By Sergio Lopez
Staff Writer
Editor’s Note: Sergio Lopez moved to North Carolina from Barranquilla, Colombia in January of 2025. With Spanish as his first language, he has been studying English for about five years. He also began studying French last year.
Learning new languages is a great way to connect with other people, know different cultures, and see life from another perspective. Also, it offers numerous benefits and opportunities, including enhanced cognitive abilities, improved communication skills, broadened career opportunities, facilitated travel and cultural understanding, and even potential cognitive decline prevention.
Learning a new language can also improve memory and focus, because it requires you to memorize vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Studies suggest that being bilingual may help delay the onset of age-related cognitive decline such as slower thinking, attention changes, memory changes, multitasking, holding information in mind and word-finding.
To effectively learn a new language, you can combine consistent practice with immersion, utilizing a mix of resources like language apps, speaking with native speakers, and engaging with media in the target language, while tailoring your approach to your individual style and goals.
First, you need to establish realistic goals and create a study plan. You need to start small, you must be bad at something to be successful. Begin with achievable goals, learn basic phrases or master a few key vocabulary words.
Setting specific goals helps you to have a measurable path to achievement and makes it easier to focus efforts and track your progress, and ultimately, succeed. Instead of “I want to learn French” try “I want to be able to order food in French,” or “I want to understand simple conversations.” You have to change your mentality and be humble to not stress out.
Here are some other pieces of advice for how to learn a second language.
- Create a schedule
Dedicate yourself to completing specific time slots for language study, even if it is just for 15-30 minutes a day.
By this it is more likely to prevent procrastination, and promotes well-rounded language development. Be consistent and try to do it every day.
- Make it a habit
Stay consistent, find what motivates you that you enjoy and engage with.
Celebrate any progress you make, acknowledge your achievements, no matter how small they are.
- Immerse yourself with the language
Surround yourself with the language, listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks in the target language, watch movies or TV shows with subtitles (or without) and try to think in the new language.
Finding a language partner is a great way to practice all the time, you can either practice with native speakers in real life or in person.
Changing your phone or computer language helps you to see and interact with the language in your daily life.
- Don’t be afraid to make mistakes
Making mistakes is a natural part of the learning process.
Use flashcards, diagrams and other visual aids; auditory learners as podcasts, audiobooks help you to listen to native people in a natural conversation. Kinesthetic learners, actively engage in speaking, writing, and other hands-on activities.
- You can use your existing knowledge to learn a new one
Learning a language from a different family can be more challenging than learning a language within the same family as learned language.
For example romance languages like Spanish, French or Italian are easier to learn because a lot of words in English have roots in Latin, which is the common ancestor of these Romance Languages. That being said, it is easier for you to recognize and understand common root words and grammatical structures.
