How to Learn a Language Fast
You can learn a new language. There’s nothing stopping you. But, if you want to learn a language fast, you have to do it differently. You can’t rely on old-school techniques. You need a reliable, scientifically-proven, and trustworthy language learning method. Luckily, it’s not hard at all. Follow these four simple steps to discover the best way to learn a language fast.
Learning a new language is a bit like slowly wading into new waters. There may be a time and place where jumping in feet first makes sense. But more often, moving slowly and deliberately leads to a better outcome. There are four steps necessary to successfully engage with your new language. While not a hard set of rules, it’s an approach that’s served those I’ve taught and me very well.
Step 1: Research, Evaluate, and Plan Your Language Learning
This is the first step in your language learning journey. Ironically, it’s a step that is frequently skipped or where people tend to get stuck. We’ve already explored parts of this step in depth in an earlier post.
Here they are again:
- Set a Clear Goal: Decide which language you want to learn and why.
- Understand the Effort Required: Think long and hard about your reasons and answers to the above and consider how much time you can realistically invest in your language-learning efforts.
- Realize the Time Investment: You’ll need to set aside a few minutes a day (a few hours a week) to make progress towards fluency.
- Determine the Outcome: What will you need to do to make progress toward your goal.
The scope and duration of this step really depend on you. This stage is introspective and requires you to be very honest with yourself in terms of your reasons for learning a new language, what you think you can reasonably achieve, and the timeframes you believe make sense.
Maybe you want to master Mandarin. Perhaps you just want to pick up a few basic phrases of Portuguese. If your goal is to speak to a Brazilian neighbor, you probably have a good sense of your answers to the questions that need to be explored at this step in the process. If you have dreams of learning and mastering 12 languages in six months because you were inspired by a spy movie… well, you might want to re-evaluate how realistic and honest you are being with yourself.
Step 2: Get Familiar with Your Language
- Goal: Get a sense of the basic structure of the language.
- Effort: Pick up a few hundred vocabulary words and very basic phrases.
- Time Investment: About 40-60 hours
- Outcome: Passive recall of very basic syntax and active ability to produce a few “go-to” phrases and expressions
Once you’ve decided which language you want to learn and why, and you’ve defined what success will look like, it’s time to get your hands dirty and begin to play around with your language. This might shock you, but at this stage, I’d recommend reading a tiny bit about the grammar of the language.
I don’t want you to study or memorize any grammar; just get a sense of the general structure of the language. Ask yourself some questions:
- Do words change based on how or where they are used in a sentence?
- Does the language use declensions?
- Do nouns, adjectives, or verbs take on masculine or feminine prefixes, suffixes, or definite/indefinite articles?
- Is the language gendered?
- How different is it from English?
This is really all you’re looking for at this point. You’d also be well served to pick up a few phrases and some vocabulary along the way. That’s actually where you should spend your time on language learning.
The brief grammar scan I described above is just to make sure you don’t get stuck on unfamiliar or irregular syntax that doesn’t make sense to you. You may still stumble or get stuck here or there, but a quick scan of the grammar can help smooth over a lot of initial confusion.
How Long Will Step 2 Take?
Depending on your study efforts, if you invest anywhere from 30-60 minutes per day, five days per week, this step might take you a few weeks to a few months. It depends on how consistent you are.
Believe it or not, almost any reputable language-learning product, app, or resource will get you to this point. Whether you do it in 40 hours or 60 hours and whether the things you learn are relevant or helpful will be highly dependent on your personal goals and the resources you choose.
Are You Fluent Yet?
At this stage, you’re just kind of splashing around in the water. Whether you know how to swim or not, it doesn’t take that much effort to get wet. That said, be careful about your expectations at this step of your language learning journey.
If you happen to interact with native speakers of your target language, you’ll barely be able to express the most basic of needs and desires. To the extent you can do so, your expressions will be highly dependent on the materials you’ve studied, and any deviation from your course materials will be difficult to manage.
At the same time, somewhat ironically, the more confident and natural you are at speaking a given phrase or expression, the faster your native speaking partner will talk and the more complex their speech will be. This is the point where you realize you don’t really know how to swim, and there are some deep waters ahead. That’s natural. Hang in there. And don’t let the temptation to give up win.
Believe me, as I’m speaking from experience here. There were a lot of times when I seriously considered giving up my efforts to learn a new language. This was mostly early on when I was first starting out on my language learning journey. I’m glad I didn’t, though, because learning that first language paved the way to learning my second and third and fourth.
That said, even today there are times when I feel burned out and ponder taking a break. And you know what, it’s 100% OK to take breaks. I take them all the time. The key here is to make sure you’re not pushing yourself beyond burnout and then giving up.
Step 3: Immersion is the Best Way to Learn a Language
- Goal: Understand and participate in everyday speech.
- Effort: Pick up a few hundred vocabulary words and very basic phrases.
- Time Investment: About 200-300 hours
- Outcome: Ability to engage in a variety of everyday discussions on a moderate set of topics
As you continue on your language learning journey, you may be tempted to stay stuck at Step 2 and memorize the materials you are studying. This is a huge mistake. As we’ll see in a future section, the human mind excels at language learning when it is presented with lots of new content.
Further, rote memorization may help you internalize the meaning of a word or expression, but you may still struggle to use that expression in dynamic speech. You absolutely will struggle to modify something you learned by rote in order to say something new.
That’s why Step 3 is so important. This is where you move beyond splashing around and get comfortable just being in the water. Are you swimming? Are you splashing? Is your form correct? Are you too close to the deep end? It doesn’t matter, because you don’t care. You’re just comfortable being where you are.
How Long Will Step 3 Take?
Again, depending on your study efforts, this step might take you anywhere from six months to a year to achieve. There are probably only a handful of materials worth studying in order to get to this point, and I don’t think many people can get here just using one resource. As I’ve mentioned before, you’ll want to experiment with lots of different language resources to find those that work for you.
Arriving at this stage is very rewarding, and in a funny way, you won’t realize you’ve achieved this level of language mastery until one day you recognize that there are words coming out of your mouth that you don’t remember having studied. You’ll notice grammatical patterns, vocabulary, and pronunciation rolling out in a very fluid manner. Most critically, you’ll realize that the little translation machine in the back of your mind has turned off, and you’re no longer trying to translate from English into your target language on a word-by-word basis.
Does This Mean You’re Fluent?
Kind of. You’ll still have a very limited vocabulary. It might be anywhere from 2,500 to 5,000 words. Most of that will be passive recall, though oddly, a word you can never seem to remember will just flow out of your mouth as you’re talking with a native speaker.
You’ll still have a hard time following the details of native speakers; they might speak too quickly or use vocabulary you don’t know. But generally speaking, about 80 percent of the time you’ll have a sense of what’s going on. Moreover, about 80 percent of the time you’ll be able to express everything you want to. It may not be as detailed or colorful as you’d like, but your meaning will be clear.
You might note that my definition of “getting comfortable” falls just short of the roughly 500–1,000-hour estimates put forth by the FSI and the CEFR. There’s a simple reason for that. I, personally, will probably never be a diplomat, and I’m not worried about passing a standardized test issued by the government to evaluate my academic progress.
That’s what the FSI and CEFR were developed to do. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’re probably not an aspiring diplomat or academic student, either. But that doesn’t mean you’re not interested in a high level of mastery of your new language. That’s where we get to the final step.
Step 4: Practice Your Language a Lot for the Best Way
- Goal: Keep getting better.
- Effort: Engage with a variety of native speakers and/or materials.
- Time Investment: To infinity and beyond!
- Outcome: Ability to consume a broad range of native materials and/or speak with native speakers without fear or hesitation
If you decide to move on to this step, it’s probably because you’ve really come to value the language. Chances are high that you’ve fallen in love with the language, the culture, or maybe even a native speaker of the language.
This is where you enjoy the water so much, you’ve decided you’re going to swim every day to improve your speed, efficiency, and form.
Step 4 is the last step in your language learning process, but it’s one without end. As I’ve noted before, even in your native language, if you’ve ever struggled to find the right words to capture a thought or an emotion, you’re still evolving. The same is true for the language you’re learning. There is literally no end to how far or deep you can go. It just depends on your personal interest and desire in doing so.
Having Fun is the Best Way to Learn a Language
With the exception of Step 1, it’s absolutely OK to reach any of these steps and decide you’ve achieved success. (I exclude Step 1 because if you never make any decisions, you’re never going to get anywhere. I’ve met many people who are serial language learners and feel that Step 2 for many languages is preferable to Step 3 or Step 4 for just a few. And I’ve met others who are absolutely obsessed with pursuing Step 4 as long and as far as possible with just one language.
The point here is that you are in charge of deciding what makes you happy, You’re also allowed to change your mind. Maybe you realize that the language you’re learning isn’t as interesting or practical as you’d thought. Stop studying it. Maybe it’s too time-consuming to get to Step 3. Stop at Step 2. Maybe it’s so charming that your goal of reaching Step 2 morphed into achieving Step 4. It’s entirely up to you.
Just have fun with it. Enjoying yourself is the best way to learn a language.
