I'm urgently trying to learn a language and I've done a lot of research on this. There's no one hack, but here are my top three:
- Anki
- Focus on producing speech over everything else, it's the hardest part 90% of the time. Practice production enough and everything else will follow.
- Work on your accent much earlier than you think you should. If your accent is better than it should be, native speakers will naturally push you to the limits of your abilities when you talk to them.
There's not really strong evidence to support "comprehensible input," but it may work well for some people. However, it severely under-trains speech production. You must combine it with speech practice if you are going to make it work.
Highly recommend Language Jones on YouTube, great resource for language study best practices.
That’s a great way to gimp your language learning curve.
Receptive skills develop before productive skills. This is just a truism about language.
I could buy into dedicating time to speaking, as many folks don’t put enough time into that skill, but I’m not sure I would ever recommend prioritizing it over receptive skills.
> it's the hardest part 90% of the time.
While this is true, it doesn’t mean that production should be one’s “primary focus”.
> There's not really strong evidence to support "comprehensible input,"
I assume you are basing this on second hand information, or “really strong evidence” is doing a lot of work here, but volumes have been written about the efficacy of comprehensible input in foreign language learning.
To be charitable, I think many people do “comprehensible input” incorrectly (content too difficult, overly scaffolded with translations/subtitles, etc.), but the folks who reach higher levels of proficient (B2 or higher to be somewhat arbitrary) almost always have had massive amounts of (comprehensible) input at some point in their language learning journey.
> I assume you are basing this on second hand information, or “really strong evidence” is doing a lot of work here, but volumes have been written about the efficacy of comprehensible input in foreign language learning.
What I really mean to say is that there's no strong evidence that CI is more efficient than other language learning methods.
>the folks who reach higher levels of proficient (B2 or higher to be somewhat arbitrary)
Realistically, this is a small subset of language learners. Most people vastly overestimate the level of proficiency they are going for. People also underestimate just what a high level B2 is.
There are some new AI apps out there that I would put in the “hack” category for being a lot more effective than all the stuff I used in the past (which also included Duolingo, Anki, etc). The one I used the most over three months to refresh my Spanish is Langua (bad name with too much competition, but I put the link below).
This app, and I’m sure others, is a polished “overlay” of sorts on top of one LLM or another, but it’s very well done. By far the best way of learning a language is conversation with a native speaker. This puts 90% of that in your pocket on demand. You can chat (out loud) on various topics, or any topic, and this is augmented with various tools, way to save words to a vocabulary list with a flash card UI, etc. After each conversation you get an evaluation. I found it a lot more fun, and a lot more effective, than anything else I’ve tried.
> There's not really strong evidence to support "comprehensible input," but it may work well for some people.
Except, there is? Comprehensible input is how you've learned your native language, and how any human learns their first language(s). After all, you can't output (produce) what you haven't first learned (gotten as input).
What I really mean to say is that there's no strong evidence that CI is more efficient than other language learning methods. It is certainly a way to learn a language. But is it a good way to learn a language?
You are smarter than a baby and you can learn a language faster (e.g. with fewer hours of study) then a baby.
There's not really strong evidence to support "comprehensible input," but it may work well for some people. However, it severely under-trains speech production. You must combine it with speech practice if you are going to make it work.
Highly recommend Language Jones on YouTube, great resource for language study best practices.