by Anna Marsh
Learning any new language can be a daunting task for anyone. From memorizing new words to drilling down the grammatical rules, there is an unending list of things you have to look into to learn a new language.
New learners of a language sometimes make silly mistakes that only waste their time and hurt their confidence.
Revealed are the 8 grave mistakes that you should avoid when learning a foreign language:
Grammar is the building block of any language. Therefore, when you embark on the journey of learning a new language, the first hurdle will always be the grammar, and this is also where most of the learners make mistakes. The rules of grammar are different in every language and getting a command over those rules is winning half the battle.
For new learners of any language, it is primarily important to know the different parts of speech along with their uses in sentence compositions. Whether it is English, Italian, French or Spanish, every language has its specific set of rules, and it is important to be fully aware of those rules.
The traditionalist approach to learning a new language is no longer applicable in this time and age. Gone are the days when you used to slog hours on writing down meanings of words or develop eyestrain by reading piles of books, grammar guides, dictionaries and thesaurus.
Today, you can easily find plenty of technological resources to boost your language learning process. There are apps, online article or blogs and social forums where you can find a treasure trove of helpful guides on different languages.
This is one of the common mistakes people make when learning a foreign language. Remember that a language is an integral part of culture. This is why it is important to get familiarized with the various facets of its root culture and civilization when you begin to learn a new language.
This includes everything from its people and history to art and craft. When you are familiar with these fundamental aspects of culture, then it gets a lot easier to fully understand a language and learn its usage.
Learning a foreign language is not just about taking tuitions or reading books. In fact, it is about taking up every opportunity that can enrich your knowledge of your target language. Instead of relying merely upon increasing your vocabulary or improving grammar, you need to immerse yourself in everything that can grow your knowledge and skills, regardless if it calls for watching a movie, reading books, etc.
New learners of a language tend to resort to the reading and Essay writing part which only elongate the learning process. Remember that a language has four core parts that include reading, writing, speaking and listening.
All these four components are interconnected with each other and demand your equal attention. Just because listening and speaking are time-consuming tasks, you cannot take them out from your daily learning schedule.
This is one of the most common mistakes of learning a foreign language. New learners of a foreign language often think that building vocabulary is the easiest ways to learn any new language.
Remember that learning a new language is not just about memorizing new words, it also includes various other important things that include sentence composition, punctuation usage, and pronunciation to name a few.
Learning any language can be a fun thing at first. However, it gradually becomes a boring thing to do when the learner finds it too hard to learn. Therefore, the learner would make strenuous efforts to get a command over it, which ultimately makes it even a more frustrating a task. This is why it is important that you spice up this task with interesting activities to keep yourself motivated towards learning more of it.
For example, you can listen to music or watch movies in your target language. Similarly, you can blog about your daily activities or befriend a native person of that language. Luckily, internet offers all these options without requiring any physical work from you.
Often, students make the mistake of enrolling in an institute that only stresses only on grammar usage and offers nothing about the other aspects of a language. When learning a language, it is first important to immerse yourself in its vocabulary, sounds, phrases and slangs before jumping directly onto something as intricate and logical as grammar.
Therefore, you need to avoid enrolling in any such institutes that bank on teaching you grammar without making any different in other equally important parts of your target language.
Learning any new language is productive only when you avoid the above-mentioned 8 mistakes.
Writing systems | Language and languages | Language learning | Pronunciation | Learning vocabulary | Language acquisition | Motivation and reasons to learn languages | Arabic | Basque | Celtic languages | Chinese | English | Esperanto | French | German | Greek | Hebrew | Indonesian | Italian | Japanese | Korean | Latin | Portuguese | Russian | Sign Languages | Spanish | Swedish | Other languages | Minority and endangered languages | Constructed languages (conlangs) | Reviews of language courses and books | Language learning apps | Teaching languages | Languages and careers | Being and becoming bilingual | Language and culture | Language development and disorders | Translation and interpreting | Multilingual websites, databases and coding | History | Travel | Food | Other topics | Spoof articles | How to submit an article
[top]
You can support this site by Buying Me A Coffee, and if you like what you see on this page, you can use the buttons below to share it with people you know.
If you like this site and find it useful, you can support it by making a donation via PayPal or Patreon, or by contributing in other ways. Omniglot is how I make my living.
Note: all links on this site to Amazon.com
[top]
