Ultimate Guide to Language Learning: From Scratch to Polyglot by Nate from Fluentli

I think this is good information, but Fluentli seems to have disappeared from the internet :-(

So, reposting. 

Language learning is a journey.

And at different points in that journey, you will have different requirements.

The aim of this guide is to be a living resource that you can refer to at any point in your language learning journey.

From how to get started all the way to what it takes to learn multiple languages, all of the links below have been carefully organized so you can quickly find the help or information you need now.

Introduction: Find Your Reason for Learning a Language

Learning a foreign language is tricky. You start out with so much motivation in the beginning, but as soon as that fades you put your studies on the back burner. It’s best to have a solid, practical reason in mind for why you are learning a language. Whether you’re a new learner or have been studying for a while, take some time to choose why you’re doing this — and put it on your wall.

    10 Superb Psychological Advantages of Learning Another Language | PSYBlog
    Why It Makes More Sense Than You Know to Learn a Second Language | Huffington Post
    5 Reasons Why you Should Learn a New Language | Omniglot
    Why Foreign Language Learning Is Still Important | Go Overseas
    Why learn a foreign language? Benefits of bilingualism | The Telegraph

Chapter 1: Get Started on the Right Foot

For many beginners, they simply just don’t know where to start. Especially if you’re set on self-study, take some time to listen to the advice of those who have gone before you.

Avoid common mistakes, and detrimental thoughts:

    4 Things to Stop Believing if You Actually Want to Learn a Language | Fluentli Blog
    10 Most Common Mistakes | Lingoholic
    Five most common mistakes | The Telegraph

Understanding Motivation

    Take Advantage of "Motivation Wave" To Build Better Habits | Lifehacker
    Redefining your motivation | Fluent in 3 Months
    How to Successfully Learn a New Language This Year | Lifehacker

Choosing the right language:

    What language should I learn? | Fluent in 3 Months
    4 easy foreign languages you never thought of learning (and why you should) | Matador Network
    How many words do I need to know? The 95/5 rule in language learning | Lingoholic

Other tips:

    22 Tips For Learning A Foreign Language | Mark Manson
    The Biggest Language-Learning Lesson I’ve Learned | The Smart Language Learner

Chapter 2: First, Learn How to Change Your Behavior

People usually don’t think about this, but learning a language is a complete lifestyle change. And just like choosing to exercise more and lose weight, if you’re not knowledgeable in the basics of your own behavioral psychology, you’re going to struggle with consistency. The below links will give you a great start.

    How Habits Work | Charles Duhigg
    18 Tricks to Make New Habits Stick | Lifehack
    Sticking to a Habit: The Definitive Guide | Zen Habits
    How to Build Good Habits | Sparring Mind
    Systems | Scott Adams Blog

 Chapter 3: Learn About and Improve Your Memory

Memory is a huge part of language learning. People who think they’re bad at learning a language probably also believe they have a bad memory. While they might not have the best memory, it may just be that they’ve never worked on certain techniques to help them remember things better.

    Introduction to Memory Techniques | Mind Tools
    Top Ten Memory Hacks | Lifehacker
    Total Recall | The Guardian
    TED Weekends wonders: What’s the key to memory? | TED Blog

Chapter 4: The Learning Process

One of the reasons why beginners often have no idea where to start with learning a language is because everyone who has done it before as discovered the “right” method to do it. Well, that leaves us with a lot of options, and humans are really terrible decision makers. This section will hopefully give you an overview of the best of the best, and will encourage you to try things until you find the secret combo for you.

4.1: Plan Your Course of Action

    I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years: Here’s How | Lifehacker
    How to Learn But Not Master Any Language in 1 Hour | Four Hour Work Week
    The Timothy Ferriss 1-Hour Method: Learn a Language Fast | Brazigzag
    How I Learned a Language in 90 Days | Lifehacker
    Guide To Autodidactic Foreign Language Study | Foreign Language Exerptise
    Beyond Immersion: Learn a New Language with Better Listening Skills | Lifehacker

4.2: Master Pronunciation

    The Key to Learning Pronunciation | Fluent Forever
    Revealing How the Brain Recognizes Speech Sounds | Science Daily
    Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension | Omniglot
    How to Tune Your Foreign Language Vowel Pronunciation | Mimic Method Blog
    Learn Pronunciation and Flow with “Flow-verlapping” | Mimic Method Blog

4.3: How to Best Learn Vocabulary

    Imagination: Your Key to Memorizing Hundreds of Words Quickly | Fluent in 3 Months
    How to Memorise Vocabulary | The Telegraph
    How to Remember Words | Lingoholic
    Why It’s Impossible to Learn Words and Phrases Out of Context | L2 Mastery
    Choosing Your Vocabulary | Fluent Forever
    38 Language-Learning Experts Reveal Their Favorite Method for Learning Vocabulary | The Smart Language Learner

4.4: Tips for Successful Language Exchanges

    How to Start a Language Exchange on the Right Foot | Linguatrek
    How to Have a Successful Language Exchange | To Be Fluent
    Making Language Exchanges Work for You | I Will Teach You a Language
    Language Exchange Tips | Polyglot Club
    5 Tips for a More Productive Language Exchange | Matador Network

Chapter 5: How to Push Through a Plateau

When learning any new skill, you reach a point where you make progress much slower than you did. The periods of plateau can feel like you’re stranded in a desert wasteland at times, but those that push through them will discover yet another green pasture of progress on the other side.

    Plateau Busting: How to Take Your Life to the Next Level | The Art of Manliness
    5 Reasons You’re Not Improving as Fast as You Want | L2 Mastery
    3 Ways to Think About Winning | Josh Kaufman (Review your goals, and declare victory on what you have accomplished so far)
    Tenacity is Not the Same as Persistence | Seth Godin  (If the same thing isn’t working, time to try something else given the new data and experiences you have)
    17 Killer Strategies for Never Giving Up | Impossible (The long plateaus where you seem not to be making progress are perfect places to quit, but don’t do it)

Chapter 6: Do You Want to Go the Way of the Polyglot?

Who doesn’t want to be a bad-ass, CIA-like, mother… polyglot? Well, read below and find out for yourself if it’s the direction you’d like to turn your language learning efforts.

    Is Wanting to be a Polyglot a Misdirected Dream? | David Mansaray
    How to Become a Polyglot | Fluent in 3 Months
    The Secret of Language Superlearners  | Time
    Adventures with an Extreme Polyglot | The Daily Beast (Goes with the video below)

    How and Why Polyglots Don’t Confuse Languages | The Polyglot Dream
    How to Learn Multiple Languages Without Getting Confused | AJATT
    Language Switching | Speaking Fluently
    Ask the Readers: Language Specialist or Jack-of-all-Languages? | Mezzoguild

Bonus Chapter: Some Fun and Inspiration

This chapter is for some more fun and inspiration. Enjoy the videos!

Feeling about languages

Isn't it interesting how our experiences of things not too connected to languages, influence how we feel about the languages?

I fell in love with a Norwegian guy. I wanted to learn Norwegian. I even developed a Norwegian accent. :-D

He made it clear that he doesn't want to know about me. Now the mere Norwegian accent irks me. Seeing text in Norwegian makes my upper lip curl. Right now I detest Norwegian and Swedish, and practically the whole North European Germanic language group, except Danish, and I'm not too sure about that either.

But this "adventure" enriched my language with a couple of words. Rumpetroll og rasshøl. And I do pronounce them with Norwegian accent.

Hello, hello, hello...!

Again. Long time no seen :-)

I stopped the 6 weeks challenge - and I also stopped studying Maltese. Ha. Typical me.

So - the next one starts tomorrow :-D
I suppose I need to start participating.

I'm just very into FarmVille right now - and so is my hubby - and we have only one computer.
Well... there's always the library :-D

Anyway, I need to get better with my French and Italian, as I plan to travel a little next year.
Does anyone know how to get in contact with locals BEFORE a week's vacation, to make some contacts and get something wonderful to do during the vacation?

Fascinating.

Æsop's Fables, as Romanized by Phædrus

BBC Quick Fix - Maltese 

I need to quit 6 weeks' challenge. I'm too competitive so I start stressing too much and cause myself too much trouble over nothing, and start neglecting important things like housekeeping and friends.
I will be doing the work, though, but I won't be recording my minutes.

How I use flashcards

I am trying to read and understand the first book of Il-Fiddien trilogy.

I type it on LWT one chapter at a time, and translate it into English so that my husband can read it too.

When I'm finished with the translation (my husband is not very patient, and wants to know what happens in the chapter ASAP) I move the vocabulary from LWT on flashcards.

LWT treats every word that looks different as its own word. So qattus, qattusa and qtates are three different words. [Cat (masculine), cat (feminine), cats (plural)]. At this moment I don't care about that, I just copy mechanically the words.

I prefer to have flashcards of basic building blocks - glosses - and have four groups of words: nouns, adjectives, verbs and the rest.

So, I go through the pile of flashcards and
- separate all the forms of one word I recognize
- separate all verbs, nouns and adjectives I recognize
- leave the rest to be (for now.)
I do my best to find the basic form of all these words, remove the suffixes etc.

In a perfect pile of flashcards I'd have
- substantives and adjectives in form like "qattus, qattusa, qtates"- verbs in indicative (if possible) or - with Maltese - conjugated in imperfect tense (used as present/future)

I want to learn the grammar, that is how to modify these words to express the different meaning, apart from the glosses. I write these grammar exercises on separate papers and it is here I use sample sentences.
I don't like learning sentences by heart, except idioms and other such sentences and word combinations that are "building blocks" by themselves (like "good morning" or "s'il vous plaît").

Right now I am not advanced enough to be able to find many basic forms, and I know too little to be able to use the dictionaries in a good way.

I learn the flashcards by heart.

I have a pile of about 50-100 cards, that I go through until I know all of them from L2 to L1.
This is really mechanical this too. I look at one side of the card, try to understand/remember it, and then check on the opposite side what the dictionary definition of the word is.
After I have "guessed" right twice, I move the card in pile 2.
This means that there is less and less cards in the pile.
I usually end up with about 10 words that I simply can't remember.

At this point I change my tactics, start using mnemonic tricks or simply turn the cards around and try to remember them from L1 to L2.

Then I go through the pile until I remember them from L1 to L2, the same way. "Spaced repetition". The words I can't remember gets more repetitions than the ones I can. :-)

Then I let the pile rest a couple of days and go through it again. This time I remove the cards I find hard to remember to a new pile, and those I know go to a box.
I will go through that box about once every two weeks in the beginning, to be sure I know them, and then I'll just forget the box.

So - it's a bit like how Aaron does it. (or did, in 2012)

Now, this is just learning the vocabulary.
You have still listening, reading, writing, speaking, pronunciation and grammar to go through :-D

P.S: 8 ways to create better flashcards

Il-Bibbja bil-Malti

I gave in today, and started listening-reading the Bible in Maltese.

I am a Pagan and I have been bashed more than enough by the USonian militant fundamentalist fascist evangelical Christians (I am not talking about all Christians, so if you are not an USonian militant fundamentalist fascist evangelical Christian, I am not talking about you.) to find the whole Bible, especially the Greek scriptures (a.k.a New Testament) slightly repulsive, because of the association. 

But - the book exists translated in several languages on-line
(here's one Maltese version)
Parts of it has been read out aloud in Maltese (L-Evanġelju ta' Sidna Ġesu' Kristu skont San Mattew)

Maltese - learning the language

8 writing activities for the younger students
(about writing in one's mothertongue, but could easily be adjusted to learning foreign languages.)

Copying and dictating are the two basic lesson activities in the natural method.  Just as the child learned to speak by copying your correct speech, so he learns to write by copying fine writing.
- Ruth Beechick, A Strong Start in Language

"copywork" can seem like mindless - and thus useless - copying, but don't underestimate the muscle memory...
In the beginning of language study, copying a sentence over and over again, will help you remember it.

Motti, aforismi e proverbii Maltesi
It uses slightly different letters

Alla fettiħi, u Alla għajjur: Alla nebbihi, u magħ kollħad jdur.

Alla fuq kollox, u fuq kollħad, xemx u xute jibgħat jib kollħad.

Maltese proverbs
Maltese proverbs (only 7 of them, but there is an idiomatic translation and meaning of the saying as well)
Common Maltese proverbs and sayings
Maltese proverbs and riddles


Later you can move on to "dictation" - write the lyrics of a song. Choose first songs that you already have lyrics on, so you have something you can use to check if you got it right.

Learn a language by listening to radio

New study may revolutionize language learning
"Dr Sulzberger has found that the best way to learn a language is through frequent exposure to its sound patterns--even if you haven't a clue what it all means."

Why You Should Keep Listening Even If You Don’t Understand

Use music to learn foreign languages
language is music
6 tips for learning a new language
Use music, TV, movies, radio and the internet to ingrain your target language in your brain

passive and active listening tips

Remember this is not a question of passive listening...

On-line newspapers from Malta
Maltese TV
Maltese radio (I like radio 101, which is a channel with a lot of international popular music, but also some Maltese songs, a lot of talk of different issues, news broadcast and a bit too much politics (but it might be because they seem to be changes going on right now, like an election or something... I find it boring so I go to YouTube and listen to Maltese songs instead. I know, I know, I would learn more if I actually found out what is going on and listened, even if it bores me - but on the other hand, I will learn more by listening to something I am interested in than something that bores me :-D)

Wikipedija
There are 2,803 articles in the Maltese Wikipedia (Wikipedija) and 13,416 pages in all "including both Articles (the official article count of each wiki) and Non-Articles (user pages, images, talk pages, "project" pages, categories, and templates)".

Then a little bit about Maltese culture and celebrations :-)
 

"two different games with a different set of rules"

"...Maltese (is) a language which typologically stands between Semitic and Romance languages, as it is genealogically related to Arabic, on the one hand, and has been in close contact with Italian and Sicilian for about one millennium, on the other. A long history of contact between typologically diverse languages gave rise to two different word formation strategies in modern Maltese, root and pattern morphology and concatenative morphology.
Word formation in Maltese can be compared to a checkerboard on which language users may play chess and draughts, two different games with a different set of rules. For any given lexical item, a speaker of Maltese must know whether it is a piece for chess or a piece for draughts, and play the morphosyntactic game accordingly."

So well said... :-)

This is part of what I have been doing with verbs: try to figure out if they belong to the Semitic part of the language or the Japhetic part of the language.

My language studies are not advancing much at the moment. I am severely depressed and after having had a couple of PMS free months, it's back - and with a vengeance. But I'm hanging on there, doing mechanically the things I need to do, and try to think that as I don't give a crap about anything, I could just as well keep doing what I have done the last days, and it will be good one day.