10 Hacks I've Used To Learn Foreign Languages Faster—And Will Help You Too
03 May 2025 #miscLearning languages turned out to be the most valuable skill I’ve learned.
It took me about 2 years to learn English and a couple more years to speak with confidence. I went to a traditional language school to get a diploma. Lots of grammar and “repeat after me” exercises.
But I learned French, my second foreign language, in about a year and a half. I did it on my own with tutors and at my own pace.
These are 10 tricks I’ve used (and recommend) to learn any language faster:
#1. Forget about grammar. Focus on your pronunciation. When I started studying English, I was obsessed with grammar. On the first day at my language school, our teacher asked us to open a textbook to start learning rules and exceptions. Later, I devoured Grammar in Use, a popular English textbook. But perfect grammar means nothing if you can’t get your points across. Work on your pronunciation first.
#2. Learn phrases, not words. It’s tempting to start memorizing individual words. A, aardvark, abacus, abandon, abase… Unless you want to sound like Tarzan, you need more than individual words. Start with simple phrases for casual conversations and combine them like Lego bricks.
#3. Change your phone language. That’s the easiest way to be immersed in your target language. We keep our phones with us all the time, even when going to bed. Turn them into language-learning companions.
#4. Change your phone’s alarm sound to a song. Again, an easy way to immerse yourself in your target language. Make sure you wake up to do something you love, or you’ll hate that song.
#5. Create your own phrasebook. List situations you’ll face when using your target language and the phrases you’ll need for them. Learning a language for your next vacation isn’t the same as learning it for a job interview. Use AI here as your tutor.
#6. Create flashcards with phrases from #2 and #5 and study them in every free slot in your agenda. Use spaced-repetition software like Anki for that.
#7. Use AI to generate stories with the most common words. Try this prompt: “Act as an expert tutor in <target language>, generate a 200-word story in the present tense about <favorite topic> using the 100 most common words.” Then use a text-to-speech tool to generate audio for that story. Boom! Enough material to practice reading and listening. Again, remember to learn words in the context of phrases. That’s from #2.
#8. Learn filler words and connectors to sound like a native. Learn the “you know,” “and uh,” and “isn’t it?” to help your words flow naturally like a native speaker.
#9. Watch children’s stories multiple times. Watch each time with a different focus. The first time, watch to understand the story. The second, with subtitles on, to read along. The third, to identify words you don’t know. This way, you can squeeze the most out of a single story.
#10. Consume content about your hobbies in your target language. Okay, call me a nerd. But when I got back home from university, a long time ago in a galaxy far away, I watched lectures on YouTube about the same topics I had covered that day. I learned new words and practiced my listening skills while reinforcing the material I was covering. You don’t have to be a nerd like me. Replace university classes with hobbies or skills you want to learn. Win-win!
I hope I have no grammar errors here. That would be embarrassing after saying I devoured Grammar in Use. Anyway, learning a language has been my best career move and an AI helped me proofread this.