How to learn a foreign language quickly and efficiently? (3 tips)

I received this question from readers of the portal and I think it is appropriate to share three tips from personal experience of learning English.

1. Take a firm decision

My main motivation to learn English was a willingness to use very good materials for studying the Bible that are in English and German, but mostly in English.Thus, being students together with my wife we could not afford to go to classes and pay, but I looked for a Russian autodidact textbook whose author was Petrova, and I began to study by myself. Almost everyone who saw me said that I would not succeed, that they had gone to classes and they had not succeeded, and I wanted to learn without a teacher… I heard what they say but I insisted to study the textbook to the end.This was a very good start, even if it was very hard to me.

2. Do not be defeated by shame (or pride)

Learning a language is not an easy thing and assume that you will do many mistakes in the speech and some will laugh at them.But, it is known that those who do not know what it means to learn a foreign language are those who laugh.Those who have made this effort will only appreciate you.Moreover, in any other field of activity only since you start to learn, you do it awkwardly and funny. Some people, when learning a foreign language, think too much at their own person, so that they are afraid not to make mistakes, so they don’t speak. Thus they will not be able to learn any language. And I do not know whether that is pride or shame. If you want to learn the language, you should insist to talk.

While I was learning according to the textbook of Petrova, the first time I saw someone speaking English, I approached them wanting to apply the gained knowledge. I do not remember what I said, but I remember someone who was behind me started to laugh and he couldn’t stop. I paid no attention to him.I was neither intimidated nor embarrassed, especially since the English speaker was very nice and he wanted to listen to me, to understand and discuss with me.

3. Use the opportunities

Later, I met with Dorel Ieşeanu, which was a student in high school, but knew English better. I taught him from God’s Word, and Dorel taught me English and he was very serious about that, so I could make a great progress in knowledge of the language.

At that time, I have already studied all the courses of the inductive Bible study series “Precept upon Precept” by Kay Arthur, translated into Romanian by Mia and Costel Oglice. When I visited the translators who are my teachers and my mentors, they offered me English books, which had not yet been translated. So, I started studying the Bible in English and I started with Revelation, part III.It was very difficult in the beginning, and sometimes I had to spend hours to study a page, to translate all the words and to understand the meaning, but I insisted and I completed the whole bookl, then Revelation part IV, then Daniel and so on.Studying the Bible in English helped me enormously to learn this language.

4. Help others

Because I saw how much has helped and helps me the knowledge of English, when God has given me the opportunity I wanted to help others. Visiting a youth camp, I met with seven Christian girls who knew very well English and two of them were teaching it at the university. I called them together and I challenged them to work on a textbook that will be based on the most effective methods of learning a language, and the text would be based on the Gospel of Mark.It took a year to write this textbook, which was entitled “English for a New Life” and requested a great effort from all of us.Then, after the textbook was printed, we opened an English school and started preparing qualified teachers.Now, our method is widely used in Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and even Nepal and Afghanistan.

If you want to convince yourself the effectiveness of the method, we invite you to learn with us.

But how did you learn you a foreign language? Write a comment and share your experience that may be helpful to others.

Translated by Felicia Rotaru