Learning a Second Language

Next month, I'll be enrolled in German classes. I took classes in middle and high school, but all that has stuck is the actual language structure and a very small vocabulary. For those of you who learned a second language as an adult: do you have any tips for remembering vocabulary? Is there anything that you found helpful while learning? Did you learn in a classroom setting or from something like Rosetta Stone? I don't know a lot of Germans, so I can't really converse with them, though I'm guessing we would do that in class. I'm thinking that reading books in German may help. So I guess another question would be how to get as broad a range of knowledge in the language as possible (meaning slang terms as opposed to proper language), without having native Germans around to talk with.

I took Spanish in High School, and one key way we used to remember vocabulary was to think of 'clues' to help remember them.

For example, 'escoba' means broom (iirc... xD), and the only reason I remember it is because a clue made for it was: "This room needs sweeping... 'ets go brah!"
Another, 'trigo' means wheat, and the clue was "when a tree is cut down, the tree go 'Weeee... tuh'" (falling, then hitting the ground).

My teacher had a rhyme for estar ('to be'), which helped with when to use it instead of ser (also 'to be'):

How you feel
and where you are
Always use
The verb estar

So I suppose little rhymes and such could help too.


As for learning German as a whole, from what I've seen a lot are similar to English spellings. Of course, the first time I was exposed to any German (other than my last name) was in a book, which sort of used German and English interchangably, and when it did use German it explained what it meant. I believe the book was called Soldier X or something like that. Interesting WWII story.

I feel like I've rambled on a bit on stuff that won't really help. xD

LOD: Fixed escoba for you ump45master

Oh... xD

I failed to mention that it was speech from the main character that included some German. 3:
I made it sound as if half the book was in German. x3

I learned a bit of German a few months back. I gave it up though, because it was sucking too much time away from other things, sadly. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the process, though — it was very exciting.

I think the most important thing, besides motivation, is to use a variety of "tools" and to incorporate German into your daily life. So, use German wherever your level permits you to. Try to think in German, listen to German music, watch German TV shows, play video games with the languages set to German, read books in German, etc.. It's not enough to just do classes — you need to incorporate the language into your life to even get a decent foundation.

Oh, and don't forget to learn the noun gender and plural form with every noun that you learn. I didn't bother with it at first, but I rapidly realised that I couldn't really string a sentence together because of it.

With regards to Rosetta Stone, I wouldn't recommend it at all. It's little more than vocabulary flash cards, and even at that it's rather inefficient because it teaches so much useless vocab. Look around on the internet, and you'll quickly see that most experts who aren't trying to sell RS say that it's a load of rubbish.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/rosetta-stone-review/
http://language101.com/reviews/rosetta-stone/

I've been relearning Japanese after studying it for six years in high school and then not doing anything for about four years. A friend of mine referred me to this website and it's what got me started again. Basically the guy there went from no knowledge of the language at all to fluency in 18 months. The way he did it was pretty extreme, but the principles are all sound so you can still get to the same goal, albeit a tad slower, and still lead a normal life.

The two key things that I got from reading the blog are SRS (spaced repetition systems) programs and language immersion. Basically, SRS are electronic flashcards that are programmed in such a way to test you on a card when it is best suited for you to be tested on. Cards you have difficulty with come up more often, whilst cards you get right no problem will hardly come up at all. Using something like this is a great way to learn vocab for a language and it's something I'm finding remarkably successful in my efforts to learn Japanese.

The language immersion thing is harder to do to the same level he did it, but it's still a great way to learn. Basically, just surround yourself in whatever language you want to learn as much as possible. If you want to learn German, then listen to German music, watch German TV shows or movies, read German books, play German video games, that sort of thing. The most important point is frequency rather than quantity; listening to five or ten minutes every hour in a day is better than doing one two hour block each day. Really, the point here is to fit in as much as you possibly can, so if you've got lots of free time then you should fill it with the language you're learning.



Oh, and most important of all, make sure you're enjoying it. If learning the language becomes more of a chore than an enjoyable activity you'll find that you won't actually be learning much at all. He talks in depth about this sort of thing and ways to go about it in his blog, but again, from my own experiences, if you love learning the language and actively want to learn it it makes it so much easier.

For the record, I'm studying medicine as well as this, so you can fit it into a pretty hectic schedule if you have one.

I have always wanted to learn to speak Spanish. It seems pretty hard, but it is probably easier to learn French. It's always good to learn another language it opens doors for careers and makes you connect to the heart of others using that particular language.

I learned to speak English when I was 11-13 and the only thing I can really suggest is going online and looking stuff up. I used Neoseeker as my place to learn to speak/write English(Yeah I know I can't speak when I'm online but you know what I mean).

quote Dragoon

I took French and German while at school and both put my off learning languages haha.

Did you try them at different times? German is very close to English, but I've heard French is pretty difficult for an English-speaker to learn. I think knowing a second language is great- I envy my German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, and Arabic friends I have on PSN who tell me they're pretty much taught English from a young age. Here in the states we start learning at about 11 (well, I started in 6th grade). I think they should start teaching Spanish from kindergarten, especially in the southern states, but that's another topic