How Some Adults Learn New Languages

I hope this post will give you some ideas of what you can do during your language learning journey.

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When Alma wanted to learn German, she took an intensive in person course. She had three (3) forty-five minute sessions per day, 4 days per week! The course was well-designed and expertly executed!! At the end of her 2 month intensive course, she had a very solid A2 level...from zero! However, that is not all that she did, She did a lot of stuff during that 2 month period...and beyond!

She also got her hands on an audio course, designed to teach beginners German. She worked on that daily. She also started to listen to music with lyrics in German. She tried to pick out the words. She began to understand more and more lyrics as she progressed in her in person language course and in her autodidactic listening course. When she was able to capture a word or phrase in the music that she didn't understand, she looked up the meaning.

Clearly she was highly motivated. She devoted a lot of time and effort to learning German. Eventually she started to watch movies in German. She used German subtitles. She used context to guess at meaning when the exact meanings were unknown. She also looked up words and phrases.

Later on, she actually moved to Germany when she was already at a strong intermediate level. She took a training course in Germany, in German. This course trained participants how to work in an office, how to work in various aspects of a human resources department. The course included an opportunity to actually work in a company. This reminds me of apprenticeship programs in the USA for tradesmen such as electricians, plumbers, masons or carpenter. Part of the education time s spent in the classroom and part of the time is spent "on the job" so to speak.

In addition to motivation, the activities that she engaged in were meaningful and ejoyable. It was important that the learning activities were enjoyable. From songs, to movies, to audiobooks. Alma continued to make progress. And of course now that she has been in Germany for several years she lives, works and recreates in a 100% German language environment.

Now Alma is working on improving her English. She has one or two sessions with me each week in addition to listening to audiobooks in English and partaking in English language content on Instagram as both a consumer and a content creator. She has a C1 level of English. However we still need to override chronic errors made in speaking regarding the usage of he/she, say/tell, that/what and on/in/at (adverbs of time and space).

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