Many people study foreign languages for years without ever becoming fluent, yet they have all possible resources to hand. Others learn a foreign language with almost no resources at all. The difference lies in the approach and the strategies employed. Here are some simplified steps to teaching yourself Spanish, Japanese, or any other foreign language.
1. Buy a Good Foreign Language Program: A good program has lots of listening components which are based on real language use, and include sentence level passages such as conversations.
2. Listen Listen Listen Listen to passages multiple times, without reading. When you read and listen, you are mainly focused on reading as we are accustomed to learning by reading. But you must listen, and only listen, to improve listening comprehension. Listen many times. Then repeat. Then check the script and listen again. Also try and listen to TV programs, music, movies, and whatever else is available.
3. Listen and Repeat Listen and repeat, increasing the size of the "chunk" that you can handle, again without reading. Pay attention to pronunciation and intonation.
4. Talk a Lot If you have nobody to talk to, talk to yourself. Out loud. Make up conversations and practice them out loud. Or, find a native speaker to talk to. Better yet, join a language learning club or group where only he target language is used, and practice. Or get a partner who wants to learn English and do a language exchange.
5. Make Mistakes We learn through our mistakes. Get someone to correct you and pay attention. Don't be afraid to speak for fear of making mistakes - it's inevitable, natural and useful.
6. Learn Grammar by Using It: Don't study 6 verb tenses and expect to be able to use any of them. Study one structure, and use it until it's second nature.
7. Read and Write: Even if you only want to learn to speak the language, reading and writing can help. Reading is the best way to increase vocabulary and internalize linguistic structures. Read something that you are interested in and can enjoy for the content; for example, if you're a sports lover, read about sports. And write about something you are interested in as well. Writing will help you express yourself in the language at a higher grammatical level.
As a foreign language teacher and lover of languages, I've found the above strategies to be very useful when studying alone. Of course it's best to be in-country and do total immersion programs, but not everyone can do these, and that shouldn't stop you from learning.
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