3 Essential Things You Should Do If You're Learning A Foreign Language.

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If you are a foreign language learner, you might find yourself stuck at a plateau at some point, like we all have when studying a new language. You might realize your communication skills are not improving, you often freeze when delivering a message, you struggle to come up with the right conjugated forms, perhaps you can't ever seem to remember the 'voi' form of the pluperfect subjunctive--and what the hell is the pluperfect whatever anyway, and why do we even need it?

If this or something similar is happening to you, there are a few important things you might be overlooking, and they have to do with your study method. Keep reading and do this if you're learning a foreign language.

If you have a child, you have probably experienced the tiring (to listen to) and endless repetition of every single sentence, phrase, word, syllable they hear. They repeat it ad infinitum like a mantra over and over, for hours, sometimes days, with some breaks in between sessions.

Here we get to our first point: repetition.

Do you ever catch yourself repeating a phrase or sentence you've heard hundreds of times over? If you don't, then here is your first problem. When you don't repeat what you hear and learn, it means you are going over it mentally and for a very limited amount of time. That way you're not letting your brain connect it to the system that physically reproduces the language. This is a pretty complex machine composed of several parts:

1) the resonatory system (sinus cavities, oral cavity, vocal tract);

2) the phonatory system (larynx);

3) the respiratory system (lungs, diaphragm).

Without the proper conditioning, these body parts cannot learn to help you speak in any other way than slowly and clumsily--when you don't freeze altogether.

What would you say is your vocabulary range? Language teachers love to reassure learners that five hundred words are enough to speak a language. I know they're just trying to make a point, but why? And what point exactly? Don't be too ambitious? Settle for less? Aim lower?

As a professional language teacher, I can re-assure you of this: if your vocabulary ranges below seven-to-ten thousand words, then your communication skills are extremely limited and your speech lacking in specificity.

Grammar's important, there's no denying that, but language teachers are just obsessed with it. Perhaps that's because all they need to do is present it to you in a book with hundreds of fill-in-the-gaps exercises you are then going to waste years on. No further effort needed on their part.

Remember this: the grammar level native speakers of any language use in average conversation (I'm referring to "street" conversation here, not a university lecture or a dialogue between Plato and Socrates) is early-to-mid intermediate. The average vocabulary range, however, though not very high, is still much higher than yours.

Upshot: learn vocabulary.

Do you know any poems by heart in a foreign language--or lines from poems? What about monologues from films or dramas? Pages from books you love? Song lyrics? Nursery rhymes? Prayers? What about in your native language? Do you know any?

If you don't, then here's your third and last problem for today.

Memorizing material as per above is what links a language to the culture it serves. You don't need to understand a quotation in order to decide to memorize it. You just need to like it for whatever reason. Any sentence, poem, quotation, song lyric, movie line, book paragraph, joke, rhyme, limerick, sillogism, postulate, you name it--if it impresses you, that's a good enough reason for you to memorize it.

Once you have it down--and can say it like second nature thanks to repetition--you can use it or recognize it in speech. You'll be able to understand cultural references and maintain an active role in a conversation, rather than timidly withdraw because you just haven't the ghost of a clue what everybody else in the group is laughing about.

So there's that.