How to Start Learning French or Spanish

In my previous post, Why Learn French or Spanish, I gave three practical reasons for why a native English speaker should learn French and/or Spanish. Now the questions is, how should you get started? With lots of free resources available, especially for Spanish, this won’t be too hard as long as you have a sustainable and effective daily process. It should be a process that you can reliably complete in about 20 minutes each day. Learning these languages will be easier and more enjoyable than you might think if you follow the advice of this and the subsequent posts on learning French and Spanish.

This series assumes you are a total beginner at learning either of these languages, and that you want to learn them for free. Before getting into specific resources for learning French and Spanish, let’s go through three considerations for how to go about your learning:

-            Create a learning process you can reliably complete at least almost every day, at the best time of day and with effective reminders to complete your process at that time

-            Focus on reading and listening first, practicing writing and speaking with the expectation that those will develop more slowly and require more effort

-            Set realistic expectations about pace of learning, be comfortable making mistakes, and remind yourself often of the reasons for learning these languages

Create a reliable learning process

In Process Goals vs Progress Goals, I explained about the importance of creating a reliable process for pursuing any goal you want to achieve. It has to be a process that you are able to reliably complete for so many days that it becomes natural and you actually become uncomfortable not doing it after a while, missing at most one or two days a month. There is no sprinting your way into mastering a foreign language, and just like in a marathon, you need to run at a sustainable pace that doesn’t wear you down fast. Along with that, ensure that you complete this process without trying to multitask; dedicate your full focus to learning in this process to make the most efficient use of your precious time.

While it’s great if you have more time to spend learning French or Spanish, at first set a modest target of 20 minutes per day. This will make it easier to make time for it, and with foreign languages, smaller increments of study each day is better than one big chunk of study each week. Remember that by creating a reliable learning process, you will study over many days, and your overall knowledge of the languages will gradually accumulate into something significant. It’s a great feeling when the amount you’ve learned sneaks up on you and suddenly you realize how much further along you are than you thought!

Focus on reading and listening first

Spending 20 minutes on learning a foreign language each day might not seem like much, it can actually give your brain a good workout if you are focused on whatever reading or listening material you’re learning from. Even reading or listening at a much slower rate than you can read or listen in English, you can still digest hundreds of words during that time. Some words will be familiar and you’ll be reinforcing your memory of them, and others will be new and reading or hearing those means you’ve just expanded your knowledge. A really satisfying accomplishment is when you learn to read or listen well enough that you can learn new words through context, not even having to look them up in a dictionary.

Set realistic expectations

It’s very common for new language learners to think they can become fluent in a matter of months. While this could be the case with a good tutor and the luxury of studying a foreign language full-time, that’s not the reality for most of us. This series and the recommended techniques are for those of us who only study for 20 minutes a day not because we want to exert a bare minimum effort, but because we are busy enough that 20 minutes is about all we can reliably sustain some days. So, first set a realistic expectation about how much time you can devote to language learning and keep in mind how critical it is to maximize the quality and focus of your effort during that time.

Along with setting realistic expectations on how much learning time you can make each day, set a realistic expectation about your pace of learning. Remember that walking up a mountain will take more time than running up, but that running up will cause you to tire out and need to stop. If you complete your daily language learning process with good focus, you have succeeded. Don’t worry about how many new words you learned or if you understood your content perfectly, and trust that you will get adequate exposure to learn the language with a large volume of words and variety of sources. And lastly, keep in mind the reasons for mastering a foreign language in the first place; put reminders of these reasons where you will see them often to keep your mindset positive even in the midst of challenging concepts, learning plateaus, or short-term boredom with the language.

Conclusion

Now you know some important rules of thumb for learning a foreign language. The biggest determinants are your motivation and the sustainability and effectiveness of your learning process. Language learning techniques to come in the next several posts will be effective if you practice them with good focus. Carefully consider and then commit yourself to a simple learning process that you can reliably complete in about 20 minutes each day, posting reminders in conspicuous places. Build a large vocabulary through lots of reading and listening first, then wade into writing and speaking as you get used to the language.

Be patient with yourself. Give yourself more time than you think you’ll need to learn the language well and remember that making mistakes is part of the learning process, not an indication that you’ve failed and should give up! The more frequently you remind yourself why you’re learning the language, the more motivated you will keep yourself to master the language to your desired level. Let's go take those first steps to climb the mountain!