New language

That depends on what language you want to learn. Judging from your profile, I assume one language you're at least considering is Japanese. Beyond memorizing hiragana, katakana, and kanji, make sure you keep things at your own pace. Don't try to learn a bunch of things at once otherwise it may make you confused. I would suggest learning the Te form of verbs too fairly soon if you haven't because you can add much more vareity to what you say if you learn how that works. As for individual words/kanji, I personally either make practice quizes on my own over them or create flashcards to study them. With grammar patterns, I just keep practicing on writing different sentences based on that patter until I get used to it enough where I don't need to think a ton about it.

 

To be honest, I'm no good at languages myself, but from what I've heard from people who are, one of the best methods is to jump in at the deep end. See how the people from that country speak, how they use plurals and verbs, and try to learn phrases rather than separate words.

 

For me, learning the basics, like first year school stuff first, so that I understand about 40 to 50% of the actual spoken language when used by native speakers, then immersion. Use the language whenever and wherever possible, translate private thought into the new language, find chats, forums, videos, friends anything that interests me in that language.

If possible, vacation where that language is native for a couple of weeks, avoid tourist areas, go where locals go, force myself to live in that language.

With a couple of months of immersion, I pretty much have it and, after a year, I loose my American accent when speaking the language.

I speak Japanese, Spanish, English (native) and, Salish (a native American tribal language.) All learned the same way, books and tapes for the basics, then jump in with both ears, so to speak.

 

As a language student, some advice I'd give would be to not rely too much on your first language.

So, for example, if you learn dog in French, your method of thinking shouldn't be to translate from dog to chien, but to see a dog and immediately think chien. Of course, this gets a lot trickier than that, but always see learning a new language as learning to speak again.

Memorize the grammatical terms. Do you know how every verb tense is called in English? No? Get to it. Knowing those terms can help you navigate the new grammar because often, they own the same concepts. For example, if you know what a subjunctive is in French, you'll know that it is the same thing in Spanish and Italian.

As for the exercises, try to read and hear a lot of the language. If you force yourself to get immersed in it, you'll memorize it more easily. Try writing in the language as well. When you have to search words, you tend to remember them better.

Good luck with your learning

 

As a language nut, I'll also try to give some input. The most important thing, in my opinion, has already been said:

Secondly, it also really depends on the way you study. For instance, I like diving into the grammar and syntax relatively quickly, so that I understand basic sentence structures. If you want to learn a language like German, it may help to know that there are grammatical cases, resulting in several definite articles (der, die, das, dem, den...). When I learnt German in school, they didn't explain that at first. This resulted in me not being to construct normal sentences, because I didn't get how articles worked. "das Motorrad - the motorcycle", yet "mit dem Motorrad - with the motorcycle / by motorcycle". Also, knowing that nouns are capitalised is useful knowledge.

In languages such as Russian, it makes sense to start with the script. In languages like Gilbertese (Kiribatese), you may want to start by understanding the sentence order.

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I never learnt any language with a different writing system than the Latin alphabet. Therefore, I cannot give you any tips on that subject. However, I do know several languages to varying degrees. I start with basic grammar and understanding the pronunciation. I'm not learning the grammar at this point, I'm merely making myself familiar with it. Getting to understand the pronunciation can be done by listening to YouTube videos, it should make the sounds somewhat more familiar.

Then, you can actually start learning the language by using plenty of websites and apps. I tend to diversify. Try to get to know all the facets of the language (listening, reading, writing, speaking, ...). Reading texts out loud and recording yourself may improve your pronunciation in the long run (given that you critically evaluate yourself ).

I listen to foreign songs, read foreign newspapers and go to discussions in a foreign language (usually people use language that you won't see in newspapers easily). Don't learn too much at once and be sure to enjoy it. If you find that you don't like some study method, find another one. Learning languages should be enjoyable in my opinion. =]

Also, if you already know multiple languages, it helps if you find certain similarities and differences between the languages you know. You will see that you will remember it better that way. =]

 

I agree with the above posts, but to be honest there's no better way than immersion. Even a weekend in the foreign country on an immersive course is invaluable. My husband came away speaking 'get by' French after just one weekend on a course in France (I already spoke French and we both lived in Spain for 3 years so both speak Spanish)
Other tips!
Learn the word for a 'thing' so you can ask someone 'what's that thing called?'
Truc (slang) in French, cosa in Spanish.
Get a good dictionary, and if you can afford it invest in a pictorial dictionary such as a Duden. These breakdown objects into parts and each part is named, such as a toilet cistern or a lawnmower!
Being immersed will help you to learn the real language. When I learnt French at school, we were told that white coffee is café au lait. I rarely hear that in France, it's just un grand crème.

 

I completely agree with you, this is in fact one of the best (if not the best) way to pick up a language. =]

About cosa in Spanish, it depends on your dialect. For instance, "vaina" is used in other dialects instead of cosa.

 

Immersion is absolutely the best. I studied Japanese on my own on and off for 10 years before moving to Japan. When I got here I was pretty much helpless. After a month I was fine in day-to-day stuff.

My biggest weakness, and I think many people's mistake, is to focus on book-learning and listening and reading. Generally, if you're learning a language, you want to be able to have conversations, speaking, with people. The only way to learn how to speak is to do it. Obviously you need the books and stuff to learn the basics, but then just speak. Yes, it'll be butchered and wrong, and likely a little embarressing, but it's really the only way to learn how to converse. You'll pick up more grammar and vocab speaking than you will studying.

 

But that's the beauty of languages, and why immersion is best to pick up the local way of saying things. We lived in Mallorca where they speak Mallorquin (a dialect of Catalan), so although we learnt and spoke Castilliano Spanish the odd Mallorquin word is slipped in locally (e.g. olivas for olives rather than aceituna).

 

Build a small but strong and functional core of the language you're trying to learn. Once you're feeling confident start extending that core by learning new things and improving old.

That's about it.

 

It does depend on where you go. For example, I'm pretty sure café au lait is a thing in Quebec, but at the same time, I don't really drink coffee. I can just tell you that grand crème is not a thing here, though xD

 

Jumping in at the deep end is good advice. Try and watch movies in that language, listen to music, try to decipher what they are saying. Listening to people speak it is the best way to pick it up. If you know someone who is a fluent speaker, having regular conversations in the language can be a huge help.