Many dream of learning English as a second language or, with a little luck and hard work, even a third. But being able to speak more than 3 languages is so rare that it seems almost out of our reach.
Yet there are people among us, called polyglots, who are a concrete demonstration that learning to speak 5, 6, 7 or even 8 languages is not only possible, it is easier than you think.
In a recent webinar, we spoke to one such polyglot, Olly Richards, to get some helpful advice from someone with a lot of experience in the field. In addition to speaking 8 languages, Richards is known for the site and podcast I Will Teach You a Language.
10 tips on how to learn a language quickly
Do you want to expand your horizons by learning a new language? Well, there is no better way to learn how to do something than to follow the advice of someone who has been successful. So here are 10 tips from Olly Richards, who speaks not one, not two, but eight languages.
1. Start with short and simple dialogues
Richards believes it is possible to learn to speak a language in 90 days, as he did with Italian, by starting to read and listen to stories. But is it possible to do this when you don’t know anything about the language you want to learn? Well, Richards explains “In the beginning you have to use really simple materials”.
In the first week, even if you only read short dialogues from a beginner’s book, you will still come in contact with the 100 or 200 words that make up 50% of the language.
To start speaking, you can create your own dialogues with our guide or use this list of expressions as inspiration.
2. Use understandable inputs
If your goal is to learn a language quickly, you need to familiarize yourself with the concept of understandable input or “the idea that you need to read or hear at your level or at a slightly higher level”.
So if you’ve just started learning Spanish online, it’s probably too early to watch original language films. Instead, you should always look for material that is only slightly more complex for your level.
You will start to understand much more than you think very quickly and you will be able to read simple stories or materials. By reading, you will have access to everything you need with understandable input and you can study at your own pace while underlining words you do not know. And the stories are effective because their structure starts from a basis you already understand.
In addition to this, the stories allow you to have an experience, involving the whole brain in the learning process instead of just the left hemisphere involved when you study only the grammar. Learning through stories is more natural and similar to how native speakers learn their language.
3. Study the pronunciation right away
With languages, you can always learn more vocabulary and grammar, but one thing that is difficult to fix later is the pronunciation. That is why Richards believes that “one of the first things to do when learning a language is to study the pronunciation, because it is much easier to learn its correct ones at the beginning than to try to fix them later”.
There are 3 keys to language learning
- Learn the pronunciation first
- Don’t translate
- Use the system of delayed repetition
How can you practice pronunciation? The best way is to learn with native speakers so you can hear how they pronounce the words and then repeat them using the same sounds until they sound natural to us.
4. Read little, but carefully
Yes, reading is important for learning a language, but not all texts are the same. Richards gives some interesting tips on how to read in a foreign language.
- Read the chapter from start to finish and try to understand as much as possible
- Reread the chapter
- Now you can search for repeated words in the chapter
- Read the next chapter
- Repeat
Also, there is value in narrowing the focus of texts. Choose the right books, ideally something related to your hobbies and interests. Olly Richards states “If you like gardening, for example, look for books on gardening in the language you are studying.”
The idea is to learn what you want and have an intrinsic motivation to learn. Contrary to what is often said, Richard advises against using the Harry Potter series to learn a language, as it is full of weird words that will not be used in real life (unless you are a wizard or a witch! ).
5. Start talking as soon as possible
Let’s not forget that conversation is a very important element when learning a language. After all, when Richards learned Italian in 90 days, he spent the second and third months only speaking Italian.
If you want to learn a language quickly, Richards recommends starting speaking and conversing as early as the second month. Olly explains, “It’s a little earlier than I’d usually recommend, but as we want to learn to speak quickly, we need to get started.”
There are many possibilities to speak a new language even if we cannot travel. You can join a language tandem, use a tandem app, or a service like Preply for daily private lessons with a teacher.
6. Immerse yourself in a language
Once you are able to “get your tongue out of your mouth and speak it”, you need to do the same things as before “with much more energy”. The idea is to talk to as many people as possible and have all the inputs through reading and listening.
To create immersion from home without traveling, you need to find ways to use the language you are learning regularly in your day. As we said before, learning according to your interests is very useful for keeping interest high.
For more tips on diving at home, read this article.
7. Learn one language at a time
Richards, famous for learning eight languages, often gets this question “How can I learn more than one language at a time?”.
His advice? “Don’t do this… Let’s face it, learning a language on your own is hard enough, isn’t it? And there is a direct correlation between concentration and the amount of things to learn ”. The more you focus on learning, the more time you spend on a language and the faster you learn it. Adding a second divides the attention by half.
That said, if you really want to learn two languages together and don’t need the time, Richards encourages you to try, although he acknowledges that “it will slow you down”. And if you want to learn two languages together, he tries two that are very different from each other (like Spanish and Japanese) to avoid confusion.
8. Focus on real studies… and not just hacks
Like anything that takes hard work, you will always find myths and useless shortcuts on how to learn a language quickly. But the truth is that learning a language is an activity that takes much more than a minimum of effort.
So, can you learn a language while sleeping or is it a waste of time? Richards does not hesitate to answer: “A waste of time”.
Got it… let’s continue!
9. Turn off subtitles when watching TV
Another common tip when learning a language is to watch TV and movies in that language. Richards doesn’t really agree with this method. According to him, “Films are not a very convenient format” as they are long and you see one sentence at a time, unlike a book which is easy to watch, read and reread. Richards disagrees with using films as the “primary vehicle for study”.
That said, if you’re watching movies or TV in a foreign language as an additional learning tool, it’s best to turn off subtitles. This is because when you turn on the subtitles, you no longer listen, but simply read. And if you read a movie in English, you wouldn’t learn much of that language, would you?
So what? “Don’t think that watching a two-hour movie will make great progress because, unfortunately, that’s not the case.”
10. Bear with ambiguities
It may surprise you that a person can learn a language at a good level in just three months. For many, it takes longer. No?
Well, when we asked Richards why most people take longer to learn a language, he explained that students need a good “tolerance for ambiguity”. This means accepting the millions of things you don’t understand when studying a language.
If you fall into the trap of checking every single unknown word in a text, it will become ineffective and endless.
But when you have a high tolerance for ambiguities, like good language learners, you will feel comfortable even when you don’t understand everything. By tolerating ambiguity, we free ourselves to stick to the fundamentals, while being open and curious about the language to learn more.
Learning a language takes the time it takes
While these 10 Richards tips focus on helping you learn a language very quickly, they are relevant and useful for those with the desire and time to learn a language.
Because unless you have a good reason to set the goal of learning a new language in 90 days, there’s no reason to stress too much about learning the language as quickly as possible. If you have to compete with someone, compete with the person you were yesterday, not someone else.
Celebrate the small and constant improvements that are the daily bread of language learning. After all, the best way to learn a language is the one that works for you. So enjoy your progress!
