How To Learn A Second Language
- Author:Shelly
- Source:Original
- Release on:2014-07-29
Italian cardinal Joseph Caspar Mezzofanti was said to have spoken more than 38 languages fluently at the time of his death in 1849, a skill that would have been imminently useful in today's globalized economy.
Unfortunately, most people nowadays have trouble recalling anything more complex than "Dónde está la biblioteca?" decades after their last high school Spanish lesson.
So we set out to uncover what's involved in learning a foreign language as an adult, which methods work best and how you can maintain your new exotic tongue once you've got it down.
The tricks to maintaining foreign fluency are very similar to the methods used to achieve it--you have to practice.
"Maintaining a language is a matter of dedicating enough time to it," says DeKeyser. "You need to interact with native speakers. Make every possible effort to speak the learned language on a daily basis."
