sábado, 18 de maio de 2013

How to learn Norwegian (or any language)

I have not written any posts this year. In addition to classes I will hopefully manage to write a complete learning from A-Z in stages on my homepage Norwegian Learning. At best it will take a long time to finish. At worst it will be too demanding to finish.

What I'm writing about here is the demands and tips to learn a language in general and Norwegian in particular.
1. Learning a new language require a lot of work. If your motivation is to learn some languages and Norwegian is more or less randomly chosen you will probably quit before you reach your end goals.

2. To learn Norwegian you will need to study on a semi-regular schedule. Start with a simple grammatical element and learn it properly by studying a little every day. The law of diminishing returns does not apply to language learning. Doubling your efforts will more than double your learning.

3. Take control of the learning process but use the assistance of a tutor. The bulk of your learning process will have to be done by yourself and not in classes. If you don't study yourself but only learn in the classes your process will be very slow indeed. Instead you should study a lot between classes and the tutor should be able to correct your errors, answer your doubts and provide you enough tasks for you to do between classes. Just studying on your own has the risk creating bad habits that are very difficult to change later.

4. Use good tools and materials. Which learning materials are the best varies from person to person. Some prefer to learn language with grammar books while others prefer to use mostly texts and audio. In addition to this material there are other tools you should use. One I and many other like to use is ANKI. This is a free program using flash cards. That you have to fill in the data yourself is not to be considered a disadvantage. It will make it much easier to remember what you fill in.
Another resource that can be very useful is the tasks provided by the site of the main book used in Norwegian language schools - Pa Vei. The tasks can be found for Pa vei 2004 and Pa Vei 2012. In addition, try to get good verb list in order to remember the conjugations of basic Norwegian verbs.

Following the above rules, Norwegian is not a particularly difficult language to learn. As with all languages, however, if you are only somewhat motivated to learn the language it is very difficult to learn. If you seriously are willing to do the work - you can get very well on your way in less than 6 months.

If you are looking for a Norwegian tutor you should visit my site to Learn Norwegian.