RAPID LANGUAGE LEARNING FOR ADULTS

I failed to learn a language on my first 8 attempts. But then I learnt Arabic, Spanish and Indonesian in 2 years.

Contents

How I Became Semi-fluent in Arabic and Spanish in 6 Months and 6 Weeks Respectively.

My reward was sitting on a battered old garden chair by the side of a small rumble road, with a local farmer serving me 6 different types of freshly picked delicious pomegranates. Who even knew there was more than one type.

Earlier that day, me and two other men left the city of Jerash, Jordan, in search of Wadi Ar-Rumaan (Pomegranate Valley). There was nothing online about its specific location. So we drove north from the city and had to stop every few miles to ask for directions.

This responsibility fell onto me as I was the only person in the car who could speak Arabic and none of the locals could speak English. After 45 minutes of stops and starts, we arrived at the pomegranate valley and tasted the best pomegranates any of us had ever eaten.

We wouldn’t have been able to find this amazing hidden treasure if I hadn’t learnt Arabic.

On the way back, the two men told me that they were impressed with my Arabic as it is known to be one of the hardest languages to learn. They were surprised when I told them I had become semi-fluent* studying part-time at home (London) in just 6 months. Whenever someone hears this, they automatically say “You must be natural with languages”. But I had attempted to learn a new language 8 times and failed miserably before I tried and learnt Arabic.

(* semi-fluent is often known as level B1 fluency. At this level, you can communicate with people across a broad range of topics but you require the other person to simplify their sentences and you may need a moment to think before speaking. It’s the equivalent of the speaking ability of a 4 or 5-year-old.)

The reason I was able to learn Arabic so quickly is that I created a good system that goes against how most languages are typically taught.
I have also used this system in May of this year to become semi-fluent in Spanish in 6 weeks.

Below describes how I learnt Arabic and Spanish and some of the common mistakes you should avoid making if you are looking to learn a new language.

Step 1 – Phonics

Logically you should learn to pronounce every letter and word perfectly. But you are better off getting to an acceptable level because it will avoid you getting bogged down and you are likely to quit if your ability to communicate hasn’t improved much after a few weeks.

You can always come back to your phonics/pronunciation later.

For Arabic, it took me 2 weeks to get to an acceptable level and I needed to take a few lessons with a teacher – it has letters that are very different from English. But with Spanish, I only spent about an hour on YouTube as it uses the Roman alphabet and there aren’t any phonics that are totally new (only a few that are slightly different).

Step 2 – Words

In English, 50% of all the words used in conversations are made up of only 100 words (such as “the”, “food” and “house”). Other languages are no different so your priority should be to learn these first. I’d recommend learning 350-450 words so you can start to create a diverse range of sentences.

A quick Google search will give you a list of the most frequently used words in any language.

Aim to learn around 350-450 words. You can learn 10 words a day for 6 weeks or do what I prefer and cram 100 words in 4-5 days. The second option is excruciatingly painful and requires 3-4 hours per day but only has to be done for 4-6 days.

Learning so many words in a short time may seem ridiculously hard but with flashcard systems such as Anki, it’s relatively easy to set up and complete. There are many YouTube videos that can show you how to set up an Anki deck so I’m not going to go into detail about how to do this.

Just ensure you include the audio of each word in the flashcards.

I get the audio recordings by booking a lesson with a teacher on a website called iTalki and having them record each word. 400 words can be recorded in a 30-minute session so it should cost around $5.

You will then need to trim audio using one of the many online audio trimmers.

Step 3 – Audio Input & Talking.

Both of these need to be done simultaneously.

Audio Input

You will need a lot of audio input, including videos, to train your ears to learn any language. But you will be surprised how much you can understand with the 350-450 words you have learnt.

Try to watch films and/or TV series (on streaming services) that you have already watched in English and have an option to be dubbed in your target language. As you have already watched it, you can work out what some of the words are. Also watching something you already enjoy will help keep you engaged.

Netflix and Disney+ are brilliant services to do this. They have many options for common languages such as Spanish and French.

Talking

Start talking as soon as you can. I usually do this with a teacher, again using the iTalki website.
Don’t worry if you sound like a caveman at first. Sentences such as “I before eat-ed breakfast” are fine when you start. Just focus on being understandable. As time goes on, your speaking will improve.

There were a few common mistakes you should avoid:

Mistake 1 – Studying Grammar.

Logically you should learn grammar because you need it in each sentence. But you are better off avoiding it and absorbing it like a child. They learn all the rules they need just by the sheer volume of audio input they get.

They aren’t taught the rules – when was the last time you saw an adult tell a 4-year-old “No. You have to use the perfect present tense in this context”. (I still don’t know what present perfect means.)

So absorb your grammar from your audio input like a child.

Mistake 2 – Reading Too Much.

If your aim is to read literature in your target language, read as much as you can. For everyone else, focus on talking and listening.

People like to read because it’s easier than the other skills. And no one can see/hear their mistakes.
But reading won’t benefit you much when you first start learning a language if your aim is to talk with people.

Reading only becomes useful when you are already semi-fluent and are on your way to becoming fully fluent (when you can understand 95-98% of the words on a page).

Mistake 3 – Studying Irrelevant Material.

Most teachers and resources will teach you things in a certain order but most of it will be useless for you. For example, you will typically be taught a list of jobs in the first few lessons. But unless you are a mechanic, engineer or lawyer, you’re not going to use these words initially. Focus on the information you will need in the next week or two.

You can learn the other words and topics when you need them.

Mistake 4 – Studying Boring Material.

Materials in textbooks and standard classes are boring. You’re better off studying material that is interesting but just beyond your capabilities than something suitable for you and boring – you will remain more engaged so will learn quicker.

So in your first lesson, tell your teacher what topics interest you.

For more advice on how to create the right system so you can finally learn your first new language, check out my book Finally, Learn A New Language: Overcome 14 Barriers That Have Caused You To Fail Multiple Times In The Past.

How To Become 1/4 Fluent in 1 Week

A few weeks ago, a friend said “I’m going to France next week. What can I do to learn some of the language by then?” I get asked questions like this all the time.

Clearly, you can’t become semi-fluent in one week even if you studied full time. But it’s enough time to learn a bit of the language so you can improve your holiday experience.

Here’s what I would do if I only had 1 week, 2 hours per day, to learn as much of a language as possible.

Prep

Before starting, I would decide on 3-4 situations I want to use the language and focus on just these for the following week. Here are the situations I would probably select:

Greetings and basic introduction (i.e. what I do for a living, why I am in their country) – it’s the conversation I’m most likely to have with everyone I meet.
2. Asking strangers for food/restaurant recommendations – I love food and speaking to the locals gets me much better results than a Google search.
3. Talking to small business owners about their businesses– This is something that interests me.

Day 1 & 2

I would use the frequency spreadsheet included with [name] to select the top 150 most used words. I would aim to learn 75 new words each day using the Anki Decks flashcard app (from this point onwards, I will refer to the app as “Anki”). This should take me around 45 minutes each day.

I would also take a 60-minute online class with a teacher (on iTalki) every day. Before the class, I would message them to say “I only want to role play [insert the above] situations”.

During each lesson, I would write down words that come up which I didn’t know. And after the lesson, I would select 7-10 of the words and add them to my Anki.

Near the end of the lesson, I would get the teacher to record themselves speaking for 1-2 minutes as if they were a person (role play) in each of the above situations (i.e. describing themselves, recommending a restaurant, talking about their small business). I would tell them to do this only in their language (no English) and at normal speed using “normal” words.

Later, I would then spend 15 minutes watching each recording several times, and try to work out what is being said.

Optional non-study studying time:

I would have a film or cartoon, such as Kung Fu Panda, playing in the background whenever I’m doing chores to get some extra audio input.
Anki has a feature which allows you to review “forgotten words”. Whenever I have a few minutes spare, such as waiting for the train, I would review some of these words.

Day 3-7

These 5 days would be very similar to days 1 and 2. The main difference would be how I use Anki.

I would continue using Anki but it should only take 15-20 minutes as there would only be 7-10 new to learn (taken from the lessons) and old cards to review. I would try to do this as early in the day as possible.

In the evening, I would then review all the “forgotten cards” in Anki. This should take around 10-15 minutes.

I would continue with the same daily class format mentioned in “Days 1 & 2”. But if I had enough time, I would try to do another class each day even if the second class was only 30 minutes.

Ideally with a different teacher (to avoid getting used to listening to how one person speaks).
I would also continue reviewing the recordings from the lessons.

“Non-studying studying” would be the same except I would also download an app such as Duolingo and use it whenever I have a few minutes spare. But I would only use it after I have gone through all my Anki deck twice (Anki is more likely to help me learn a language than Duolingo. But Duolingo is fun and could help me get some additional studying done throughout the day).

By the end of the week, I should be able to communicate in my 3 selected situations.

If You Are Still Unsure You Can Learn A Language

I stood in the white corridor next to the dark blue door to my Spanish teacher’s class. She had sent me out of her class as I’d messing around. I’d been sent to stand outside many classes at school before this point but the conversation I had with her afterwards was anything but normal.

Usually, teachers would either leave me in the corridor for the rest of the class or come out at some point and try to encourage me to do better and tell me how much potential they saw in me (as any decent teacher should do).

But on that day, near the end of the class, my Spanish teacher came out “Don’t pick Spanish next (academic) year”. I was 14 and it was the first time in my school life where I could pick what subjects I wanted to study the following year. And she told me that it might be best if I picked a totally different subject and not another language, indirectly telling me that languages might not be my thing.

She confirmed what I already thought – I was bad at languages.

During my 20s and early 30s, I tried to learn a new language 8 times and failed miserably every time.

And with each failure, it felt like confirmation of what I already thought “I’m just bad at languages”.
This all changed a few years ago when I learnt Arabic, Spanish and Indonesian in 2 years.
So what changed?

I didn’t suddenly become smarter or unlock some hidden talent for language. What changed was how I learnt.

I started to look at how polyglots – people who can speak multiple languages – learn languages and found none of them use the conventional methods of learning a language. Instead, they all had their own systems and techniques. But there were a few things that kept on coming up. Below are some of the most common (which I also used to learn 3 languages):

They focus on learning the most frequently used words. Most language books and teachers will give you lists of words based on a topic. But often you won’t need these words in most of your conversations. Very early on, they will often get you to learn a list of job titles such as accountant, nurse and engineer. As a beginner, you are much better off learning words you will need in almost all your conversations. In the case of job titles, learn your own and then move on to more relevant words.
They spend the majority of their time listening to audio and/or talking (and very little time reading and writing).
They study material that is interesting and relevant to them rather than following a set syllabus, which is often boring.
If you have failed to learn a new language before, it is probably because you are using a bad system.

And not because you are “bad at languages”.

If someone like me – who failed eight times – can succeed, so can you. The right system makes all the difference.