Language learning strategies
What language learning strategies do you feel are important?
What strategies do you use?
How do you learn?
Look at these Vocabulary learning techniques, advice for listening more effectively and see if you think they are similar to the way you learn new words or your learning circle. Are these ideas useful? Share your experience!
What do you think makes a “good” language learner?
Which characteristics listed here do you use? What others would add to the list?
Good language learners should be aware of the fact that we are surrounded by languages (especially English and some other European ones) and that we can turn many moments of our life into an occasion to improve our language skills: listening to a song, watching a video on You Tube and reading the comments written by people from all over the world , even reading the instruction manual of our new television in different languages.
Learning is not just remembering by heart what you have read in a book, but something completely different. Theory should be followed by practice, and while practising you become more aware of the grammar rules you studied.
I agree with the fact that language learners should benefots from their mistakes. They are not a defeat, but an occasion to grow in the learning process.
I use many techniques in order to learn foreign languages. One of the hardest things is pick up new vocabulary. I realized that creating sentences with the words I had just heard or read was really useful. On the contrary, I noticed that when I just wrote the word and its meaning in Italian I tended to forget it.
Writing is one of the best ways to master a language: words do not stand isolated, but they become part of a context. When I prepared my Dutch exam I was really worried about vocabulary, because many words had no relations with their equivalents in the other languages I know. I used a stategy that helped me to remember an increasing number of words and expressions: I first wrote many words and their translation dividing them for semantic areas, then I wrote some little texts for each topic, so that specific terms related to music, sport or eating habits had to come up to my mind. Thanks to that strategy I was able to use words like “beeldhouwkunst” (sculpture)and “ingenieurswetenschap” (engineering) during the oral exam.
Interesting technique, that of splitting the new words into “themes” and then trying to use them in a small paragraph. If I weren’t this lazy I’d have given it a try. XD