Back in high school, I use to sleep with my French book under my pillow, because I guess I thought I would learn the language through osmosis while I slept. I lacked brain cells back then obviously. I also use to wear my pajamas inside out for snow days.
The point is the only reason why I was any good in French was I spent my time making flash cards (I have thousands) and studying.
There isn’t a magical effortless way to learn a language. Language learning is always said to be difficult, which can be true. However that doesn’t mean that it is impossible. Personally, I think if you make the time, do the effort, and practice, then learning a language isn’t any more difficult than driving, or riding a bike.
That being said I have 5 unconventional ways to help you learn a language.
1: Youtube
This one is going to be your best friend if you want to learn a language. You can find lessons, music, native speakers, movies, TV, etc. I feel the sky is very much the limit.
This will involve some research on your part. If is easier to find things if you have specific searches, but that is easy enough to do.
2: Google
I don’t know why so many people are afraid to use google to search things… It doesn’t make scenes.
However Google search can be very helpful when it comes to learning a language in a more amusing way then just studying verbs.
Games, Forums, books, and my favorite Recommendation. Want to watch something to help you learn French? I am sure that there is a blog about it. Want to work on French by cooking? There are blogs with French Recipes.
Now the only downside is that some languages are more popular than others. So your options might be limited depending on what language you are trying to learn. However even that has improved over the years!
3: Facebook
Facebook Groups are my thing! You can find groups dedicated to anything, language, writing, youtube, movies, TV etc.
I joined some Dutch speaking youtube groups. It is great, not just for practicing my language, but also great for networking. If you are trying to build an audience, then networking on a Facebook group can help you greatly, and being able to talk to more people (even if your lingual skill are low) can be very helpful.
4: Children’s Stories
Stories are normally in the public domain, which means that you can find the books to read for free online and even download.
A useful option would be to search for them on youtube. You can listen, and sometime read along.
While you may not understand everything, normally you will know the story well enough to be able to follow along.
The little Mermaid – show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbQYx-E1uKI
The little Mermaid story – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzGIOKnyuEc
HCA Version – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COQau4elKQs
5: Movies & TV’s
The language you are learning will depend on how difficult this is. First you can try watching your DVD or Blu-ray in one of the other language track options. You could also invest in an multizone DVD player, then you can easily watch foreign films.
Another option would be to search them on youtube. You can normally watch variety and talk shows in chucks or in whole on youtube. This will require some detective work to find the names of the movie or tv shows, but that is easy enough in a google search.
Bonus: Twitter
I’m not sure how reliable this can be, for me it seems to be a hit or miss. I initially wanted to make some contacts to have one and one talks, which didn’t work out. It was helpful in terms of finding recommendations for resources, or getting answers to grammar questions.
It will all depends on the experimentation of the tags you find.
If you are learning a language, best of luck. It will happen.
If you happen to speak Dutch, and want to practice English. We should be friends, so say hello!
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