18 FUN ways to learn any language 🍃 tips, resources, ideas

Are you bored of your language learning routine, friend? Need something to spice it up? Well how 'bout 18 things? HAHAH, today I wanted to share with y'all how I keep my language studies from feeling too much like.. well, studies. Let me know which ones you'll be making a part of your routine!

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📚 My language learning resources and templates:

☕️ buy me a coffee (if you are so inclined!)
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💌 social media:

📷 instagram:

🐥 twitter:

🎵 spotify w/ english, german, spanish, and portuguese playlists

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💌 about me: my name is Elysse, I'm 22 years old from the southern U.S. I've been learning languages for about 8 years, and I speak English (native), Spanish (C2), German (B2/C1), Portuguese (B2), French (B1/B2), American Sign Language (advanced), and Turkish (A1). I'm interested in learning Hebrew, Chinese, Georgian, and maybe Náhuatl as well :)

#polyglot #languagelearning #languagelearningtips

00:00 bored of your language routine? let's talk about it
00:44 do crossword puzzles!
01:24 study (in-depth) with music
02:17 learn a new dialect!
03:25 join the language community
04:23 do a lang exchange (irl or online!)
05:19 do your hobbies in your T.L.
05:54 join Skillshare!
07:39 read kids' books (srsly)
08:34 learn your T.L. BACKWARDS
09:14 try laddering ~
09:44 play video games in another lang
10:29 cook with multilingual recipes
11:02 watch reality tv (PLEASE HAHAH)
11:43 watch vlogs!
12:24 keep a diary in your T.L.!
13:40 homestays, always
15:00 watch dubbed cartoons
16:15 find a penpal!
17:32 record yourself (a lot)

[blu]

Okay, I cannot stress this enough, on how learning languages by using music to study has helped me. I studied French in highschool and was pretty average. After 4 years I decided to get back to French. I picked my current favourite song in French and really tried to pay attention to the lyrics just by listening every day (in my daily routine) Then I wrote them down and tried to properly pronounce them. Then I tried picking words that I knew what they meant and translated the rest by trial and error. By doing this I progressed so much not just with French. I now know the most basic words used in 2-3 languages by doing these things with songs.

[desexplicando]

8:13 Reading children's books can be surprising because we realize, while we learn a language (as grown-ups), there are lots of gaps. Simple words kids know and we don't just because we were too prideful to read a simple and yet rich book.

[andruska]

I had crush on a girl in Mexico when I visited, we exchanged letters for a year…helped my language learning tremendously, so excited to open her letters…

[themikafiles]

This video was exactly what I needed! I've been struggling lately with staying consistent while still trying to keep it fun, and this was super helpful. Goodluck to everyone and their learning journey <3

[Indigo]

I’m currently learning German and was considering playing games in the language because I thought it’d be helpful and then this came out so I’ll definitely try that. The recording myself speaking sounds like a cool idea too

[LenKa]

In my personal experience, watching SpongeBob in Russian has been such a game changer for me. I've been learning Russian for the last few months now, and damn I've had hard times trying to understand podcasts or shows or music or whatever it is, but with cartoons like SpongeBob or Cheburashka (which is a soviet cartoon) I feel like all these months of effort are finally paying off. I highly recommend watching cartoons, specially if these are not foreign cartoons; that's a great advantage for Russian learners, there are a lot of soviet cartoons which you can easily find online or cartoons made for kids to learn Russian; these last ones are great, you can try finding cartoons meant for kids to learn their native language.
Great video Elysse 😎

[karly]

I have watched The bachelor and Greece's next top model to learn Greek slang and people usually shame me for it so it felt good to know that other people do it to 😀

[jupitercivilian]

16:15 Personally I recommended the app Slowly. It's an app where you can write to ppl that have your same interest all around the world. You can find penpals through a simple research on the app if you put your languages (and your level in those languages) and the interests you have and the app recommend you some ppl you might like to talk to. You can filter out ppl too in your research. Also everyone can create a little cute avatar to interact with other ppl. The fun thing (or not, it depends on who use the app lol) is that the letter will take a bit to get to the other person, depending on where that person is situated, exactly like it would happen if you sent a letter irl.

[michaeltrajkovski]

Here are some of my thoughts on the video:

2:16 I feel that when you try to learn a different dialect, it becomes a slippery slope of learning a different language. I remember trying to learn Austrian German by reading news from South Tyrol, Italy which turned into trying to learn Cimbrian. About 6 years ago, someone dubbled a lot of 2012 viral videos in Luxembourgish; it is really funny to hear if you speak German.
7:40 Reading books in German is nice because one can finally see the simple past being used. It also helps one build up the cultural knowledge of the language. I am currently reading the play Faust, so I can understand the meaning behind "the Faustian Spirit". One can also notice the differences in when the spelling reforms took place. z.B. daß anstatt dass.
9:50 Playing video games in different languages depends on the language as well as the game. With some games, the message gets lost in translation/poorly translated. When I am playing Grand Theft Auto Vice City on the Switch, it says "Außer Gefecht" anstatt "Wasted" and everything else gets toned down completely. Pokemon is an absolute pain because one has to relearn all of the pokemon's names, moves, abilities. Animal Crossings is actually very good because one learn words that are not frequently used as well as the game makes puns about the animals when you catch them. In Mario Sunshine, the German version feels like one is a tourist in Italy and the English version feels like a fantasy land. The localization really makes a difference.
16:15 If one wants to find a penpal, Slowly is a good app. It is completely anonymous, so one does not have to worry about the strange people amongst us. One can also filter the people by language skill, country, and topic.

Overall, it is a great video, and I really enjoy your content.

[GladysHunnam]

When I was 12/13 ish I learnt a lot of vocabulary watching the Shrek movies with english subtitles, so I highly recommend that metod :)

[skamiikaze]

Yes to the crosswords! They're also useful for learning pop culture

[parkin_it]

Yess I used to love doing crosswords in another language!! I took German all thru high school and my teacher would give them to us as practice! So much fun!!

[JuanCarlos-ezyn]

It is so wonderful to have such a lovely girl in the multitask life of learning a language and I barely see such kindness in language learners I thank this girl for being a great motivation to all that are learning a new language.

[MetamorphosisTetr]

Here is a little tip : I listen to music a lot, like straight 2-3 hours per day. One day i was just looking for new bands and i ve noticed, i've never listened any German metal bands before when i just saw Rammstein's Herzeleid album. I just loved their music, and obsessed with them and Neue Deutsche Härte. After this i started to learn German by Translating the lyrics to english and memorising the German lyrics. With this method i memorised like %75 percent of their songs lyrics, this made me to have a decent German knowledge, then i did practiced a lot by grammer books and stuff.



The idea of this method is : Learning language is a something that you can made with emotions. If you have any positive emotion or love to a specific country or language you get a boost. I already had a love for Germany and when i see Neue Deutsche Härte, it made the progress even easier. But for example i can't learn french easily because, I am not insterested in French movies, music, things from France and i dont have any French friends. I don't have any emotional connection with France/French makes the learning harder.

Good luck for everyone ❤

[lucassouza-xfgk]

It is very nice to have someone to pratice and learn language together. I've been practice english with a guy from Colombia, and i noiticed that since I've started to talk to someone in english may conversation skills has become better. I'm a native speaker of brazilian portuguese, I'm interested in learning english, japanese, chinese and german. I've just started to read some books in english to learn new words.

[laurakaramcruz]

I gotta comment again, lol! Also, trying to vlog in my target languages (German and Arabic) has been super fun while also forcing me to improve my skills. You inspire me a lot, Elysse 🤗💪🏽

[jennafloww]

This was such a helpful video! Sometimes it’s too easy to get caught up in trying to achieve a high level with a language that we forget to have fun. I’m definitely going to be using some of these methods!❤

[laurakaramcruz]

I learn a lot from music too! Been listening to a lot of songs in Lebanese Arabic lately and it does really help me😀

[CouchPolyglot]

I love playing video games in other languages, penpals or tandems help a lot too, yeah! :)

[lumv]

i've seen other videos talking about new ways to learn a language but none was as interesting as yours!!! it made me eager to study languages more, thanks for the tips <3