How to Learn a Language from Scratch

Learning a new language takes time, and it can be difficult to see your own progress, but you’re not alone in feeling this way. It’s taken me 4 languages to develop the process I’m sharing with you here today, and I’ll always be improving. Here’s what I’ve learned so far on my language learning journey and the step-by-step process I’ve used to achieve fluency❤

Immersion with Duolingo

I use Duolingo as an introduction to a new language, much like we learn our native language before we start kindergarten. It serves as exposure to the language to learn the sounds, basic vocabulary, and sentence structures. I don’t worry about grammar at all while I’m in this stage of the language learning process, although I might do a bit of grammar practice on the side. The main goal in as a beginner on Duolingo is to acquire as much vocabulary as possible and memorize simple sentences. This takes about a year or two of consistent, daily practice.

Grammar Activities

After I’ve finished the Duolingo tree for my language, my focus shifts to grammar. I do this by practicing in a grammar workbook for my language and taking a class if it’s available. By this point, the content in the book or class should seem like review, but it’s still necessary to practice reading and writing in this way because we need exposure to these concepts many times in various contexts to learn them well enough to develop our language to fluency. This also takes about one or two years.

Fluency Practice

Once I’ve worked through all of Duolingo and done extensive grammar practice, I focus on reading and writing short stories, journaling, novels, comics, essays, anything I can get my hands on for practice. It’s crucial at this stage of the language learning process to have feedback from a teacher or tutor to progress efficiently toward fluency.

Conversation Skills

Speaking and listening starts on day one when we begin learning vocabulary and sounds and throughout our language learning process. I practice conversation with a tutor after I finish the Duolingo tree, while I’m working through grammar concepts and during reading and writing fluency practice. I find my teacher on iTalki and work with her once a week or every other week for a few years.

Application & Overlap

You may have noticed that these 4 steps are not entirely separate from one another because there is a lot of overlap in skill development for reading, writing, speaking and listening in a language. There’s also overlap when learning multiple languages. (My Mandarin is in the Duolingo stage with character writing practice, French is in the grammar stage and Spanish is in the super fluency stage to read complex literature and have analytical discussions). This step-by-step process is a guide, but it needs personalization based on your goals, learning style, needs and preferences❤