Recently, I have seen many discussions and questions about "the best way to learn a language"? In reality, there is no clear cut answer because every person is different. I wanted to create this discussion so that experienced language learners can help people who are learning their first foreign language. Please feel free to share the learning strategies that worked best for YOU so that new learners have many strategies to try out to see which one works the best for them.
If it's self-study, I always have a pen and paper handy. I write down what I'm learning and even add my own notes. Even if it's watching a video, I can at least jot down a couple of things that catch my ear.
If there are grammar notes, a short text or even a chart, I write it out again. All of it! Basically, I take the time to study something carefully and actively, otherwise it's a case of "in one ear, out the other". It's just a case of developing a habit. I see a lot of English students take a passive approach (only read and listen) and their English comes out as haphazard. I think it helps to be a little more active and careful, and to pay attention to the little details as I go.
If something is confusing me, I try to work it out myself before asking someone else (viz. my last question about word order in a phrase).
Then when I'm talking to someone, it can be a whole different ballgame! :D
To learn english, i do writing and repeating by loud voice. I use websites to read news for English learners. because i need to know how write better. But i think if i did not want to take ielts test, i tried just movies and reading story books. To be honest, i started learning English by chatting for fun with a friend from the USA and i think chatting helped me much. I think strategies for learning a language depend on one's goal. It is a test or its is for fun. one wants to be a good writer or a good speaker, for example, i havea friend who speak exactly like a native one, but he cant write with true spelling!!! he just watched movies and repeated the movies by stoping and repeating to learn how speak. Maybe he is amazing at speaking but i am better than him at writing!! which is strange!! Because of that i think it deponds on a person's goal too.
Take me as an example, when I started to refresh my English last year, I ran across many of problems in Vocabulary insufficiency and speaking as well at that time when I consumed plenty of time in vocabulary comprehension by continuous making sentences and checking all samples in the dictionary as much useful as I can. Eventually, my speaking and writing is far better than before by investigation of my IELTS test score. Now there is another problem coming along to disturb me which is my receptive ability (reading and listening) is comparatively weaker than productive ability far and away. Therefore, I concentrate nearly all of my effort and time in reading and listening. It is improving I can sense yet not good enough to meet the minimal requirement of IELTs test. I am struggling and working hard to remedy my flaw on this gound.
My suggestion is to adjust your strategy as the weakiness impeding your proficiency.
@allen I completely agree with you. Language goals greatly affect the learning strategies one must use when learning a language because certain strategies focus more on certain characteristics of the language.
To adjust your strategy toward your target anytime while you are learning a new language is very important. There is no one manner persistent and unchangeable for you to learn.
