Bilingual in 3 Months
Bilingual in 3 Months
New Year’s Eve is just around the corner. Christmas trees, lights, euphoria, and, let’s be honest, a bunch of resolutions we aren’t going to fulfil. That’s a typical New Year for the majority of people, but it doesn’t have to be like that for you if you’re willing to put some work into it and change your ways of doing things. Imagine promising yourself to become bilingual in 3 months. Is it possible or is it yet another empty promise?
It is possible! However, stating your goal this way may be detrimental for your progress in the future. What are you going to do if you can’t make it in time? Quit altogether or keep learning? What is your motivation for learning? Why do you want to learn a new language? Do you want to be able to talk to foreign people and experience a new culture or do you just want to add it to your CV and brag to your friends about your new skills? Albeit the source of your motivation may not be the most important factor in the process, it will play a role in the future. It all boils down to the amount of genuine work you want to invest in this. It’s not time but focused effort that matters here.
If your goal is clear and you want to give it a try, you need to set yourself up for success. Never let your perfectionism get in the way. That’s one of the issues a lot of students experience when they first start learning their second language. You should always go for quantity over quality in the beginning. It means you want to learn as many new words, practical phrases, patterns, and sounds as possible. You also want to speak out loud from day one even
if you can’t do it well. Having someone who can listen to you and correct your mistakes is the best way to go. On a deeper level, this is a more efficient way of studying because that’s how our brains encode information at a faster rate. Have you heard of Bloom’s taxonomy?
In simple terms, Bloom’s taxonomy helps us understand how we learn. The higher up you can go on the pyramid, the faster you will learn. Higher steps also absorb lower ones. It means you don’t want to spend hours upon hours trying to memorize words and grammar. You’ll be better off if you can apply and analyze immediately. Instead of trying to memorize simple words one by one in the beginning, you can start with simple sentences. Let’s say you speak Spanish and you want to learn English. That’s why you should ask with a simple sentence instead of starting with a bunch of words and grammar.
My name is Jack. = Mi nombre es Jack.
You can immediately start analyzing. Instead of using time to learn one word, this way you’ll already have learned four. It may not be much, but it adds up. It’s also applicable for any level of learning. This way you can end up fluent in three months instead of six, twelve or perhaps never. There are two key points I’d like you to take from here:
- Stick with higher level learning.
- It’s not about how much time you want to spend learning but how you learn that matters.
Now that you know how to learn faster, don’t start thinking it will get done by itself. You still need to do it. Here are some practical tips for becoming bilingual in three months:
- Learn essential words first. These include your basic needs such as food items, water, bathroom, and such. You also want to learn question words (what, where, who, when) and numbers.
- Speak as soon as possible! Don’t be ashamed of trying to speak and, by all means available to you, avoid the resistance of keeping quiet until you learn the language perfectly because it only prolongs the process and you may never actually learn unless you try to apply.
- Learn grammar, but don’t be a perfectionist. You definitely want to start learning grammar from the get-go, but do it only when it is in the way of your progress as a speaker.
- Listen to other speakers of your target language. You can probably find a bunch of people speaking your target language online. Watch their TV shows, listen to radio and, if you can’t understand much yet, watch the kids’ program because words and sentence structures used there will be simple and easy to understand.
- Hire a teacher or get a native speaker to help you. We learn languages so as to be able to speak to other people. It isn’t always enjoyable to listen to one just learning to speak the language you speak with ease so it may be difficult to find a native speaker willing to help. That’s why you can always hire a teacher to help you out. You may have to pay, but you will get great practice, valuable feedback and tips to learn faster.
Last but not least, whether or not you can become bilingual in 3 months depends on how you understand the word bilingual. Even if you can’t become native-like in this limited time frame, you’ll be far better off than now!
Click HERE to learn more about our 3-month beginner course.
