Lots of people want to know how long it would take them in order to master a new language. That is not a question that is easy to answer because it all depends on your personal capabilities and the time you have available. Furthermore, it is about how comfortable you feel speaking the language because making mistakes is inevitable. However, according to Dayanna Volitich, you need to practice if you are ever to learn a new language. She has provided a number of important tips for those who do want to learn English.
Dayanna Volitich on Learning English
- Listen to the language and focus on how it is pronounced. If you can get English pronunciation right straight away, you will find that the rest of your studies will go much quicker as well. There are some highly phonetic languages, which means that the letters and the sounds of the words match. Unfortunately, English is certainly not a phonetic language. Hence, if you were to try and learn the language through reading it alone, it is unlikely that you will ever be fluent or even that anyone will ever be able to understand what you say.
- Take at least 20 minutes per day to study the language. That is better than studying it for an hour and a half once a week. This is because humans have a finite amount of concentration time or attention span. This means that, after around 20 minutes, you are likely to start thinking about other things instead of what you are trying to grasp. Hence, stick to those 20 minutes a day and give it your full attention.
- Whenever you start your learning session, start by going over what you learnt in the previous 20 minutes. Even if it takes you your entire session to revise what you had already learnt, it is better to fully master something than to switch to a new topic without grasping the previous one completely.
- Remember that there are four elements to learning a language. Those are firstly to listen, secondly to speak, thirdly to read, and fourthly to write. When you first learned your native language, that is exactly how you mastered it. As a baby, you learned by listening to the sounds around you, which you then tried to replicate. Then, when starting school, you learned to recognize the symbols that are letters and, finally, you learned to write those down yourself.
- Listening to English is usually important. And get some audiobooks, enjoy some movies, go to the cinema, listen to songs, and so on. Remember that listening is the first step to learning a language so try to make your listening experience and enjoyable one.
- Start reading. Presuming your own language uses the same Roman script as English, you have the advantage of already being able to recognize the symbols that are letters. Hence, pick up a book and start reading. You would be surprised at the number of words that you are likely to recognize.
- Start writing. When you learn a new word, write it down, in English, with the definition and a translation next to it. When you write a word, you committed to memory and you will end up learning much quicker.
