i'm learning french and german in school and i just want to know some revision techniques. i'm also interested in learning other languages (spanish, japanese, chinese) but i don't have anyone to teach me. how would you suggest i go about teaching myself?
215662
I know this might sound weird, but I'd buy some language learning kits, the ones with tapes or cds and a workbook in them... and then pop the tape in at night while you're sleeping, it helped me out some. Languages are learned best when the person is at a very young age but the older you are the harder it is to learn.
391974
The Pimsleur program is very good. I purchased the Pimsleur Portuguese I program and I thought it was extremely helpful in learning the basics of speaking Portuguese. However, it will not teach you how to write or read it. If you want to learn how to read and write then maybe you can try my approach. Once you have completed the entire program, all 30 lessons, get a dictionary in your target language and start from the very beginning of the program and look up all of the words you hear in the dictionary. Additionally, in order to do verb conjugations, go to the Dictionary.com website, type in the English and have it translate the phrase into the language of your choice. (Ex: I am, You are, He is, She is, We are, They are) Furthermore, write all of this information down in a notebook and review daily. That's what has worked for me so far.
529610
It takes time to learn the program.  4 & 5 Of French I gave me no and of trouble.  You may have to go back and redo every lesson from the start now & then.  Some sections you will get the first time others will take several trys.\n\nIt wasn't until I reached the upper lessons that I was begining to realy catch on to speaking French.  Keep going you will get it.  Then you'll be ready for the next set of 30 lessons.
309402
I love other languages.  All of them, really.  I like to hear them spoken in groups.  It flows so naturally, as though you should understand every word, but you don't.  I tried to speak German while living abroad, but I was with many americans and we'd only speak German when we were drunk and in class.  I was lucky - I could speak it more than most.
468884
I'm Japanese and I think the best way to learn the language is from a good teacher. But, if  you are going to learn it yourself, I think you might want to start with learning the hiragana, which are the basic 50 Japanese alphabets. However, if you prefer to be more into the talking rather than writing and reading, I would recommend listening to Japanese CDs, whether it be music, books, or anything where you can here the words, so you'll get used to listening, which probably makes it easier to talk. (This is how I learned English few years ago)\n\nI really think it's great that more people are willing to learn Japanese today, which is only spoken in Japan, unlike French and Spanish that are spoken and official in several countries!!\nIf you have any questions on the culture or anything, it probably would be the best if you answer here. There are probably other people willing to share their information about our culture with you, and there are people who might have the same questions you do. \n\nがんばってね！(ganbattene=good luck!)
361027
try and make out a "revision timetable." To do this just set some time aside each or every other day to look over a subject that you are struggling with or would like to improve in. Always ask your teacher for help. Also you could purchase revision books from the likes of NPO, Easons etc which will have all the notes that you require for any subject (eg. maths, french, engliash, chemistry) All in all just try your best and you should be fine!
52326
Some schools should look for ways to offer options, but actually- Spanish is becoming the second most important language in this country!   French is next to useless in many states.  Latin is barely useful- its helpful but has little application in the job market.  A great school might offer a remote classroom where motivated students could learn japanese, urdu, german,arabic, or russian or whatever.  Basic comprehension of spanish is important. If the student wants to study french, italian, or latin- then a background in spanish will still be useful due to some similarities in structure.
495994
some libraries have classes that you can take for free or at a minimal cost. Check the french society in your area, too. Sometimes as a PR thing, they have french classes at a minimal cost.
406540
If you already have Spanish and French, you can easily pick up Portuguese if you need it; I would suggest something more challenging, that would also open more doors and widen your knowledge base - Russian, still widely understood in the former Eastern Bloc, and will give you some help with Polish, Serbo-Croat, etc; Arabic, you would find it some help in tackling languages that have borrowed heavily from Arabic, such as Turkish, Farsi, or Urdu; Hindi (actually a variant od Urdu); Chinese; Japanese. It would be a great mistake to limit yourself only to European languages if you haver other opportunities. Even languages like Swahili, Bahasa Indonesia, and Korean are well worth consideration. Learning a language means opening yourself up to another culture, different ways of thinking, different perspectives.\nAnyway, go for it, and enjoy!\nGood luck
587692
If you want to learn a language without spending any or too much money?  One way is to get the materials from your local public libraries, they can be CDs, books, tapes and so on.  These days, they have it on both Mandarin as well as Cantonese.\n\nIf there's a local Chinese community club/society, often times, they may have a Chinese or Mandarin lessons for beginners at no cost or small fees.  \n\nWhen it comes to your school (high school, college & university), there might be an Asian Student Club.  Join them.  Or, try to meet your fellow Asian schoolmates.  After that, interaction is very important.\n\nFinally, practice.  That's the single most important and effective way for you to master Chinese.  You listen, speak, read & write.  You will need a partner or friend to do this with you.  Never be afraid of making mistakes, that's how we learn and improve.\n\nOh, one short cut, watch tons of Chinese movies or tv series.  I find TV dramas the best, though long and boring, I think more effective than watching a movie.  This is to improve your listening skills.   \n\nRemember, practice x 3.  That's the key.  Incidently, that's what I am trying to do for myself.   Good luck and happy learning.
276928
As a former teacher trainer in Asia,\n\nGotta set up a routine for you lesson. Let's say you have young ones, start with a song/chant, and then into your "grammar/language" lesson (the crappy books they give you to follow). Seatwork (appropriate for the level). Then end it off with a story. You can ask simple questions for the story, "Find something red. What page was the boy eating the ice cream?" Always good to add a few language games into your lesson. One simple game is for two students with swatters to hit the correct vocab card. Plain, but better than repeating the words. You can make up a whole bunch of language games. Try bingo, but with pics of vocab. Play Simon Says.\n\nI find when I was teachign ESL, my greatest problem and my teachers' greatest problem was the lack of resources. Here is a site: http://www.readinga-z.com/\n\nBuy a $50 yearly member ship and download the books. Get your school to pay for you. This will provide you with 100s of reading activities for ALL levels!
153565
I'm learning German.  http://www.polyglot-learn-language.com/  Or practice with me.
364263
Guide or teacher it is best to have the help of a person who has gone before.  To start you should learn hiragana as you can write everything in it.  But, you should not neglect katakana.  And, you should start in using kanji as soon as you've hiragana down.  Japanese is a mix of all three.  While you are learning hiragana you can learn to pronounce Japanese.  That part is very simple. To learn by yourself you will need some books on grammar.  I think grasping the grammar and learning to read and write kanji are what makes Japanese seem difficult.  Kanji just takes time. You can learn about 100 a year.  You just write them CORRECTLY over and over.  and it gets easier and begins to make sense.  When you write them also you learn the pronunciations (the Chinese and Japanese readings called onyomi and kunyomi.)  Japanese syntax is SubjectObjectVerb.and is aided by postpositionals called particles or joshi in Japanese.  A good book on grammar should have ample examples of this.  And, the other difficulty is verbs and their conjugations.  Learning hiragana will help you with this, you will see.  Just realise that you are going to have to put some time in to learn it.\nI found that teachers can help with the kinds of things that we learn in school.  Reading and writing kanji would be one of the things that I found classes helpful with.  But, it was a college class on Japanese overall.   And, also friends in particular native speakers will inform you of your shortcommings.  They are teachers.\nI taught Japanese in college here and basically you need to know hiragana.  Katakana is used like we use italics for foreign words and for emphasis.  It is the same syllables as hiragana over again. Learn hiragana first.\nI basically taught Japanese grammar as I thought that the most important  to learn and yes there are various levels of politeness but you only need to learn one to start and the verbs and endings that go along with that.  You will learn the others almost automatically.  As Japanese is frought with polite expressions.\nI repeat  you need to learn the postpositionals (particles) and the verb conjugations... knowing hiragana will help you with this.
33590
I'd say hang around people at school who speak that language. You can also take classes. Like Irish said, the older you are, the harder it is to learn.
7996
I personally reccomend the Rosetta Stone language education software. It's specifically designed to teach people fast. My father was at conversational italian after an hour a day for six months, and was reading and writing it by the end of the year. I'm going to get a copy before I go to Japan. It comes in almost every language, too.
576831
I have a degree in French, a B.A., and a minor in Spanish. They are similar in the syntactical sense of the Romance language construction.  All five of the Romance languages are similarly constructed.  What I find interesting about French has to do with my Cajun French ancestry in Louisiana and the musical flow of the language.  It's such a beautiful experience to speak and listen in French.  Yet, it is a very difficult language to use for an FSL speaker (French as a Second Language) at first.  But, then that very issue became the compelling impulse for me to continue learning it.  Like English, it is a life long experience.  But, there was a threshold that I crossed when I started to study French as conversation while studying French literature, etc..  That threshold, I discovered, was the doorway that only opens up to the French language scholar when s/he realizes that part of the musical experience of French requires a precision in the use of one's tongue, mouth, cheek and throat muscles that the other languages did not seem to require (I never experienced this problem with Spanish or Italian; even in German, though German is more gutteral than the others).  For instance, the use of the Trill in French is extremely difficult to accomplish consistently when these muscles are not used so extensively in the other Romance languages, English certainly included.  Think about my being from the South with a Southern drawl and trying to use muscles my face has never used, ever, ever as we slide words out of our mouths using as little energy (and as few facial muscles) as possible.  Until I realized I needed to train these muscles to do things they had never done before, I could not speak or think in French, but when this aspect was revealed to me by a Canadian French teacher I had in college, it changed everything for me.  \n\nOn top of that, my knowledge of French made me able to at least understand the other languages if they are spoken slowly and I know the context of the conversation or the reading.  I really believe that French is the key to understanding the other languages of European descent.  I hope it is clear that I am not saying any of them is better than the others.  When you say it was very hard but you liked it made me think that since you have a family connection to the Romance languages that you might be going through the same thing I did when I studied French.  You might be just at that doorway where I was when, once opened, I gained the crucial knowledge about the language that revealed the essence of the difficulty in learning it.\n\nHope this helps.\n\nutopianwizard/CC Ryder
191923
I suggest you learn a third language. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, just go for the one which might help you most in the future.