How to Learn Languages: My Experience
Learning languages is difficult for many, but modernity has introduced a great many apps and resources to help one with their vacation or life abroad. These are great if you do not want to pay for a class, but do they work? Indeed, that is the question. Over the past two years, I have tried every single strategy that came to my mind to try and learn Italian, French, German, and Old English. Some worked, and some failed miserably.
The Apps: A Great Tool for Avid Learners
My experience with language learning apps lies in two chief examples: Duolingo and Memrise; the former being the one I have most experience with. Before I analyze how much time was spent (and mostly wasted) on these apps, I will preface that I do not believe they are solely maladaptive. Indeed, they have their strengths; however, they should act as the seasoning on top of the chicken, not the chicken itself.
To begin with Duolingo, I first began using it intensively in the summer of 2024, when I began learning French for visiting Romandie, Switzerland, in August. I found that it was indeed quite fun and engaging compared to my high school Italian classes. However, I noticed that I had plenty of questions that weren’t being answered. Why vous and not tu? Why is it qu’est-ce que and not simply quoi? Duolingo never gave me an answer. Over the next two years until today I gradually found my Italian classes far more interesting and fun simply because I got the history, and thus was able to find the answers. I drifted away from using Duolingo except to keep a streak; I found Google to be a far better teacher than any textbook.
Memrise is slightly different, by the time I’d tried it I had already found that Google AI actually is great at answering questions about the structural mechanics of language. Memrise helped me with more conversational French, though it didn’t teach me extremely casual texting, nor formal writing conventions for emails and such things.
Now, as for these apps’ positives, I would say they lie solely in vocabulary acquisition, and use for avid learners, not serious learners. If you are going to Greece, and thus want to be able to order food or ask for directions, Duolingo will absolutely teach you that. If you, however, want to learn Greek and thus come up with the very logical question of why it resembles the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets so closely, well, the owl probably won’t know. That is precisely the reason I spent two years learning French and only got to B1.
Memrise utilizes wordlists rather than the linear gamified path of Duolingo. I find this to be more helpful because it will teach you vocabulary for what you want. Want to learn greetings and basic phrases for a trip? Select a travel wordlist. Want to learn words for school and/or business? Select a school or business-oriented wordlist. However, again, if you want to be taught the mechanics of grammar and the history of how said mechanics came about? Memrise won’t give you that. Which brings me to the strategies I employ now, after two years of experimenting.
The Self-appointed Curriculum
To make great progress in a language quickly, you must appoint yourself a curriculum. For French, I did not do this, but when I began learning German, I appointed it as thus:
Day One: The Nominative Case
Day Two: The Accusative Case
Days Three-Four: The Genitive and Dative Cases
Day Five: Applied Practice and Immersion via TV
Day Six: The Past Tenses at a Glance
Day Seven+: Practice and Understanding
The great thing about a self-appointed curriculum is that it moves entirely at your pace. If you have a question, google an answer. I recommend creating a notebook on Google AI and utilizing it solely for the language you are learning. Remember though to use it as a teacher or to test you, not to give you answers, because that is just cheating yourself. Keep in mind also that your curriculum may look more or less in-depth based on your needs. I knew prior to beginning the pronunciation of German. If you are learning Hungarian and do not know the pronunciation or something very basic like the alphabet (which is Latin), then dedicate a day to it. If you still don’t understand a topic after a day, dedicate another day to it; it’s not a race.
In addition to the curriculum itself (whatever it looks like for your language), remember Duolingo and Memrise, and immersion. I recommend spending 30-60 minutes per day on the appointed topic, followed by 15-20 minutes on an app for vocabulary acquisition, and another 30-60 minutes on immersion, be it TV, music, video games, literature, or something else.
Now as for practicing itself, I recommend using a notebook whenever possible. Research suggests that writing results in far more brain activity than typing, therefore helping you to better remember words, spellings, and grammatical concepts. When possible, you should also tie your learning to something emotionally significant to you, be it happy or sad. This will help you remember because all of a sudden it holds more weight than simply rules. This could be, for example translating sentences into your chosen language about a time you were very happy, like a wedding, or something simpler like someone saying hello to you. So long as it is emotionally significant to you, you will have a better time remembering it.
Pivoting to immersion, TV for example, it is important you choose the right TV. If you are watching a show on Netflix, be sure that your chosen show has closed captions (CC) in your chosen language instead of just subtitles. How are they different? Well, subtitles are general and close to what is actually said; from my experience they are more proper than vernacular, closed captions are exactly what is said almost always. If it isn’t, it is usually just shortened; while watching Die Kaiserin (The Empress) on Netflix, I noticed the captions said Danke when what I heard was Danke schön. Same meaning essentially, different ways of saying it. In a French show, you may see it written Merci while you hear Merci beaucoup, it matters little, the captions are accurate is what you must know.
Now obviously, this depends on the language you are learning. If you are learning Old English, you won’t have any shows to watch sadly, but you probably aren’t trying to learn to speak it. More likely, you are learning to read it and/or analyze it. Therefore, you are stuck with reading. But fret not, for there is good news, almost anything you could possibly want to read in your chosen dead language is completely free. Want to read Old English? Beowulf itself is free in Old English online in many places (though I recommend starting with simple prayers and chronicles rather than Beowulf). You won’t have to spend sixty dollars on Klaeber’s Beowulf unless you want to the commentary.
If you are learning a modern language, though, like most people, your books may be harder to come by because of copyright and the lack of multilingual books in America compared to Europe and other places of the world. However, books in the public domain from older authors are available for free on sites like Project Gutenberg. Keep in mind, though that these may be in a more archaic form of the language you are learning and may not be representative of modern prose or speech.
Now, you may be wondering, “how far ahead must I plan my curriculum?” and the answer is simply, as far as you need. I covered the basics of German in my plan, but beyond that, I really just continued practicing forming sentences in a notebook, asking questions, learning nuance, vocabulary on Duolingo, and consuming media. Therefore, I wouldn’t plan out everyday of the next four months, I would simply plan out the basics of the language and tackle new tenses and conjugations when you feel ready, which takes some discernment. A good rule to use for each day is that you want to learn at least something new each day, even if that is just cleaning up your syntax or learning the difference between two similar words. Like everything, it is repetition that produces steady learning.
Learning Steadily Going Forward
Over time, after the novelty wears off and you no longer feel that you are learning a million things per day because of what you already know, you will obviously experience a plateau. Don’t fret and think, “I must be burnt out.” You’re almost certainly not. You will have days where it feels easy and days when it makes no sense and you feel like a beginner. You will ask every single question you have and others that you don’t want to ask any. That’s okay, so long as it isn’t every day. Keep in mind also that while practicing everyday is good, some days you are so tired or stressed out that you just don’t want to. When that happens, recognize that it is okay to take the day off or practice less intensively; the best part about this style of learning is that it is at your own pace; you can learn as slow or as fast as you want.
To answer one last question that you may have, “How long will it take to learn?” The answer is wonderfully vague; because you aren’t in a classroom, ignore the CEFR recommendations. That is based on how long it takes an English speaker to learn a language to the point where one can discuss everything from what they ate for breakfast to the logistics of managing an airline. So don’t use it. There are different types of fluency, the main two being conversational and complete fluency. Conversational is great for everything from ordering a coffee to working. Complete is like being able to read archaic books and write with your own linguistic flair and prosody. They take wildly different amounts of time depending on what you know, how much you practice, how you practice, and how malleable your brain is to it. So yes, it could take you four weeks to reach B1 in Dutch, or it could take you nine months because of your linguistic knowledge, your practicing methods, and just how much time you set aside specifically for Dutch practice.
