Immersing yourself in a language is by-far the best way to learn it. However, the process itself is difficult, frustrating, and exhausting. The following tips are things I have learned through experience to make the process as manageable as possible, while also giving yourself as many opportunities to practice and learn the language as possible.

1. Relax: Learning a language is a long, pain-staking process. You are guaranteed to have a number of highs and lows along the way, including days or even weeks when you feel you haven’t made any progress at all. This is completely normal, so DO NOT let it discourage you. As long as you keep your spirits up and keep practicing the language, your abilities WILL improve.

It is when you get discouraged and shut yourself off of the language that true progress stalls. This is actually a pretty common phenomenon. People get very frustrated by not being able to communicate, and instead of taking a short-break and putting things into perspective, they sub-consciously give up. Therefore the most important advice is to simply relax, give it time, and enjoy the journey.

2. Remember your goal: You aren’t trying to learn a new language so you can hit the best-seller list, write poetry, or even compete with other language learners. You are learning a new language so you can communicate with speakers of that language. Nothing else!

This means there is no reason to fear mistakes or worry about sounding silly, just try to get your point across. If nobody understands you, or you can’t understand anyone else, just keep trying. Your grammar doesn’t have to be correct, and the words don’t have to sound pretty, just get the point across.

3. Make it all a game: Learning a new language abroad is a great opportunity because it forces you to speak the language. Where classroom language students usually only practice the language for an hour or two a day, abroad you have the opportunity to practice 24 hours/day. However, that’s only if you have people to talk to. What do you do if nobody wants to talk to you, or you aren’t the type of personality that likes going up to random strangers as a way to practice the language.

A great way to find people that literally have to talk to you and to put your language abilities to practical use, is to give yourself mini-challenges. These mini-challenges are nothing more than trying to accomplish simple everyday tasks. Tasks like opening a library account, a bank account, buying something, or finding your way across town. You don’t have to actually open accounts or make purchases, but see if you can figure out how the process is accomplished. Salesmen will talk to you no matter what language you speak, and it’s great a good opportunity to practice the language under new but practical conditions.

4. Go out, have a drink: A significant factor in learning a new language is who you practice the language with. Some people can literally talk to anyone for hours, and for them practicing the language is not difficult. However, others, myself included, prefer to talk to people with similar interests.

I have lived with families abroad while learning both Spanish and Portuguese. However, in both experiences I really didn’t spend much time practicing the language with my family. Both families were very nice, genuine people, but we just didn’t have very much in common. As a result we pretty much only ever talked about how dangerous everything was, or the weather. The conversations were often quite boring, and as a result didn’t put much effort into them. For me, a more effective strategy has always been to go out, have a couple drinks, and meet native speakers that have interests similar to my own. I find that I am a lot more interested in fumbling my way through the language for hours at a time, because the topics and conversations are MUCH more interesting to me.

5. Write it all down: Learning a language isn’t about memorizing as many words or grammar rules as possible. It’s about developing an arsenal of phrases and strategies to get your point across in given situations. When out among the people you will encounter hundreds of situations where you don’t know how to communicate what you want, or when you learn the workings of a new phrase to add to your arsenal. This is great, but only if you can remember them. Everyday your brain will be overloaded with new words, rules, and phrases, that’s why it’s important to write it all down.

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