Where Should You Start When Learning A New Language?

If you are a total beginner to learning languages it can be confusing where to start. There are so many different options and so much to learn that it can almost be too overwhelming and put you off.

I will try and go over what I would do if I was starting out with a new language and hopefully you can take a similar approach.

Keeping It Broad 

You will quickly notice I am keeping things pretty broad here and that is because the fine details don’t matter.

I can sit here and tell you that one day one you need to learn the word for cat and dog and whatever else, but really that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what order you learn certain things in.

Of course you can argue that some concepts are easier to understand than others, so there should be some order and that is true. The order I go through below should try and keep things simple for you and you should be fine. Being spoon fed what to learn on a day by day is pointless. You need to create your journey and go at your own pace, slowly discovering and mastering the language in your own time.

Just go through everything below and you will have a direction and understanding of what you need to do, then you just have to go and do it. 

Should You Start With A Course or Textbook?

It is common for new learners to want to start with a course or textbooks and honestly, deciding if this is good or not is 50/50 for me. I think trying to use a resource like this can be very helpful, especially if you are really brand new to a language, or even language learning in general. 

However, they are also not perfect as I find courses or textbooks try and get you look at things that you don’t need to worry about right away, such as too much grammar or trying to get you to output the language.

I don’t think this is ideal, but you can also learn some basics from these types of resources, so I am not totally against them. I think I would say use them, but don’t depend on them.

Skim through them and get some basics, but leave it at that. Don’t get caught up in remembering things or trying to do all the little exercises perfectly. These are not helpful at this time and will just stress you out.   

You Need To Focus All Your Efforts Into Getting Input In The Language

The best way to start with a language is input, which means immersion …which means watching/listening to things in your new language.

This is not an easy way to start things as you will understand nothing, but that is okay and it is still something you should still start on day one.

I would focus more on immersing with videos as it will allow you to listen to the language as well as see what is being represented on the screen. You can almost get an idea of what is happening from the context of what is on the screen.

You will also hear that reading is input, which is correct and it is great, but not right at the start. When you are a beginner you will have not heard the language properly, which means you can’t read properly. You need to hear how the language is pronounced and get used to how it flows before you can really start reading effectively. 

For now focus on immersing by watching videos, reading can come later. Watch videos on topics that interest you and just focus on listening and really hearing the language.

In the next few steps you will be doing some things like learning words, which you will start to notice when watching videos. This is how you will start to understand what is going on. It takes time, but watch videos every day and slowly you will start to understand more and more

(You can read more about – What Is Learning A Language By Immersion?)

Understand The Basic Sounds and Alphabet

Right at the start you will want to watch some videos that explain how the general language works. This is extremely boring, but it can be very helpful for your immersion.

You basically want to find out how the sounds of the language are formed. Think about how French people pronounce words different to English speakers, this is all down to how they form their vowels and consonants.

Each language will have this and it is important to know how it works. You don’t need to memorise it, just have a rough understanding of it. When you go back to watching videos in the language you will really start to notice a lot more and actually be able to pick a lot of the sounds out and it will sound like less of a blur.

If you are learning a language that has a different alphabet, it is very sensible to learn this early on. While you may not be reading as much in the beginning, you are still going to see the language pretty much every day, so the sooner you can actually start recognising the letters the better and when you do start reading a lot it will not be difficult.

Look At Very Basic Grammar

Grammar is not that important in the beginning, but I would still advise that you go over the basics of the grammar.

If you are not using a course or textbook, you can easily just search this up online and find plenty of free resources.

However, it’s really important that you don’t stress yourself out about this. A lot of the grammar will make no sense, be boring, or just generally be too much information to take in. This is okay; you don’t need to understand it all now.

It is just good to read through it and get a basic understanding of its existence. Some of it might make a lot of sense and you will start to notice it when you are immersing, but either way, don’t get caught up in the grammar.

The idea here is that you just know it exists, you will come back later and actually focus on this properly when you have spent some time with the language first. You need to have a lot a exposure and some understanding of the language first before you can understand its grammar properly.    

Start Learning Vocabulary

Language is made up of individual words, so it can be extremely beneficial to learn as many words as possible.

The best place to start is with the most common words and the verbs. You can quickly look up lists of these, or download pre-made anki decks.

You are going to notice these words appearing all the time in your immersion, which makes sense since they are the most common words.

Learning these is how you start to understand what is going on when watching videos. You will learn individual words and every quickly you start to notice them while listening to the language. You will reach a point where you will start to recognise all the words you hear. At times you might not understand everything, but overall you start to understand what you are hearing.

This will take a while and you need to learn 1000 words before you feel like you understand full sentences, but just keep learning words and listening to the language and it will come together and you will start to understand more and more.

(You can read more about – Should You Learn The Most Common Words Of A Language?)

Just Repeat Everything Until You Are Comfortable

So everything I have said above is all you need to do. Skim through the basics of the grammar, understand how the alphabet and sound system works …then learn as many words as  you can and listen to the language a lot.

It sounds too simple, but it works. It’s not easy and it will take you time to learn the words and listen to hours and hours of the language, but if you do this, things will come together.

You can make things more complicated for yourself and start worrying about grammar, writing and speaking, but these can come later.

Language learning is hard enough without overloading yourself so just focus on learning words and listening. This will allow you to understand the language and you will feel like you are making progress, even if you are not speaking yet. 

Move On To Output

Once you have done a lot of listening and learned a few thousand words, you will still not be fluent, but you will start to feel comfortable with the language. The big issue is that you can only understand, you cannot communicate yourself and you haven’t spoken a single word yet.

This is the point where you start to focus on output. This is now when you start to try and write and speak and also worry more about grammar.

You have laid your foundation of understanding and now you can actually start to build your skills and use the language.

You can still keep on listening, but really now you can focus on both input and output and just generally start to feel like you are becoming fluent in the language.

(You can read more about – The Input vs Output Language Learning Methods)

Conclusion

This article is a pretty basic overview, but it should still be detailed enough to get you started. You really only need to start learning words and listening. The more you do this, the better you will get. You actually have to put some effort in.

Actually try and learn a handful of new words every day and make sure you are listening to as much as you can, at least an hour, but hopefully much more.

If you put the effort in, you will see results and you will start understanding things and then you will feel comfortable moving to output and this is when you will really start to feel good.

Put the effort in, you will get there!

(You can read more about – How To Immerse Yourself In A New Language – A Practical Guide)