you can. You won’t be able to understand everything, but once you listen to it for a longer period of time, it would have a rubbing effect on you. Imagine how you learned your native language. You heard it so much that you started to speak the language. The best way to listen to foreign language is to watch movies in foreign language and use English/native subtitles to understand the meaning. If you do it long enough, you would be able to see a difference in learning the language.
- Practice it for 20 hours with a foreigner: When we said that you will be able to speak the new language within 20 hours, it doesn’t mean you will be able to do everything in less than 20 hours. But 20 hours are practice time you need to provide yourself for communicating in the new language. No matter whatever language you want to learn, find a friend. Now in this age of internet, it’s easy to find a foreigner friend. Find someone who is generous enough to give you some time every day or every week. You can simply connect and ask that you need help in practicing the language. Once you start to speak with a native speaker, use the words you learned and ask him/her to correct you if you make mistakes. Do it for 20 hours (in total) and see for yourself whether you learned the basics of the new language or not.
If you have a goal of learning a new language, don’t sit back and dream. Rather go, start taking action right away.