Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Make sure you have enough motivation - either inner or outer, without it you will
never make it.
Decide what languages you want to study - there is so many of them. You can decide
according to: number of native speakers, number of total speakers, difficulty level,
geographical area, your future intentions, job requirements, availability of study
resources, your financial situation.
Think about the best order of studying them - eg if you study Spanish then Italian and
French become much easier.
Study basic phrases and polite expressions - ordering food, hotel room reservation,
asking for directions.
Begin with vocabulary - study as many words as you can and then have a look at the
grammar. For that I recommend Project Lowell. It is a new thing online and it is growing
pretty quickly. The blogs there are a great resource too.
http://www.projectlowell.com
Don't stop thinking after asking a native speaker - sometimes they can tell you lots of
nonsense. In addition many native speakers have limited vocabulary. If you study hard,
you can become better than a native. That happens in the top American universities,
where the international students study hard to improve their English and at a certain
point they realise that they speak better English than the American students.
Read books - start with easy reading - fairy tales for children, and continue later with
novels in your target language.
Listen - I recommend to start with podcast for language learners, later you can change
those for podcasts for native speakers.
Write - find a pen pal friend to communicate with, or find one on Facebook; later you
can write your own diary in the target language.
Talk - with a friend while study, or in your class, or you can record yourself and send the
record to a native to give you feedback.
Watch movies in your target language - either in a cinema or you can download a
movie from Google Play or iTunes.
Read online newspapers
Everywhere you go, try to name things around you in your target language (in work:
chair, table, computer, secretary, shoes, pen, mouse, keyboard; in a car: license plate,
headlight, windshield, rear window, side window, windshield wiper, tire, tail light,
exhaust pipe etc.)
At a certain level, start to use X-X dictionary - let's say that you study German. At a
certain point it is great to have a German-German dictionary, that explains German
words in the German language.