Reddit post: 10 years, 8 countires, 6 languages: What I've learned about learning languages

A great article with lots of advice about language learning. It closely matches my personal experience so far which will help to keep me motivated to continue with the way that I'm learning Russian.

The main points that are covered in the article.

So, here are the most important lessons I've learned:

  1. Think in ideas, not words 

  2. "A mediocre workout done religiously outperforms a perfect workout never done"

  3. Going abroad is a force multiplier: if you're not making progress at home, you won't magically begin improving just because you uproot your life

  4. You'll overestimate how much you need to know to begin doing cool things in a language and underestimate the gap between that point and fluency

  5. You will learn as well as you need to learn to do what your lifestyle demands of you, no better or worse; if you’re stuck, light a fire somewhere 

  6. Achieving fluency means you know one more language; you'll be the same person you are now, for better and worse, plus one language

  7. "There's only two sorts of problems: 51/49 problems and 100/0 problems," and most things in life (and language learning) are 51/49 problems.

  8. Some things are best learned with less hours and more days; other things are best learned with more hours and less days; a lot of learning boils down to figuring out which things are which

  9. Your brain will figure a lot of shit out by itself, if you let it

  10. Knowledge is a spectrum, not a binary; this is at the root of many (most?) early learning hurdles


You can read the whole article here.

10 years, 8 countires, 6 languages: What I've learned about learning languages

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