Bonjour!Hola! Hello teenAGErs. Today we are going to talk about learning a language. Learning a language can truly be fulfilling. Not only does it look great on resumes, but it can open a world of opportunities to you, so it’s something worth venturing into. Enough of the lecturing , here is how you do it.

Things you need: Internet access, small notepad, pen, motivation and time.

Step 1: Establish which language or languages you want to learn. This is the easiest step really. Remember you don’t have to do Spanish or French, even though this might help you at school if you are taking them. Be daring! Pick a language that you are truly curious about.

Step 2: Find a medium by which you will learn the material. This step is a little trickier because it depends on your resources and personality. You could enroll in language classes (there are a ton), as some are offered by local universities and others by language schools. However, for those of us whose pockets may not be so heavy, or the thought of being in a classroom in the summer is not your style, you can try websites. There are those websites that charge you a small fee, but there are too many free resources on the web for you to really be paying money to learn a language. So put away those credit cards (well, your parent’s), and log on to www.duolingo.com and www.memrise.com. These sites provide you with free lessons for a whole bunch of languages.

Step 3: Start with the most common words. This might seem obvious, but you might overlook the simple words like ‘Hi, my name is….’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. It is usually recommended that you start with the 100 most common words. Building your vocabulary with simple words will encourage you to learn more words, and you find that you can express yourself easier in the target language.

Step 4: Practice Practice Practice. You will not become fluent in a language overnight. Getting a small notepad and pen is a great way to scribble down all the new words you learnt. If you are more the ‘techy’ type you could use OneNote or whichever writing interface you prefer to make the notes. Set down a couple minutes a day to practice. If you did take the classroom route, make sure to do all the exercises given to you, they will honestly help you.

Step 5:Immersion. The downside to learning a language online is that you miss the conversational aspect of it, and the robot-like pronunciations don’t always cut it. This is why you need to supplement your learning by immersing yourself in the language. You can log on to YouTube and type in the language you are learning and tons of videos will pop up that help with pronunciation. Please watch them. If that sounds too boring you can try finding songs and tv shows online (YouTube is good for this too) and put on the subtitles. Read up on countries that speak the language, find native speakers, try finding books – just immerse yourself in it.

Step 6: Don’t give up. Honestly, it will get hard at some point when the not-so-fun conjugations hit you, and you think you sound weird when you try to speak the language. Don’t worry, there are tons of tips online from people just like you that tried to learn the language, and overcame the challenges. Read them from time to time. Keep motivated.

That’s it for this week guys. Boa Sorte! Good Luck!