The Best Way to Learn a Language: What the Science Says

“What’s the best way to learn a language?” “What’s the quickest way to learn new words?” “How can I sound like a native speaker?” “Do I really have to study grammar?” Language hackers ask themselves these kinds of questions all the time. We all want to use effective study methods so we can learn a language quickly and speak it well. How can we know if we’re spending our time on the right things? Everywhere you turn, language teachers are using different methods and giving conflicting advice. Some learn vocabulary by memorising word lists, others absorb it naturally by reading. Some concentrate on the sounds first, others prefer to improve their pronunciation as they go along. Some swear by grammar drills, others never open a textbook. Fortunately, language learners aren’t the only ones who’ve been puzzling over these questions. Linguists, the people who study the science of language, have spent decades observing how people learn languages. And while they don’t have all the answers yet, they have discovered a lot of cool stuff about what works and what doesn’t. So let’s take a look at some of the most common questions in language learning, what science has to say about them. We’ll also look at the strategies science provides that can help us become better language learners.

How Can You Sound More Like a Native Speaker?

Perhaps the first question to address is why you want to sound more like a native speaker. Lots of language learners don’t worry much about pronunciation. They think that as long as people can get what they’re saying, that’s all that matters. And there’s some truth in this: you don’t need a perfect accent to communicate well with native speakers. But the more you sound like a native speaker, the easier it is for them to understand you. And the easier it is for people to understand you, the more they enjoy talking to you. Which comes in pretty handy, given that you need to talk to people in order to learn their language. So why do we have accents in the first place? And what can we do about them?

Why do we Have Foreign Accents?

There are two main reasons language learners have foreign accents. Firstly, it can be difficult to tell the difference between two sounds that don’t exist in our native language. Secondly, other languages can have sounds that require us to use our mouth muscles in a new way. Let’s take a look at both of these issues, why they happen, and how you can address them.

Sound Differences that don’t Exist in Our Own Language

When I started learning Italian, I spent a few months desperately trying to avoid the word anno (year), for fear of accidentally saying the word ano (ass). It felt as if Italians across the world were playing some kind of cruel joke on me because I just couldn’t hear the difference. On the flip side, I’m a native English speaker, so the difference between the sheep and ship vowels seems pretty obvious. But lots of learners struggle with difference, which explains why everyone’s terrified of speaking English on holiday, with all those beaches and sheets and what not . This happens because when we’re born, we have super little polyglot brains that can tell the difference between sounds in all of the world’s languages. As we grow older, our brain zooms in on acoustic differences between sounds that are important for our native language and filters out differences that are not important. This is good, as it helps us understand our own language better. But it causes problems for language learners, because they filter out sound differences that might be important in the language they’re learning.

How to Tell Sounds Apart

But it’s not all bad news. Linguists have been studying this phenomenon for years and they’ve found a way to help learners hear and pronounce the difference between these tricky sounds. This method, known as minimal pair training, involves listening to a word that has the sound difference you want to learn (like ship or sheep), deciding which one you think it is, and getting immediate feedback about whether you were right or wrong. After a few sessions, you’ll hear the difference more easily and be able to pronounce them better. You set up your own minimal pair training by using forvo to download sound files of the words you want to learn to tell apart. Then use Anki to put the sound file on the question side and the written word on the other. Listen to the word, try to guess which one it is, then flip the flashcard over to see if you were right.

New Mouth Positions

Some sounds are difficult because they involve completely new mouth positions, like the rolled “R” in Spanish or the “U” in French. For these sounds, science has some good news: it turns out that with a little perseverance, it’s absolutely possible to train your mouth muscles to pronounce sounds more like native speakers.

How to Train Your Mouth Muscles for Correct Pronunciation

To do this, you need to learn a little about articulatory phonetics (which is basically just a fancy-pants way of saying mouth positions) to find out exactly where the tongue, teeth and lips should be in the sounds you want to learn. Then practice them regularly until your mouth naturally moves to that position. That sounds great, but where do I learn about all these mouth positions, I hear you ask. Well, luckily a smart guy called Idahosa Ness is already teaching people about the mouth positions in lots of different languages, with his Mimic Method courses, available for English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin and Portuguese. Alternatively, try doing a quick search on YouTube. More and more language teachers are uploading pronunciation videos and you might just find one which explains the mouth positions in the language you’re learning.

What’s the Fastest Way to Learn New Words in Another Language?

There are as many ways to learn vocabulary as there are successful language learners. Throw this question out to a room of polyglots and watch as they they initiate a battle royale style fight to the death, until the last survivor stretches out his weak arms in a victory celebration, clutching a pile of bloodstained flashcards. The most important debate - as far as science is concerned - is about whether we should make a concerted effort to memorise words, for example using flashcards, or whether we should pick them up naturally through reading and listening. As with most battles fought between two polar extremes, they’re both a bit right. Both techniques are useful for different reasons and if you can balance the two, you’ll be onto a winner.

The Science of Flashcards

Lots of learners use flashcard systems, which involve writing words or sentences in your target language on one side and a picture or translation on the other. To learn the words or sentences, you look at one side of the card, see if you can remember what’s on the other side, then turn it over to see if you’d remembered it correctly. These days, most people use apps like Anki or memrise, which leave a specific time lapse between card reviews using a system called spaced repetition. This technique is based on research by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus which showed that people learn more when they space learning out rather than cramming it all together. This means that you’ll remember a word much better if you look at it once a day for five days, rather than five times in the same day. Ebbinghaus also noticed that people tend to remember things better when they can link them to personal experiences. You can take advantage of this by using a memory technique called mnemonics, which involves linking words in the language you’re learning to words and images in your own language that sound similar. For example, to remember the Mandarin Chinese word for book, shu, you could imagine a book with a shoe on it, which helps you link the image of a bookto its Chinese translation. Spaced repetition and mnemonics can boost your word power quickly and make your brain feel like an awesome vocabulary learning machine. But they’re not the be all and end all of word learning strategies. In fact, overuse of these techniques can actually harm your vocabulary, and here’s why.

Your N400 Signal: How to Learn Words the Natural Way

You may not know it, but your brain is already an awesome vocabulary learning machine. When you read or listen to something, your brain doesn’t take each word at face value: it’s constantly taking statistics about which words appear together regularly so that it can anticipate what’s coming next and process speech faster. Neuroscientists have found a way to measure when your brain is doing this. Our brains constantly emit electrical signals, which change depending on what task your brain is dealing with. Scientists can read some of these, using a technique called electroencephalography, to study how your brain processes language (but don’t worry, they can’t read your mind... yet!). One of these signals, called N400, changes depending on whether words make sense in context or not. The N400 is relatively small for expected word combinations, like coffee and cream, and increases in height for unexpected word combinations, like coffee and crap. This means that scientists can read the N400 height to analyse the kind of expectations you have about which words usually occur together. If your N400 doesn’t increase for coffee and crap, they might wonder how on earth you’ve been drinking your coffee. In language learners, the N400 changes based on proficiency. The better people get at a language, the closer their N400 pattern is to a native speaker’s. This means that an important part of language proficiency is taking statistics and building up expectations about what kind of words usually appear together, just as native speakers do. To get better at this, we need to flood our brains with bucket loads of natural content so we can build up a picture or which kinds of words usually appear together. Reading is a great way to do this and there’s lots of research that shows that reading works wonders for your vocabulary skills. It’s important to choose resources that are right for the level, as if the percentage of unknown words is too high, it can be difficult to figure out what they mean from the context and it’s frustrating having to stop every two minutes to look up a word. Graded readers, which adapt books to make them easier to understand at lower levels, are perfect for this. And if you’re a higher level but you’re not a big reader, how about watching shows with subtitles in the language you’re learning? It’s still reading, after all!

Do You Really Need to Study Grammar?

Grammarphobes often ask themselves whether it’s really necessary to learn all those grammar rules. Can’t we just pick it up with the natural method, that is, through reading, listening and talking? Linguists struggle to answer this question because it’s very difficult to control and measure. Experiments usually compare one group who are taught grammar rules with another who sees/hears sentences with the same grammar but are not taught the rules. But how do we know each group has paid attention to the same grammar structure the same number of times? What if the ones who aren’t taught the rules are secretly trying to figure out the rules in their heads, or running off home and learning it on their own? How do you know if they’ve learned the grammar? Is it when they understand it, when they use it or when they don’t make any mistakes? And what if experiments that find no positive effect of teaching grammar simply aren’t being published? “Hey, we did an experiment and nothing happened” isn’t exactly a bit hit with academic journals. That’s why, after decades of research, the grammar question is still a very murky one. To clear it up, linguists have started doing meta-studies, which involve gathering all available research on learning grammar rules and seeing if there’s a tendency. The results emerging are that grammar rules do help people speak more accurately, but the results aren’t nearly as drastic as you might think, especially given all of the attention to grammar in the majority of language classes and textbooks. These results fit in with my experience as a language learner. Knowing the grammar certainly helps, but spending the majority of my language learning time memorising complicated grammar rules doesn’t feel like the most effective way to learn.

What’s the Best Way to Stay Motivated in Language Learning?

This is probably the most important question of all: you can know all the best ways to learn pronunciation, words and grammar, but if you can’t be bothered, it’s never going to happen. Luckily there’s loads of cool research on motivation that’ll help you get your language learning act together. Here are a couple of ways to get started:

Find a Friend or Language Partner to Study With

Studies show that people who feel like they’re working as a team (even if they’re not physically together) accomplish more. There are a few reasons for this:

1. Social: We’re social animals and sharing our experiences with others makes us feel more positive about them.
2. Accountability: Once your goals are out there for all to see, you’re more likely to work towards them.
3. Support: You get access to a lovely support network who can give you advice and encouragement.

Over the last few years the internet has exploded with online language learning communities which are helping people connect support each other in all kinds of awesome ways. One example is the Fluent in 3 Months community. Another is the Add1challenge.

Break Down Your Big Goals into Mini-Missions

Research shows that people who break down big tasks into little chunks get more done in the long run. In one study, people who were given six pages of maths problems per session over seven sessions completed the pages faster and more accurately than people who were given 42 pages from the start. Breaking down the task is essential in something like language learning, where the outcome feels big and scary. Instead of trying to “speak German”, aim for something smaller and more concrete, like an hour of German a day, or however much time you can afford. By breaking it down this way, you’re much more likely to do it. And if you keep it up day by day, you’ll be speaking a language before you know it.

The Best Way to Learn a Language: Your Experience

Do these findings fit in with your experience as a language learner, or are they different? Let us know in the comments.

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How Adults Learn: 6 Important Things to Know

“I’ll never learn to run with the stamina of Paula Radcliffe, so why bother training for a marathon?” “I’ll never win a Nobel Prize in maths, so what’s the point of studying it at all?” “I’ll never play cello like Yo-Yo Mah, so I shouldn’t even start.” How do these excuses sound to you? If, like me, you love to learn for the sake of learning, they probably sound quite lame. Yet so many language learners let themselves be swayed by similar excuses:

• “I don’t have the language gene.”
• “I’ll never have a perfect French accent.”
• “I’m too old to ever be fluent in a new language”
• “I didn’t do it as a child, so why start now?”

The “I’m too old” excuse is one I hear a lot. I even said it to myself as a young adult, when I still only spoke one language fluently. Now, over a decade later, I’m fluent in seven languages. Putting aside the fact that there’s no conclusive proof that children learn languages any better than adults, would it really matter if they did? Children are good at learning languages. They’re good at learning, full stop. But adults are absolutely not bad at learning. In fact, they’re extremely good at it. Just look around the web at all the people who have successfully reached fluency, even mastery, in another language well into adulthood with no previous foreign language experience. With that in mind, I’ve investigated how adults learn - from a scientific point of view. You can use these insights to your advantage when hashing out a study plan for your target language.

1. The Ability to Learn Vocabulary is not Related to Age

Whatever advantages children may have in language acquisition, such as more easily learning to speak without an accent, they don’t have an advantage where it counts: learning the actual words required to speak a language. Vocabulary is far more important to learning a language than accent. In fact, accent isn’t an indicator at all of your competence with a language, regardless of some people’s preconceived notions to the contrary. What’s more, as an adult, you can use hacks for memorising vocabulary quickly, which I’d argue work even better as an adult. Adults have more life experience and can invent more memorable stories as mnemonics to make the new vocabulary stick. If a native accent is one of your goals, go for it! A good accent can change people’s perception of you, even if you don’t speak the language any better than someone with a foreign accent. A native-sounding accent is not impossible, no matter how old you are. It just takes a bit more effort. Which brings me to my next point…

2. Adults are More Motivated to Learn than Children

If you’re an adult thinking about learning a second language, chances are, it’s not out of necessity (though obviously for a small percentage of people, it is). It’s morely likely that you want to learn a new language for some personal motivation. Perhaps to experience other cultures in a more authentic way, to appreciate the arts and literature of another country, or to keep your mind sharp. On the other hand, how many kids do you know who like to do extra homework after school when they don’t have to? Not many, I’d guess! The only reason most kids go to school and do homework at all is because they’re sent there by their parents. When you reach adulthood, however, you realise the benefits of learning for the sheer pleasure of it. As a result, you’re more motivated. This extra motivation means learning more quickly and efficiently. Consequently, the learning process itself becomes more enjoyable. Not only are adults more motivated to learn for learning’s sake, but also because of the immediate reward they get from learning something new, which children don’t get. And that is…

3. Adults Get to Immediately Apply What They’ve Learned

When you were a kid in school, I bet you wondered more than once why you had to multiply compound fractions, or learn verb conjugations for a language you wouldn’t be able to use outside of class for years and years, if ever. None of what you were learning was relevant to your day-to-day kid life, so you didn’t see the big picture about why it was useful. That’s understandable! It’s not easy for anyone, much less a child, to enthusiastically learn something that they won’t use for ten or twenty years! You have a big advantage as an adult, however, in that you can get out there today and practise the things you learned yesterday. There are few places where this is more evident than in language learning. Unlike many other disciplines, you don’t have to wait until you’re ready before you go out and speak a language. Even if you only know ten words, you can go out on day one and use those ten words to successfully communicate with native speakers. When you’re able to see such immediate success, you’re far more likely to continue studying. Compare this with children who have to sit in a classroom for years, memorising vocabulary like “stapler”, “moose”, and a host of other words that are irrelevant to daily life, for the sole purpose of passing a test. No wonder so many children drop their second language course at the first chance. As an adult, you can forget about staplers and moose and just learn the vocabulary that’s relevant to you right now, giving you the ability to instantly go and have a conversation in your target language using that vocabulary. You can learn whatever and however you want, and still get the most out of your studying, because…

4. Adults Have Control Over Their Learning Environment

I love being an adult! I’m all grown up, settled down, and exceptionally mature for my age. Well, ok, I’m all grown up at least! Grown-ups have something that children don’t: control over their daily lives. If you want cake for supper, you can eat as much cake as you like. You also have control over your learning environment as an adult. When studying your target language, you get to experiment and find out how you learn best. Then you can go ahead and learn that way. No more relying exclusively on teachers with pre-determined lesson plans that offer no flexibility in what you learn, or how you learn it. I’m sure there are some people out there who learn languages best in a classroom, but if (like me) you’re not one of them, then you might have fooled yourself as a child into thinking that you were no good at languages. Now that you’re an adult, you’ll see that there are nearly as many ways to effectively learn a language as there are language learners. All it takes is a bit of trial and error to find the combination of language hacks that works best for you. And once you start studying a new language, you’ll quickly gain momentum in your learning. The reason for this is…

5. The More Adults Learn, The Easier Learning Becomes

One of the reasons adults supposedly learn more slowly is simply because they’re out of practice. The phrase “use it or lose it” couldn’t be more apt when it comes to your brain. Every time you learn something new, you create new synapses and increase the plasticity of your brain. This makes it easier for you to retain the skills you’ve learned, improve on these skills, and continue learning new things. That’s why I can go for months without practising some of my languages, but can then spend just a few days polishing up the areas where I’m rusty, and get right back to the level I was at before. If you don’t use a skill for a while, but you spend the meantime using your brain to learn other skills (such as another language, a musical instrument, or even juggling) then what you’re doing is improving your ability to learn. As a result, you can re-learn the old skill more quickly, as well as more easily learn entirely new skills. You’ll gain momentum. You’ll see results more quickly, and get hooked on learning. It will become a lifelong process. When it comes to learning a language, however, just practising over and over again, like you would practise the piano, isn’t really effective. You’ll want to use your language in interactive ways in order to improve. Which brings me to my final point…

6. Adults Learn Languages Faster When They Get Feedback

This should be no surprise. However much you might consider yourself shy and introverted, best suited to studying alone at home, there’s simply no substitute for interactive feedback in your language learning. The easiest and most efficient way to get it is by talking with real people in your target language. If you only practise by yourself at home for hours, without getting any real feedback about your progress, then don’t be surprised if you fail to meet your language goals and end up losing motivation. Don’t get me wrong: tools like Duolingo and spaced repetition software are an extremely useful supplement to your language learning. You can use them to study vocabulary and grammar. But if you want to be sure that you’re actually using the language correctly, talk with a native speaker who can provide feedback. Not only will you learn to use the language more effectively, you’ll get a better ear for it and start to pronounce it more closely to native speech.

How Adults Learn: Your Attitude is a far Better Predictor of Success than Your Age

You can learn a language at any age. Sixteen or sixty! If you want to learn a new language but have yet to begin, then the only thing holding you back is your mindset. Like the old saying goes: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right”. Yes, your individual results might vary compared to other people’s, but guess what? No matter how good you are, there will always be someone better. You’re never going to be the very best in the world at anything - especially languages. But why worry about that? Stop comparing yourself to others. Stop making excuses. Get out there and learn something!

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