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Top 6 Fun Ways To Learn A Foreign Language: Using Music, Radio, TV and Movies
2010-02-13
by Susanna Zaraysky
Have you ever heard a song on the radio that you have not heard in years and you surprise yourself by singing all the lyrics? Music and catchy jingles can stick in our minds for years, while verb conjugation charts and memorized data disappear.
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So if you are trying to learn a new language, put down the verb conjugation charts for now and turn on your radio! You will need the grammar books later, but for now, relax and get in the groove of your new tongue. You need to first see the forest before you can see the individual trees when it comes to language learning. Paying attention to media in your target language introduces you to the phonetical and grammatical structure of your target language. After you get used to the melodies of your new languages, then you can insert the grammar and vocabulary lessons. Listen first. Speak later. Most importantly, make it fun. Enjoy the learning process and you will learn much more.
My Top Six Tips on How to Learn a Foreign Language Using Media
1. Be Quiet and Listen
Learning a new language means you have to change your key and tune. Dancing the cha-cha to waltz music is like speaking a new language, while still using the rhythm of your mother tongue. Let yourself take in the sounds of the language as though you were listening to a new piece of music. Even if you are just a beginner and barely know any words, you can still learn by listening. Pay attention to how people speak. Does it seem like they are reading a phone number or rattling of a list of numbers? Are they angry? Happy? Sometimes, you have to shut off your brain and inclination to interpret to analyze. Listen to the words spoken and to your intuition.
2. Relax and Listen to the Music
Find music in your target language that you like. It does not matter if at first you do not understand the lyrics. You may start singing along without even knowing what you are singing. You are not only learning the rhythm of the language, you are learning new vocabulary.
Relax and close your eyes. Turn off the lights. Lie down or sit in a comfortable position. Do not try to understand the words, just listen. You might fall asleep or daydream. Give yourself the time to simply listen and not do anything else. Your mind needs to be calm in order to absorb the sounds. Your ears need no other distractions to let them properly hear all the high, medium and low frequencies of the language. Do this regularly.
3. Write Down the Lyrics as You Listen
Listen to music with the lights on, your eyes open and a pencil in hand. Write the lyrics of the songs while listening. You will have to pause the music and rewind or repeat many times to get the words down. Some words will be hard to write because they may be idioms or slang that you have not learned yet, but just write as much as you can understand.
Remember that songwriters sometimes employ rarely-used words just to make the song rhyme. They often play word games and compose their lyrics with words that sound alike or may even be spelled the same way, but have different meanings. Do not be frustrated with obscure words. Compare the lyrics you noted with the original song and see how well you were able to understand the song. Some CDs come with the lyrics inside the CD case. If you do not have them, look for them online on lyrics websites (see links at the bottom of this article). If you cannot locate the lyrics on the lyrics websites, just type in the name of the song in quotes in a web search. For example, type "New York, New York" and "lyrics" in the search to get the lyrics to Sinatra's famous song.
Once you have your version of the lyrics and the original, you can see how much you were able to understand from listening to the song. Use your dictionary to translate the words you do not know.
4. Listen to the Radio in the New Language
When you first start listening to radio broadcasts, the radio announcers may sound like they are emitting a stream or storm of sounds and not individual words. In time, you will hear familiar words repeated and will learn to distinguish them. Language teachers call this "acquired competence." You can actively listen to the radio attentively and take notes, listen to it in the background or just close your eyes to listen without straining yourself to understand.
5. TV for Homework. Really!
Let's say you are learning Spanish. You have found a local Spanish language TV station in your area or you are watching the national Univision news. Even without knowing all the words, you will be able to get the gist of some of the news reports. The images and video footage of events already tell you what the news announcers are talking about. Tune into how they are speaking and the words they are using to describe the images on screen.
Even if you cannot watch TV all the time, it is all right to do errands around the house as you listen to the TV in the background. Think of the TV as background music like you would hear in a cafê or restaurant. Even though it is not at the forefront of your consciousness, your brain is still processing it and getting used to the flow of the language.
6. Find the Original Version of Movies in Your Target Language
Never watch movies dubbed in your home language! Watching dubbed movies is a cardinal sin when it comes to learning languages. You lose most of the cultural experience when you watch a dubbed movie.
The Scandinavians watch many English language television programs on their televisions and English language movies in their movie theaters, as do the Mediterraneans. However, the northern Europeans leave the soundtrack in the original language and just add subtitles in their respective tongues. The French, Spanish and Italians see English language actors speak in unnatural dubbed voices in their national languages. They are learning English in isolation from the sounds of native speakers. Learning a language in a vacuum is tough. You can let the world into your home by watching the original versions of movies, listening to how people really speak.
So go forth, turn up the music and turn on the language-learning!
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Susanna Zaraysky speaks seven languages (English, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Serbo-Croatian) with excellent accents because she learns languages like she learns music. She has also studied Hungarian, Hebrew and Arabic.
After teaching English in Argentina, Bosnia, and the United States, she realized how to make foreign language learning fun and easy through listening exercises and music.
Susanna has written, Language is Music, with over 70 exercises and tips to learn foreign languages using music, TV, film, radio and other low-cost and free methods. She's been featured on MSNBC, MTV, NPR podcast (New America Media) and the Filipino Channel Travels show.
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http://www.expatwomen.com/learning_languages/music_susanna_zaraysky.php
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