Foreign Language: Fill & Download for Free

MY OWN DARN NAME!Okay, so English is technically a foreign language for me.I went to an English medium school, spoke fluent English, but among my friends I generally converse in Hindi, and mostly prefer Hindi. This is no excuse for the embarrassing incident that unfolded.. but just saying why English is a “foreign language”.Anyway I attended grad school in US, and found a job in one of the largest companies in America, with a very popular, very well known CEO.So one day I meet our Director (also his right hand guy) who is just as well known, very powerful, and very charismatic.Now considering how intimidating my name is to most Americans, I go by the nick name Ash in my company.Our powerful Director strides into the conference room. I stand up.I am tongue tied in his presence and nervous as fuck. This is my fan girl moment.My mouth goes dry.I introduce myself.It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Ass.Can the earth please open up and swallow me?

I currently speak 6 languages: French( Native), English, German, Chinese, Japanese and KoreanLet me tell you briefly how I did that.Put in your head that learning a language is easy, you just need time and patience, that’s allYou can absolutely become as fluent as a Native.Don’t listen to anyone telling you you can’t, most people around you don’t speak more than one language and have some fixed mindset about language learning which prevent them from being open to learning and improving. You are different. You know you can become VERY good if you just trust and do what I will tell you right after.Don’t rely on professors to teach you. A language is a tool of communication. It has to come from you and you have to be proactive to apply what you learn and improve fast.Find the best book to learn the language you target. Just one book is enough. Don’t fall into the “Application” mania. An application or a dictionary is just a tool, a “helper”.Every day, take 30 min to read that book until you finish the book. Go slowly, do all the exercices.When you have some very basics and you know few phrases, find some friend speaking the language and go practice what you learn. Don’t be afraid to fail or to speak incorrectly, no one will laugh about you. Everyone speaks incorrectly before speaking correctly. Just think about babies: If a baby was waiting to have the perfect grammar to start speaking, he would never say a word. Instead, use the “ Fail Fast Forward” approach. Fail quickly, then listen to the correction. Ask others to correct you. Then improve.When you understand few phrases and you feel you are okay to present yourself, start to watch dramas and series in the language you target. My advice is to watch dramas with subtitles in the language of the country language, NOT yours. The purpose is to listen. when you don’t understand, pause and search in the dictionary. make lists of words. If you don’t understand 100%, that’s okay. Try to understand the gestures and you will see that after some time, you will start to understand more and more.Repeat all those steps: Find more books, dramas, friends.Go to the country and study there. Speak with locals, be curious about the culture.With this method, you will be fluent in less than 1 year.Good luck.

I've learned several foreign languages as an adult. I was able to learn French to conversation fluency in 17 days using the following techniques. Note that I had previously learned Spanish to fluency so this was not my first foreign language.In summer of 2005 I stayed with a French friend in a tiny village in the Beaujolais region of France. No one in the village spoke English and, since my friend knew I had an ambitious learning goal, she refused to speak to me in English as well.I set up a routine where I did the same things every day.In the mornings, I woke up and wrote out longhand the regular and irregular verb tables for 1.5-2 hours. I managed to get through an entire pad of paper in two weeks. I still believe that writing things out by hand is the best way to memorize things.While I wrote, I would listen to Michel Thomas' language learning mp3s (http://www.michelthomas.com/). On the CDs you listen as he teaches French to other English speakers. It's really helpful to hear other students make mistakes that you can learn from, just like a regular classroom environment. In two weeks I listened to the foundation, advanced and language building courses twice.I would run for 45-60 minutes in the early afternoon in the French countryside listening to catchy French music. Music is a great way to learn the intonation of a language and train your facial muscles as you sing along.I had lunch with my friend and her French friends everyday. As they refused to slow down when speaking to me in French, it was learn or starve!In the afternoon, if I wasn't playing darts or Boules with my French friends, I was reading "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" in French. Reading the children's books you read as a child is a great hack to learning new languages. Firstly, the language used is simple and secondly, knowing the story helps you to guess the meaning of new words and avoid using a dictionary. Surprisingly children's books are more entertaining in a foreign language.I spent at least an hour writing basic essays about myself which I had my French friend check for errors. When you meet new people you inevitably get asked the same things: "Where are you from?", "What do you do?", "Do you like France?". By learning ready-made answers, you get to practice what you learned and build up your confidence.Another good tip is to learn the filler words. These are the words and phrases people say then all the time between sentences (alors, en fait, etc.) but have no real meaning; allowing you to buy time in a conversation and increase your confidence.After 17 days I left the small town and went to Paris. I met a girl in a coffee shop and we started talking. After a few minutes, she asked how long I had lived in France. When I told her I had been learning French for 17 days, she swore that I had lived in France for at least a year.Hopefully there are some useful tips you can use in your learning. Let me know and bonne chance!Edit: Follow me on davesuperman (@davesuperman) | Twitter.