Everyone learns differently. There is no ‘fool-proof’ system to learning.
Experiences, knowledge, the way your brain operates – all of this affects how you learn languages.
So, take everything I tell you with a grain of salt. Adapt everything to your own needs.
What may work for me, may not work for you. The important thing is to find what works for you and go with it.
However, there are some things that generally don’t work for learners. I can’t learn this way, and no one else I know can.
I’m going to focus on these methods today, so that you don’t end up wasting a ton of time learning in a way that really is not effective.
So how do you not learn?
I can tell you right now that some things will never work for you if you want to learn a language.
Even though everyone learns differently, these techniques will give you nothing but hatred for the language, and you may very well never succeed in studying this language.
- So, the first thing to not do is to read grammar books from cover to cover. I’m not talking text books. Text books are useful for getting a good understanding, a good base in a language. I’m talking grammar books.
These are so incredibly ineffective. You need to know grammar, but you learn this grammar through usage, not reading and memorizing terms such as accusative case, agglutination, and reflexive pronouns.
If you are a linguist, someone who studies these things for a living, good for you. But if you are just learning a language to learn a language? This will give you nothing but pain and a dreading feeling whenever you pick up the book.
Use a grammar book for reference only. Learn the cases through use. Learn how to speak by listening and actually, well, speaking.
You don’t have to know all these technical grammar terms. You didn’t have to know them to learn your native language, so why should you have to learn them to speak a second language?
You just don’t need grammar books like that.
Trust me, reading them cover to cover won’t help you if you don’t actually use the information. If you have a question about how something works, look it up. Then move on. Don’t force yourself to learn something there really is no reason in learning.
- This brings me to my second point – forcing yourself to learn.
Why the hell would you force yourself to learn something that you don’t have to learn (ie for school or work)?
Language learning be fun, enjoyable. It shouldn’t be something you dread to look at every day.
Us language learners have our own little bubble that we exist in, but you’ll exit it real fast if you force yourself to learn.
I can promise you that.
All you need to do to make progress in your language is to learn something new every day. You don’t have to have a heavy grammar studying session.
You don’t have to write 4 pages in your target language every day.
All you have to do to make progress is learn one little thing a day.
Obviously, the more you do in a day, the quicker you’ll learn. BUt if you force yourself to learn, you’ll forget much more than that, and may just give up on language learning all together.
We don’t want that. We want you to stick with it.
So don’t force yourself to learn.
If you just aren’t feeling it today, listen to some music in your target language. You’re enjoying yourself, and this is often good enough to get your motivation level up enough to study.
And, if not, at least you still looked at your target language.
You still made some progress. And that’s better than none.
- My last point is that the phonebook method of learning languages is extremely ineffective.
I know that when I was younger, I set a goal to read the dictionary. I never got past the first couple pages.
Why would you think you can learn a whole language that way? You can’t even learn vocabulary that way.
You may be able to list a large amount of words, but how many can you actually use?
You’ll only remember words that you use.
Plus, if you never use the words, why learn them? When you are a language learner, you don’t need to learn words like procure. They are cool words but not necessary, and you’ll forget them without using them.
You need to learn the words you’ll actually use. That’s all.
The rest, you’ll pick up in time, when you actually come across the words in context. Then, you’ll be able to remember them.
Because you sure won’t by reading a dictionary.
Do you have any other techniques that just really don’t work for you? Let me know in the comments. 
