10 Commandments of Successful Foreign Language Learners

Are you trying to learn a foreign language? Have you tried to learn a foreign language in the past but you struggled or felt like you did not achieve the level of success you desired? Here are 10 rules which if followed will guarantee your foreign language success.

1. Study the language every day. Learning a foreign language takes time and you must expose your brain to the language on a consistent and regular basis or you will not retain what you have learned.

2. Set goals for learning the language. What do you plan to accomplish with the language? Are you seeking to learn to read it? Speak it fluently? Speak it only at the conversational level? Having specific and clear goals as to how well you plan to learn the language you have chosen is crucial to your success.

3. Have a reward in mind for yourself once you have reached the level of proficiency in the language you are seeking. Your reward could be a vacation to the country where the target language is spoken, a dinner at a foreign restaurant or something similar.

4. Take every opportunity to speak the language. If you are learning a popular language such as French or Spanish then this will be easy. However, if you have chosen a less popular one it may be a bit more difficult. Try to find a pen pal online, locate someone you can practice with online via Skype, explore restaurants which serve food eaten by the people who speak the given language, find a foreign bookstore, or check into cultural festivals where these people hang out. You can also ask around with your friends and family and see if they know anyone who speaks the language you are trying to learn.

5. Commit to your success and work at learning the language until you succeed. It usually takes at least six months of immersion or two-three years of serious academic or self study in order to achieve a high-level of fluency in any language.

6. Make an effort to learn all you can about the culture of the people who speak the language as well as the language itself. Learn to think in the language as well. This takes practice but it can be done.

7. Watch movies in the language. If your target foreign language is a common one you will be able to find Disney and other popular movies dubbed on DVD in the language. These are great for learning as you are already familiar with the content and story line.

8. Take advantage of the internet. There are many ecourses, online videos, online audios, exercises and many more resources on any language you can imagine all at your disposal.

9. After you have been at it for a while, you will need to either enroll in a course either at a college or through community education or to pay an expert tutor to help you. Although you can teach yourself quite a bit, after a while you will find that you have reached a plateau and cannot really achieve the level of success you desire without some professional and expert help.

10. Take advantage of your library. Many times there are children’s books in foreign languages as well as DVDS and many other resources.