New Language Journey: Essential Steps and Tips for English Speakers

Learning a new language opens up great opportunities such as understanding a specific culture and/or country better, improving brain health, and much more. I teach children English as a Second Language to my students who attend a bilingual school education school here in China, where I have grasped a fairly strong idea of what it takes to both teach and learn a new language.

Kirin Beer from when I lived in Japan during the Cherry Blossom Season, bilingually labeled.

If you want to get started on learning a new language, here are some recommended steps to get started:

1. Choose your language wisely: Choose a language that resonates with you, for whatever the reason may be. This is of great importance as learning a new language is no easy task and requires a lot of time and effort.
2. Set realistic goals: Use SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time -bound) to ensure progress is being made through the use of strong learning habits.
3. Immerse yourself: You do not necessarily need to be in the country of which a specific language is spoken to immerse yourself. Connect your already existing hobbies with the language you are learning; watch movies in that language, listen to music in that language, etc…
4. Build a strong foundation: Learn and practice the phonetic sounds of the language you are learning. This is especially important if the sounds of the language are immensely different than English, for example, with Mandarin or Cantonese Chinese. Build your way up to learning about the grammar basics of the language.
5. Practice regularly: Make learning habits, starting from small commitments to then increasing them. For example, practice on a language learning application for 5 minutes a day, increasing it to 10 once a habit is built.
6. Speak from day one: Make mistakes and learn from them. Make a short introduction of yourself whether you wish to use audio or video and share it somewhere in which native speakers can give you feedback on and introduce themselves to you.
7. Keep a language journal: Document progress, write down new words, phrases and grammar rules, or whatever else resonates with you.
8. Stay curious and have fun: Learning a new language is a goal which takes a great deal of time, similar to a marathon, it cannot be achieved in a quick sprint. Stay curious, be patient with yourself and aim to enjoy the process!

Example of my own language journal for learning Mandarin Chinese (using pinyin) to track new and difficult grammar points.

Embarking on a new linguistic adventure as an English speaker, you’ll find that the structure and vocabulary of many languages may already feel somewhat familiar. Embrace the journey, and soon you’ll find yourself thinking and speaking in a whole new way.