Although learning a language is harder as an adult than as a child, here are a few strategies that can help pave the way:
Watch social cues: Pay attention to nonverbal cues, such as eye gaze, gestures or pointing. They can enhance your understanding of sounds, words, phrases and even grammar.
Sleep on it: Going to bed soon after drilling vocabulary or other practice can help consolidate what you have learned.
Listen to your own accent: You can improve your pronunciation by recording yourself in conversation (as opposed to reading from a script) and practicing with a native speaker.
Tune out to tune in: Listening to language spoken in the background while doing another task can help you learn to distinguish among similar sounds.
Say it again: Hearing and repeating words and phrases can help you learn them faster and recall them better.
Immerse yourself: Of course, nothing is more effective for learning than complete immersion in the culture. Living and working with native speakers can round out this experience.
This article was originally published with the title "Tips for Picking Up a New Lingo"
from Scientific American Content: Global
0 comments:
Post a Comment