A Look at The Best Ways to Improve Your Foreign Language Skills

There is just no better way to reach fluency in your foreign language skills if you’re missing out on the critical aspect of fluency. Learning a new language isn’t just a thing—it’s an awesome way of advancing in your career—or even enjoying yourself by watching your favorite foreign movie.

However, if you want to reach fluency, you must put more practice into the speech part of it. With that said, speaking—or frequently engaging in longer conversations with native speakers can greatly influence your proficiency level.

Accordingly, it might help if you also know about the common problem for many language learners who are only focusing their full attention on the rules and proper writing but fail to practice their speech.

The issue is that they are almost often choking during a real conversation—and they’re also finding it harder to understand when the natives are speaking their language. To help you get better, and reach fluency—perhaps it’s much better if you checked the below awesome ways of how to improve language skills.

Platforms That Will Help You Learn any Language Online

The dawn of technology has made it especially easy in a way you can learn any language online today. Some of them are packed with audio and visuals to help you find balance in other languages by learning it from the native speakers. 

Be sure to try any of these apps which can help you learn any language online, or improve your language proficiency. They offer you different tutors and professional teachers to work on your language skills with the help of 1-on-1 lessons. There are 4 best platforms: LiveXP, iTalki, Verbling, Preply. If you’re at the very beginning of your learning journey, feel free to use Duolingo that will help you master greetings and teach you to build sentences.

Talking When You’re Reading or Writing

Writing is a very crucial aspect that shouldn’t be overlooked, especially when it comes to learning a new language. Likewise, it’s also very essential that you complete different exercises which challenge you to pick a word that fits best in a given phrase, to answer questions, or to write texts for emails and articles.

Further, the best way to increase your chance of reaching fluency when you’re reading, or writing is to talk it out loud. Although you may sound a little silly, mimicking a native’s accent when you’re practicing also helps to find balance in other languages.

Thinking in a Foreign Language

There is just no other way to score higher in a foreign language if you’re only thinking in your native language and doing some mental translations. However, if you can get yourself in the habit of thinking in a foreign language—people might as well start considering you as a fluent speaker of the language.

Although it may be a bit hard to start thinking 100 percent in a foreign language—especially at the beginning of your practice—this simple tactic can slowly but surely propel you forward. So, try to think in your target language, and you’ll be glad you did!

Try thinking about most of the simplest words that are often used in daily conversations, and carefully translate them into your preferred foreign language. For example, you can think about how to order a meal, or how to ask for directions—or anything else. Just remember to make it a daily habit, and see how fast you’ll be able to reach fluency.

Watching Movies With Subtitles

Apart from learning languages online, spending some time watching foreign movies and imitating how the characters are talking is also an awesome way of reaching fluency in a foreign language. But if you watch the movies without subtitles—you’re always missing the fun, and won’t reach fluency easily.   

While subtitles might seem a little destructive and somewhat boring—they play a particular role in helping you to correctly capture the speech you’re trying so hard to hear from the film. To extract speaking lessons from a foreign movie, there are some phrases in the film that might help the process.

Moreover, if you’re watching a foreign film with subtitles, and you don’t understand some words—it will be easier if you write it down and look for the meaning. Accordingly, it also helps to say the words by mimicking the native’s accent to see if you can get it right.