How to learn a new language from scratch: Step-by-Step Guide

You've been trying to learn languages but not getting results?

I've got good news for you.

You're not bad at languages.

You're simply not doing it right.

What you need is a system that works.

Hi, my name is Mikel Telleria and I am the expert in language learning. I speak 12 languages. I can help you learn any language in less than three months.

I am about to show you the best and fastest way to learn a language.

Let's get started.

The Alphabet:

If the language you're trying to learn has a different alphabet...

You're going to ignore it completely at first.

Yes, you heard that right.

If the language has a different writing system.

Ignore it for now.

You didn't learn to read and write before you learned to understand and speak your native language, did you?

Trying to learn a foreign alphabet when you can't understand spoken language is a massive waste of time.

It will slow you down immensely.

Let's learn the language phonetically instead.

Forget the alphabet.

The 3 main things you need to learn are:

1. Vocabulary

2. Grammar

3. Pronunciation

Vocabulary:

You can't understand a language if you don't know the words.

It's as simple as that.

You need to learn a lot of words.

Thousands of words.

Don't listen to those people talking about the Pareto Principle and most common word lists.

You need to learn a lot more than that to understand and speak well.

Then there is...

Grammar:

Understanding how grammar works is important, but not as important as knowing vocabulary.

If you learn a lot of vocabulary but not much grammar.

You'll be able to understand quite well.

You'll also be able to speak, even if you make a lot of mistakes.

But eventually you'll need to understand how grammar works to communicate effectively.

Pronunciation:

The third ingredient is pronunciation.

Even if you know enough vocabulary and grammar, if you don't know the correct pronunciation of the language you won't be able to understand what you hear.

If your pronunciation is terrible, native speaker often won't be able to understand you.

And sometimes, some of them will understand you but they will judge you because of your terrible accent.

This is how the world works, I don't make the rules.

People will judge you.

So...

Learning the correct pronunciation is extremely important.

Both to understand and to speak the language.

Learning Vocabulary, Grammar and Pronunciation FAST

The best way to learn a lot of vocabulary, all the grammar and the right pronunciation is a combination of Massive Input and Memorisation by Association.

Basically you take some content and you read and listen to it over and over again, memorising the vocabulary with associations.

Start with beginner level content.

Switch to intermediate level content when you're ready.

Personally I like to move on to authentic materials as soon as possible.

Articles, books, podcasts and YouTube videos.

Always the same routine until you understand everything:

1. Read the texts.

2. Listen to the audio repeteadly.

3. Memorise vocabulary with Associations.

Speaking

Ok but what about speaking?

Are you supposed to become fluent just by reading and listening?

No, of course not.

In order to get good at speaking, you need to practice speaking.

Unlike some grifters and frauds out there giving you worthless advice.

Telling you things like "simply immerse yourself in the language" or "just move to the country where they speak the language" and "just talk to native speakers".

I've got some practical, actionable advice you can easily implement on your own.

The only thing you need is a computer with internet access.

Speaking is divided in three main sub-skills:

1. Fluency: the ability to express yourself smoothly and effortlessly.

2. Accuracy: making the least amount of grammar and vocabulary mistakes possible.

3. Pronunciation: sounding as similar as possible to a native speaker.

You need to improve at these three skills as much as possible.

You can do it at home on your own with these simple exercises.

Fluency

There are 2 main exercises you can do on your own to improve your fluency in the language:

1. Language Islands.

2. Questions & Answers.

Language Islands are groups of sentences for a specific topic or situation.

You memorise and practice them until you can say them effortlessly.

Doing this with good 1,000 sentences is enough to become conversational in any language fast.

If you want to do this go watch my step-by-step tutorials.

Or sign up for the Natural Language Learning course, where you can get my Language Islands with 1,000 sentences to use them for any languages.

The Q&A exercise is for intermediate and advanced levels.

Basically a list of questions about a specific topic that you have to answer in speaking.
This is excellent training for real conversation.

Because it forces you to think fast and answer in the moment.

You can find some lists online, create your own with AI or use mine from the NLL course.

Accuracy

This is the best and only exercise you will ever need to learn grammar in a new language.

Translation into the language.

You simply have to take a bilingual text (or create your own).

Translate into the target language mentally.

Saying the sentence in the target language aloud.

And comparing it with the original translation.

Repeat it aloud correctly if you got it wrong.

You can do this in writing as well.

Although it's more time consuming.

Doing this daily is all you need to learn all the grammar and fix all the mistakes.

The Language Islands I talked about in the previous part are perfect to start with this exercise.

Pronunciation

Finally, let's talk about pronunciation.

There are 2 main exercises you need to do:

1. Listen & repeat

2. Shadowing

You need to listen and repeat native speaker sentences aloud.

Hundreds of them every day.

Trying to sound as close as possible.

Imitating the accent and intonation.

Shadowing is the same but simultaneous instead of pausing after the sentences.

Remember that for this to be effective.

You need massive amounts of listening time.

Ok but how do I implement all this?

The Plan

Now what you need is a simple plan that includes all these things.

To improve your comprehension and speaking skills daily.

A simple plan that will help you stay consistent with the exercises.

If you aren't already, I recommend using a daily planner and including all these exercises there.

I recommend starting with 30 minutes of reading and vocabulary memorisation a day plus 30 minutes of listening as a beginner.

And adding 30 minutes of speaking exercises once you understand a decent amount.

Don't worry about the intermediate plateau.

You just have to keep going.

Keep doing these exercises and adding more and more complex content and topics for the reading, listening and speaking practice.

And that's it!

Keep doing this and you'll reach fluency in a matter of months.

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And if you want to become an efficient language learning machine, join the Natural Language Learning course.