How to learn a foreign language

8 tips from a linguist and former Italian instructor

Languages are my passion and it was fantastic for me to spread my mother tongue by speaking German when I lived in Austria. When my students told me an idiom or expression I had never heard before, I was always used to write it down and thank them for this language exchange. I think it is just great when the teacher can learn new things thanks to their students. According to my experience, this situation represents also the fact that a teacher has no supreme knowledge: They are human beings, too!
Thanks to this work opportunity, I thought it was useful to share some suggestions:

1. Don’t be afraid to ask if you have some doubts. When I was a student, I did not ask many questions, but I suggest everyone to throw their hands up and tell if something is not clear.
2. Don’t be afraid to speak or read. A good teacher should never judge.
3. Do your homeworks. Through homeworks you will notice if you have understood the previous lessons or not. In case of doubts, see point 1.
4. Learn vocabulary step by step. An example? On Monday you start with no more than two words, on Tuesday you repeat the previous ones and add another one, so you have 3 new terms on Tuesday, 4 on Wednesay, and so on during the whole week. If you realise you miss a word, go back and don’t add any further words until you know the first ones. Thanks to this method I learnt the English irregular verbs some years ago.
5. Don’t be frustrated if you don’t manage to understand some or some exercise. Talk with your teacher, ask for an explanation, tell them what is so complicated to you.
6. Connect a sentence with a grammar rule. If you memorize a sentence with a specific grammar rule, you will be able to recognize it everytime and use it properly. It is perfect to learn the structure of a sentence, especially if the language you are learning has a different construction in comparison with your mother tongue.
7. Don’t procrastinate. Procrastinating homeworks, for example, will lead to a huge amount of exercises to do.
8. Be motivated. Without motivation it can be very hard to go further, and this concept applies to everything, not only language learning.

Last but not least, a metaphor I created myself:

Teaching is like cooking: The cook provides and shows the recipes and the ingredients, and then they cook with their students. By knowing ingredients, recipe and method, the aim of a cooking class is that the students will be able to cook on their own (at home, but also in class) and enjoy the company of other people while eating.

I hope you have enjoyed my article and I invite you to click the follow button to read more about my experiences. You can also check my previous stories.

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