Parrot Time Magazine

Learn how to write

1. Learn linking words

Linking words connect ideas among sentences. If you are not familiar with linking words, they are words you can see in the beginning of the sentence or in the middle of a sentence. Some of the examples are "because", "then", "so that", to name a few. As you are reading, you will see these words repeatedly, and soon after that, you will realize that these words are special words that you will quickly remember. Omitting any of these words would make the sentence sounds unnatural or even bad.

Because linking words are important in either speech or writing, they can be the priority to learn because you sound better and more fluent when you incorporate them into your speech. To my astonishment, linking words are not commonly taught in language classes.

2. Learn writing skill

If you want to write well, you need to practice writing. However, it is recommended to learn how other people write before you write. Learn their writing styles, pay attention to the punctuations, learn how they start the first paragraph and how they finish the last paragraph. Learn also how they explain the main topic of the writing, and how many lines in a paragraph they use or how many paragraph per subtopic they have.

3. Learn how to construct sentences

When you read, you get comprehensible input of the language. That is how you can understand the meaning. However, your understanding doesn't guarantee your proficiency. If you can understand 90% of a text, it doesn't mean you are able to explain the main topic easily. It is because your brain needs to think of words and grammatical rules and how to combine all of these as you are constructing sentences.

By frequent reading, you can get ready-to-use sentences that you can mix and match together, or substitute part of it with part of other sentence. For example, you see "I want to go home because my mom is waiting" and "You want to eat because you are hungry", then you can make a sentence by using parts of these sentences "I want to go home because you are hungry". It might be ridiculous but this method is effective to train your brain.

4. Learn conversation

Imagine you are in a situation where you meet someone who can converse with you, and both of you start asking questions and answering to each other. You can use your imagination to create dialogues by having one character to ask questions and the other character answer the questions. When you are more experienced, you can even create more formal dialogues, such as closing a business deal or speaking in a business meeting. Imagine yourself being the main character, what would you say and how would you say it? Create the picture in your mind so you can be better-prepared when you face the situation in real.

Not just language learning

1. Read about other cultures and customs

Almost every language learner I know mentioned that they also learn about other cultures when they learn a new language. Some others even stated that their motivation of learning a new language is because they like the culture of the speakers. Language is certainly more than just a communication tool. It has history that evolves with time.

Have you ever wondered why most countries in Latin America have Spanish as their official languages? Why English is the most popular international language nowadays? Or why Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French are similar? When you learn a language, you can also learn about the story behind these facts, about the language past, present, and future.

2. Read about the latest information

I like to read news articles and I read it every day. It is much more fun when you can read news from different countries news agencies and read about what is happening in other side of the world in different languages. Although there are also news from a country that is available in several languages in order to reach a greater scope of readers.

You may also find that some information is reserved much more in the original language than in foreign languages where it is usually translated. This kind of information is usually more detailed information, such as about the local history or any news that is not big enough to reach worldwide market.

3. Be able to use different perspective and different way of thinking

Besides knowing the latest news, you can also learn how to see matters from different perspectives. For instance, American media must have different point of view towards Middle Eastern countries than Indonesian media. You can only acquire this knowledge when you know different languages.

When you see things from different perspectives, you will tend to have an independent thinking rather than just believing. If someone commented negatively about something, it doesn't mean that the fact is as what is commented. Having the capability to think independently makes you a critical thinker, you would never jump into the conclusion before thinking about it twice or thrice.

4. Increase knowledge

On top of everything, learning language through reading benefits everyone in many aspects. You can learn about vocabulary, grammar, phrases, writing skills, and you can even get the latest information and be a critical thinker. You can even create your own phrasebook that you can use to learn any languages and you can learn quickly because you prioritize some words and phrases that are essential for you in real conversation.

Knowing more languages certainly gives your more opportunities to talk with people from different backgrounds, and thus, you get to learn about their way of life and mindset. By the time you reach this phase, you will feel that this world is not that small as what you used to believe. There are much more to uncover when you leave your comfort zone, such as speaking foreign languages. You will start to accept and cherish differences that we have as human beings.

Teddy is an avid language learner, blogger, engineer, and a collector. He has a dream to make this world a better place through language learning. Apart from learning languages, he also likes reading and playing ukulele. You can speak with him in Medan Hokkien, Indonesian, English, Chinese Mandarin, Spanish, and Esperanto. Visit his blog at www.neeslanguageblog.com