Best Way to Learn a Language

The best way to learn a language is to learn it from a native speaker.

If you listen to the way I speak English, you may think I am a native speaker. I don’t have a Chinese accent. I started learning English at a very early age, but I could not understand or communicate clearly with a native speaker after more than a decade of learning from school or attending extra curriculum classes. Even though my grades were often at the top of my class, my English was only good for exams.

My English didn’t improve until I started chatting with native speakers online. I was on Tagged, Interpals, Livemocha, and Skype looking for English speakers to chat with. I learned more of the English that people actually use on my own than I have ever learned from any of my classes. I learned slang, the colloquial way of expressing myself, and how to greet people without ever using “how do you do?”

Day after day, I started to pick up on the “real-life” English from all the English-speaking friends I had been chatting with. My English improved tremendously.

Of course, merely talking to people online is not enough to really master a language. I joined an English corner of my city where people get together weekly and practice their English with native speakers. I fell asleep listening to English podcasts. I read out loud for hours on end whatever English material I had on hand. I recorded myself and listened back to the audio to give myself feedback. I watched a plethora of American movies to grab a feeling of the way Americans talk. I listened to English songs, and learned to sing the lyrics, I wrote them down in a notebook and found out the meaning of the words I didn’t understand. I sang out loud. Singing is my favorite hobby and with the combination of learning English, it was extra enjoyable to my learning. It didn’t take long for me to start sounding like a native.

And you guessed it! All of these would not have been possible if I wasn’t interested in English. So the second best way to learn a language is to be interested.

Even though I was more than just interested. I was passionate, to the point that one could call a ‘maniac.’

When I couldn’t converse with a native speaker, I talked to myself. I remember one evening walking down the street in downtown Shenyang, perhaps after just finishing one of the English corner meetings. I was practicing what I learned and I looked as if I was talking to myself. In the distance, I saw two women that looked quite familiar walking towards me, but I couldn’t tell who they were because I was concentrating on practicing English with myself. When they got closer, one of the women suddenly spoke to me: “Yiya?” Oh my god, they were my aunt and my cousin. Oops! They must think I’m nuts talking to myself late in the evening walking down the street by myself, I thought. My aunt continued: “What are you doing out so late by yourself, kid? I saw your mouth moving. You’re not talking to yourself, are you? Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I was just…err..um…practicing my English.”

They must have thought I was crazy. But that’s ok. I was crazy. I was crazy for English.

Because I ignored the teachers and learned my English slang in other class. I had a huge English dictionary sitting on my desk all the time. Whenever I opened the dictionary during other classes and lost myself in all the strange English words, the teachers would give me a face that looked like this kid is hopeless.

I wasn’t quite sure why I was so crazy about learning English. But I’ve always believed that it would be a better way of using my time. I’ve always believed that at least learning English would come into use one day.

And it did.

I don’t know how differently life would turn out for me if I wasn’t crazy about learning English. I would probably be in my college dorm in China cramming until midnight for more tests right now.

I’ve taken enough exams in my life that I wouldn’t regret not having to take more.

If you want to master a language, go crazy for it. Nothing great is achieved without a little bit of craziness. Go insane, don’t care what people might think about you. Practice speaking with yourself out loud and strike up a conversations with native speakers of your target language. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes in front of them. Be happy because you are learning.

I still wouldn’t say I’ve mastered the English language–there is so much more for me to learn. In fact, I’m learning something new everyday for more than two years now since I came to the United States.