How To Learn A Language In 2 Months

May sound quite crazy, but it’s absolutely doable! While living in Vienna I went from practically zero German to a decent level of fluency in as little as that. How did I manage to do this? It only takes an effective plan plus a lot of hard work and practice. Here you’ll find detailed instructions.

Planning the Feat

The main idea here is to focus. Focus on learning the most important words and the most used grammatical structures. Don’t bother learning vocabulary you will hardly use and don’t pay too much attention to the complicated sides of the language. At least not at the very beginning.

For example, German has three genders (masculine, feminine and neutral) and four grammatical cases. It’s doesn’t take much time learn all these but it’s hard to put them into practice. Because of that I decided, for the time being, to skip trying to speak with all these and instead focused on becoming fluent faster. Without having to think every other second if the word had to be declined or not I achieved results much faster.

Same goes with the sentence structure and the rest of the grammar. I realized that if I only learned five or six grammar points I could speak without any big problems. Which are these? Simple sentences, modal verbs, simple past (not the much more complicated Präteritum), future and the most used prepositions and the way to insert them. As my German progressed and I wanted to use more complex structures I just looked in the dictionaries, online or asked friends how I could say what I wanted.

See the point? By focusing on less but more important sides of the language I managed to have a much higher return of my invested time (ROI.) All the grammar I knew, I used. Same goes with the vocabulary. I focused on learning words I would use in the immediate conversations. Of course that all words are important, but some are much more than others!

The best words to start learning are the hundred most common written and hundred most spoken. By learning all these you’ll be able to read more than 50% of what’s written and understand 50% of the words in a conversation. The following are these words in English, taken from frequency lists around the web:

Written:

The, of, and, to, in, is, you, that, it, he, was, for, on, are, as, with, his, they, I, at, be, this, have, from, or, one, had, by, word, but, not, what, all, were, we, when, your, can, said, there, use, an, each, which, she, do, how, their, if, will, up, other, about, out, many, then, them, these, so, some, her, would, make, like, him, into, time, has, look, two, more, write, go, see, number, no, way, could, people, my, than, first, water, been, call, who, oil, its, now, find, long, down, day, did, get, come, made, may, part

Spoken:

a, an, after, again all, almost, also, always, and, because, before, big, but, I can, I come, either/or, I find, first, for, friend, from, I go, good, goodbye, happy, I have, he, hello, here, how, I, I am, if, in, I know, last, I like, little, I love, I make, many, one, more, most, much, my, new, no, not, now, of, often, on, one, only, or, other, our, out, over, people, place, please, same, I see, she, so, some, sometimes, still, such, I tell, thank you, that, the, their

The lists hardly change between languages, so if you are focusing on one language just throw them into an online translation program to know which words you have to focus.

Then, notice that more than half of the most common written and spoken words are different. Focus learning these and you’ll have a solid first step into the language. Compliment by learning 300-400 more words and you’ll have enough for the most basic conversations.

What I recommend you in this case is to learn the 10-20 most used verbs, adjectives and nouns. Once you got a solid base what you can do is to go out with a dictionary and a notebook and, once you are trying to speak, write down all the words you want to use. A few of the first words in my German notebook were:  somewhere, never, nothing, “two weeks ago”, inside, outside, insist, boring, etc. Words as diversity, shy, exception, explosion and temptation only appeared much later in the language learning cycle (page 30 of the notebook.)

This is where most language classes fail. They teach you a lot of vocabulary you’ll hardly use and most lessons are centered around a topic in particular. Instead, learn the vocabulary you’ll need the most and are more likely to use. If you don’t have the time or possibility to try out the dictionary+notebook method, the following exercise will help you out finding the words you should learn:

Get a blank sheet of paper and start writing (in the target language) a normal conversation you would have with a friend back home. Ask and answer simple things as: “How are you doing?”, “What did you do today?”, and give your answers to these answers too. Force yourself to use the words you learned and only look up in the dictionary for a new word if it’s absolutely indispensible to make a point.

Setting Your Objectives

You now know the keys to learning a language fast. Before putting the plan into action what I recommend you is to make a list of objectives and of the milestones you want to achieve. Write a list of your most direct goals so as to keep in track of your progress and also to motivate and put a bit of pressure on yourself. Be reasonable but also be demanding. If you want to learn really fast put a high objective and work very hard to reach it.

Sample milestones are, for example:

• Week 1: be able to order food and to have the smallest conversations possible.
• Week 2: ask and understand directions, speak with friends about what I do.
• Week 3: read the newspaper headlines and understand, speak about current events and start speaking about your anecdotes.
• Week 4: make conversations at least half as rich as your everyday normal conversation in your language. Write your diary solely in the target language.

And so on. Think of your milestones and focus on what’s your topic of interest too. My obsession was to be able to communicate with people. Maybe yours are philosophical books and conversations. If that’s your case, set your own milestones focusing on that.

Putting Your Plan Into Action

This is the most enjoyable part! To put the plan into action there are two main points you got to work hard on. First, immerse yourself completely in the language. Second, have fun and enjoy the process of learning. With these two you are all but done.

What is total language immersion? Basically it means switching most of your life to the new language. Whatever you can do in the target language, do it. Whatever you can change to the new language, change it. If learning the language is your obsession – and it has to if you want to learn this fast – it must be everywhere. Live and breathe the new language, practice a lot. Here are a few suggestions and what I did myself:

• I spent the first hour of the day reviewing the new words, learning others, practicing grammar structures and writing a bit (in German, of course!)
• I switched my Gmail and Facebook into German. Once I had practiced a little bit more, I switched Firefox and Windows itself too.
• I started writing my to-do lists in German. Few weeks later I was writing my entire diary in German too.
• Switched my homepage in the browser to my focus words and phrases of the week.
• Every time I was home I turned on the Austrian radio station. They had some music but spoke a lot of time too.
• Hanged posters on the wall with words and motivational phrases.

This way, want it or not, I was obliged to see German everywhere. It was a bit too much sometimes, but it was well worth it. It helped me a lot to keep progressing and to stay motivated.

The second step was to couple this total immersion with some fun. And hell it’s easy to have fun learning. As I was living in Austria it was easy for me to find people to practice the language with. What did I do? I looked for one person a day to go out with me and help me practicing. In return, I usually I taught this other person Spanish. It was fun and I used them also as a way to meet girls too. I went out with a different girl almost every day; it was fun combining dating with learning!

Dates were in parks, in cafés and we also met up to cook or in the university itself. It worked well as I was speaking and speaking every day and I was double motivated to go out and practice. Then I started working and things became even easier, as some of the guys at work knew neither English nor Spanish and I was then obliged to speak exclusively in German. I might have learned faster than in just two months, honestly.

Of course, living in the local place makes things easier. But it’s not the only way. Find partners to speak in services as Shared Talk, directly through Skype Search or on Facebook Groups. The possibilities are endless. You just need to speak and speak a lot.

Conclusion

Speaking a language in just two months is doable. It requires a lot of hard work, dedication and a good plan, but it’s something we can all do. Find the right materials, learn the most frequent words and don’t complicate yourself with hard grammar. Once you know what to focus and have your milestones listed focus on immersing yourself in the language and on having the best time of the experience.

Resources

These sites may come on in handy:

http://www.lextutor.ca/
http://german.about.com/library/blwfreq01.htm
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists#English

Photo credit: Elektracute

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