Learning a language can be quite challenging . . . . except if you follow the universal truths we all have experienced during our lives. Teaching on ITalki during the past year has brought me tremendous joy, helped me make new friends and provided me with the opportunity to improve my students' confidence and mastery of this beautiful universal language. By adopting certain principles, which I've also used in my own language learning, the whole "burdensome, tiring" study of languages gets thrown out of the window.

Here are some key principles which will guarantee your journey towards language mastery in a much more efficient way :

1) Goodbye Grammar! - Avoid grammar books at all cost. Your brain is forced to memorize rules and when you finally want to speak to someone you have to do two things at the same time : Thinking grammar and speaking. It's way too difficult! I've never seen a baby studying from a grammar book, however, he/she learns through :

2) Immersion - make contact with the language on a daily basis - watch videos, movies, listen to podcasts, speak with someone - your wife, husband, friends, teacher, anyone (even if they don't understand a word you're saying)

3) Repetition - Writing is such a powerful tool in language learning. Remember when you learnt how to drive a car? You had to repeatedly drive until you could finally cruise the roads. Struggling to remember a conditional structure, for example 'If I saw a ghost, I would run'? Write down 5 sentences per week using this structure....it really is a piece of (English) cake

There are so many more principles that can be applied to language learning. I'd like to reveal the two most important principles :

Good luck and Enjoy the process! :))