The quickest way to learn a language

Let me tell you how you can learn a language within the shortest possible time. What you need is determination, persistence and hard work.

First, you must master passive knowledge. You can find lots of books with CDs that you can work your way through within a few months. When I was learning German, I had to go through 12 cassettes of 60 minutes each. In this way I learnt the grammar and approximately 1500 words.

Then you have to buy yourself a simple children’s story. You underline the words you don’t understand and translate them. Then you record yourself in the following way:

·        You start reading out loud and when you come to an underlined word, you carry on until the next comma and stop.

·        Pronounce the underlined word and its translation.

·        Then go back to the comma before the underlined word and read once more the part of the sentence with the underlined word.

·        Repeat the process until you reach the end of the text.

I recommend that you record no more than 60 minutes at once. It’s better to start with 30 minutes. When children’s books become too easy, you move to fiction for adults. In this way you can learn approximately 5000 to 6000 new words in a year, which is a considerable active vocabulary.