How to Learn a Foreign Language: Finding a Great Language Helper

So you want to learn Spanish, French, Japanese, or some other foreign language? Your first idea of how to learn it is probably to sign up for a class at a local college. But there are other ingenious ways of having an awesome, effective language learning experience! One method that is more self-directed and works wonderfully for many people is the “language helper” method. This method involves learning a language with the help of a very special person: your language helper!

What is a language helper? The language helper will be a friend and a great assistant to your language learning endeavor. But unlike the typical classroom teacher, your language helper doesn’t have to be someone educated as a teacher or professor. As a matter of fact, there have been some great language helpers who have not received a formal education at all! Your language helper is your facilitator, but not your teacher in the typical sense of that term.

So if a language helper isn’t technically your teacher, who is? This learning method is unique in that you, in one sense, are your own teacher! Simply put, you choose your own curriculum, you make the lesson plans, you direct your own learning! You formulate questions and activities around which a “language learning session” will be focused. For example, you may focus a lesson around learning grocery store vocabulary and phrases. You will bring your own props to the lesson, and the language helper will basically just “show up” and provide you with the most valuable part of the session: words, phrases and cultural insight in the target language and culture! Clearly, an important part of learning through this method will be coming up with your own great lesson plans! That’s not as hard as it may seem, and there are endless creative spins on a few simple language learning techniques.

But before you can put great lesson plans into practice and start learning a foreign language, you need to pick a good language helper. So let us focus on how to find an excellent language helper!