It’s much easier to keep doing something you are interested in than something boring.

It’s easier to figure out something if you are familiar with than something totally new.

Interest

Being interested is motivating. It keeps you going. And keeping going is a key to language learning. It’s hard to put time into something if you aren’t interested in it.

Language learning requires putting in a lot of time. There’s no way around it. You can do it more efficiently, find hacks to learn more quickly, but you will need to put in the time. However, when you are actually interested in the subject, everything can become easier. In fact, learning a language doesn’t feel like putting in time at all!

For this reason, learning a language from interesting material is a key to keeping motivated. In fact, learning a language from material you’re interested in becomes a passive activity that hardly feels like work.

You want to know what that video game review says - and you figure out the grammar or unfamiliar words in ‘the background.’ Your main interest is in the programming tutorial. You learn the vocabulary and grammar to understand the tutorial, not learn grammar. But you end up learning grammar anyway.

The theory behind Comprehensible Input says that it is very important to learn from material that is truly interesting to you.

This is similar to how most of us learned our primary language. We didn’t learn how to say ‘I want candy’ when we were kids because our parents were drilling basic grammar. We were craving sweets and needed to figure out a way to communicate what we wanted.

Familiarity and Learning From Context

It’s easier to figure out a few unfamiliar things than something completely new. Being able to learn from our current context is powerful human ability. You make deductions from what you already know about our world. You figure out relationships between people from what you already know about those people.

Context

You can also use this skill in your language learning journey. You can figure out a missing word if you know the rest of the words in the sentence. We can figure out an unfamiliar tense if we know what the sentence is trying to express.

If you see the sentence:

If I go to the park tomorrow, I will bring my dog.

You may not already know the future tense ‘will’, but we can probably figure out what “will” means from the context. ‘Oh so you use “will” with present tense verbs to talk about things in the future.’

You’re not really memorizing a rule. You’re developing an understanding of how a language works.

When you were young, your parents pointed things out and you picked up vocabulary that way. You noticed the words your parents used and how they related to your environment. And you were doing this mostly subconsciously while listening to other people speak about the world around them. That’s how you picked up our native language skills*, not from memorizing lists our parents assigned (unless we were in spelling bees!).

Familiarity

So reading material that we have a basic familiarity with can greatly accelerate our language learning. Imagine reading a recap of a sports match you already watched. Since you know what happened in the match, you probably can figure out what part of the match a passage is referring to. You may think -

‘Oh so they are talking about that moment in the third quarter, so this word or this verb must mean….’

‘So you would use that phrase to talk about that moment…’

‘You use a reflexive construction to talk about that…’

The best part is that you learn the vocabulary or grammar constructions at a conceptual level rather than rote memorization. The words or grammar are connected to broader concepts or situations already part of your life. You can connect your vocabulary and grammar to your experiences - things you’ve seen, situations you’ve been in, tasks you have tried. This personal, experiential connection can make what you learn ‘stick’ better.

Conclusion

As you learn a language, make sure you include material you are interested in and familiar with. Interest will keep you motivated. Material you are familiar with will help to internalize what you learn. You will connect your language skills to your personal experiences and those skills will ‘stick.’

Be sure to include material you are interested when creating a study plan.

Use Langa Learn to get reading material personalized to your interests.

Interested in Finance? Get articles about finance from all over the German world.

Interested in Movies? Get movie reviews from all over the French speaking world.

Interested in Technology? Finding out the latest from the Spanish speaking technology scene.

Accelerate your language learning with Langa Learn.

Sign up today.

Download ios app

Download android app

Install chrome extension

*It should be noted that adults do learn language a bit differently than children due to the different stages of brain development. LINK

A child’s brain is structured in a way to be sponges for language. The child brain has an abundance of synapses that make children especially good at absorbing a great deal of information, including information about language. During adolescence, these synapses are pruned, reducing the post adolescent brain’s natural ability to learn a language in the same way it did before.

Language learning for adults often involves more conceptual understanding of rules. However, there still needs to come a point where a language is internalized. A language has to go from a collection of explicit rules and procedures to a subconscious understanding.

Research has also shown that when children learn an additional language that information for the new language is stored 'along side' the child learner's native language. Adult learners store this information in a different location.

This is perhaps why people who begin learning an additional language as an adult will never achieve a native level of fluency.

Read more about the Neuroscience of language learning.