Three Necessary Changes To Learn A New Language The Easy Way

Every language is different. Doesn’t matter if it’s Spanish, German, or JavaScript. But learning any language effortlessly and effectively has these three things in common.

Make A Hard Commitment

A hard commitment means you have a deadline and you absolutely need to get it done by that time.

There are two kinds of commitments you can make. Either you can take an exam or you can buy a plane ticket.

Exams aren’t really the best motivators because often nothing happens after the exam. You get a certification but then what? Do you actually use the language?

Plane tickets are a better option.

For example, once I decided to learn Spanish, I bought a ticket to southern Spain as soon as I knew where I could fly from (I was traveling when I started learning, so, couldn’t do it immediately). This gave me roughly 4 months to learn Spanish at the least to the level where I could order food and drinks.

Similarly, when in high school, I studied German as my first foreign language. The progress seemed very slow and meaningless for 8 years. Then, in high school, I got the chance to go to Germany for the summer. This changed everything.

I knew two things. First, we needed to do some farming work in teams. Secondly, and more importantly, we were going to stay on a farm where no one spoke English.

We took the bus all the way from Estonia. It took two days. I’ve never studied German harder than during those two days on the bus.

I finally figured many things out, for myself. Because I really needed to use the language. For example, how Akkusativ and Dativ work, and much more. Things that I only superficially crammed for in school in order to pass the tests.

Without a hard commitment, it can be challenging to push yourself every day. And you might feel that learning never ends and there’s no real use for your knowledge.

A hard commitment gives you a deadline, a finish line, and a reason. But it also gives you something else — a change in your environment.

To take the maximum out of it, try to aim for smaller and more rural places — where you’re forced to speak the language because people don’t know English that well. If you’re going somewhere for a week, spend half of outside the big cities.

Build Learning Into Your Existing Habits

The way we learn languages as children is always the same — we learn it naturally through everyday interactions. We learn it in and through the environment.

When we get older we fall victim to the formalization of learning where instead of discovering problems and solutions you’re being forced to study the solution before understanding the problem.

There are many habits in our lives where we use language. I’ll cover some of the most common ones and possible language learning hacks below.

(Note that I’ve written more extensively on switching your habits and habit loops elsewhere already.)

Using Your Phone And Computer

Switch both your phone and computer to the language you want to learn. You’re forced to understand what different menu options mean etc. You don’t want to accidentally block someone on Instagram, for example. So, you’ll learn it properly.

Your entertainment apps will also start serving you more content based on your system language.

I’d start with your phone as the stakes with computers can be higher when you’re also trying to get some work done.

Browsing The Internet

When you switch your phone/computer to Spanish, for example, you’ll already start seeing more websites in Spanish. Sometimes it can be overwhelming when everything is in Spanish. Or it can be non-relevant when you’re being served content for Spanish speakers instead.

The solution is to use something like Lingo Champion. It’s a Chrome extension that automatically translates part of the web pages to the language you want to learn. Part of the page but not all of it. This means less mental fatigue. And you’ll learn the vocabulary you actually need to use.

Or if you’re learning a language with Duolingo, then Duolingo Ninja does the same thing but based on your Duolingo vocabulary. So, you can keep the words you’ve already learned fresh each time you browse the web. Full disclosure: I created both extensions ;)

Using TikTok

Follow a couple of accounts that teach language. You’ll start seeing them naturally pop up in your “For you” feed from time to time — mixing entertainment with education.

Watching Videos/Movies/Youtube

Netflix often has subtitles in the language you want to learn. But sometimes they don’t show up in your country. Using VPN usually solves this. You can also switch the audio language.

For YouTube you can use an extension like YouTube Dual Subtitles.

Another good tip is to watch the movies you already know and love in another language. So, you know what the dialogue is saying roughly. It makes it easier to not get overwhelmed.

Living

If you can, move to another country temporarily. There’s really no substitute for the real thing — having real conversations with real people.

Gaming

If you’re into multiplayer games, you can take advantage of VPN again. Use VPN to have people in your team from the countries that speak the language you want to learn.

It does slow down the connection a bit but might be worth it. Or you can do it temporarily and stop using VPN after a while but still have some gaming buddies from another country. It’s what I did.

Don’t Try To Learn Too Much

I often see people going to the gym for the first time and trying to do 15 different exercises. Each one more challenging than the next one. The next few days they can’t even walk properly. And of course, many of them quit because it’s not fun.

What you want instead, is to enjoy the process and slowly take on more exercises while you build up your habit. You don’t want to get overwhelmed.

Instead, focus on the smallest amount of work you can do (that you ideally also enjoy) while still making progress. And then over time increase the load when you feel more comfortable with it and you’ve already built a habit.

For example, when I was learning Javascript (also a language, right?) with Codecademy, my goal was simply to do one exercise task every day. Not even an exercise. But just simply a small task that takes maybe 30 seconds maximum. But once I did one, I usually, of course, continued to do many more.

There was no obligation to do anything more, so, I never even once felt disappointment — only achievement. I finished the course in 6 months.

Tying It All Together With JavaScript

To give you an idea, how to apply all the principles I mentioned above, let’s use learning the JavaScript language as an example.

Practicing is useful, no doubt. However, the real learning kicked in when I started doing actual startup projects.

You can’t fake speaking a language. You can’t rely on dry practice. You need to get out there and get real with it.

In summary, in order to get better at “speaking” JavaScript, I did the following:

• I made a public (hard) commitment to build 6 startups in 6 months. It created a goal, a temporary finish line but also a reason. When you finish course projects, they’re usually just left there. But with real startups, you most likely need to keep working on them. And they need to actually work.
• I started following podcasts, YouTube channels, and TikTok creators about programming, so, that I would learn something new every day even if I wasn’t actually coding.
• I pledged myself to write one line of code every single weekday. Not one feature, not one task, but simply one line of code. I can’t even count how many days I’ve had when I reluctantly went to the computer and tried to find a place where to add/change a single line of code but ended up adding a new feature. I’m also tracking that with an app.

Because of these changes, I still keep learning something new every day.