Learn English, Spanish and Other Foreign Languages Rapidly

The best way to learn a new language is to speak it with native speakers. If you can’t just bolt from work or school and fly to, say, Poland to learn how to woo supermodel Karolina Malinowska in her native tongue, you can settle for the next best things.

Mass media and instructional media are excellent substitutes. However, you should plot your progression with a good dose of commonsense. For instance, movies, songs and reading materials that use the language you want to learn can help, but not when you’re learning from scratch.

If you’re an ‘intermediate’ or ‘advanced’ learner, having already learned the basics well, watching foreign films or television shows exposes you to the colloquial aspect of the language, and that’s probably why you want to learn it in the first place. Nobody studies Japanese just to know what the manuals of some gizmos bought from Japan mean. Poeple who have been interestes in learing foreign languages quickly, have also shown interest in online foreign language learning. A good understanding of online foreign language learning is usefull.

These ‘audio-visual aids’ (movies and TV shows) will help you with the proper pronunciation of words, as well as the non-verbal signs that come with these: facial expressions, hand gestures, body language, the whole kinesics and ‘proxemics’ of the language.

Songs, poetry and opera (for Italian) can help too, but more on vocabulary building and the use of ‘elevated’ language. You can’t treat conversations like scenes in a musical, not even when you’re conversing with Italian singers. So keep a good playlist in your MP3 player. If it’s French you want to learn, The Beatles’ ‘Michelle’ is a good start. Julio and Enrique Iglesias can give you a good repertoire for your Spanish lessons.

If you’re an immigrant in any predominantly English-speaking country and you want to be better understood and appreciated at work and in the neighborhood, there are ESL (English as a second language) courses available, be they in classroom setting or self-help. And of course, mass media can bombard your senses and make acculturation easier.

For beginners, audio books are excellent learning aids. Language learning audio books are considered the most reliable means of learning any foreign language today. These audio guides constitute a complete, innovative way of integrating the conversational linguistic macro-skills, such as listening, reading and speaking, in language instruction.

Through language learning audio books, you’ll have excellent time to listen, speak along and even sing, with some learning programs embedded in these downloadable audio books. You can store the entire course in your iPod or any MP3 player and listen to it at your convenience.

The leading provider of language learning materials in audio book form is Pimsleur. Each audio book is designed for people who need to speak another language quickly: those who are about to be assigned to their companies’ overseas offices, students who qualify for exchange programs, journalists, intelligence officers, diplomats, etc. You can download these audio books from The Talking Book Store. Just visit online language learning.

The best thing about these audio books is that it teaches a language not as a subject in school, which is what classroom-setting learning and textbooks feel like. It’s the closest thing to learning Ms Malinowska’s mother tongue right in her Polish hometown.