How to speed up the language learning process

Many language learners can feel frustrated when learning English due to the slow pace involved with English language acquisition. Students do their best to learn the grammar rules and to pick up new isolated words and phrases but still feel that they could be progressing much faster. It is easy for a teacher to say that the more effort you put into it, the quicker you will improve. But, is it as simple as that? Are there any other ways to speed up the language learning process?

It is widely believed that listening is the most important language skill. In fact, improving your listening skills will greatly help to improve your speaking skills. Active listening is deployed when having to listen and respond to someone and we can respond by using verbal cues or by using body language.

Think about being involved in a conversation with somebody, you give the person you are speaking to small signals to let them know that you are listening to them, such as nodding your head or saying ‘Uh-huh’. However, there are many situations in life which involve the use of passive listening. For example, if you are watching a film or T.V programme or listening to a lecture, no response is required. Active listening requires an instant response whereas passive listening requires you to understand. Let us look at some ways in which you can become a better English speaker through passive listening.

You could try to focus on specific target language within TED talks, films or T.V shows. Ask yourself what it is that you want to listen out for. Is it your goal to listen for specific words or phrases? Perhaps you want to focus on listening out for phrasal verbs within different contexts in order to become more familiar with them and how they are used. Targeted listening is a good way to do this. You could also make a note of how these phrases are used as you are listening. Note-taking through passive listening is very effective when you are writing down only the things that matter to you most. You could then add these words and phrases to your vocabulary notebook or if you have them in there already, could write down the context and/or new sentence in which they were used.

If you already know what you are listening for, it is better for you. By being able to choose what you want to learn by yourself, can help to accelerate your language acquisition and you will be in control of your own progress. This will also help to build your confidence.

The fastest way to improve your overall understanding and to fine tune your speaking skills is to speak with native English speakers. You will learn idiomatic expressions, set phrases and much more. You can meet up regularly with people for sessions where you speak only in English, be it online or face to face. Whether it’s an English-speaking friend, relative, fellow student or teacher, they’ll be able to help you recognise areas that need improvement, let you know when you make mistakes, teach you new words and phrases, help with your pronunciation and help to keep you motivated! You have nothing to lose and everything to gain! You could try using some of the new phrases you have learnt from passive listening in real-life communication. There are language exchange events which happen all over London which can help to build your confidence and improve fluency when speaking. These are organised events which encourage people to speak in the preferred target language. Check out this link for a list of events:

https://www.meetup.com/topics/language-exchange/gb/17/london/?_cookie-check=3nMUlpasRryrSXwQ

Linguists, such as Michael Lewis, encourage language learning in lexical chunks. Lexical chunks are groups of words which commonly go together and these include collocations and phrases. It is important to learn chunks of language because a good portion of daily communication involves predictable common phrases such as “turn right,” “See you later,” “nice to meet you.” When studying a new language, memorise these phrases and you'll have a bunch of ready-made useful dialogue at your finger-tips. Why is it better to learn language chunks rather than isolated words? According to research, our brains have not developed to remember isolated words. Neuroscience has found that our working memory has developed to remember short patterns of no more than four items at a time. It doesn’t matter how many individual words you memorise, without fitting the words into patterns, your brain will have trouble retrieving them when you really need to remember!

There are various ways in which you can speed up your language learning. The important thing to remember is to enjoy the process and to not give up!