How to Teach Yourself a Foreign Language

Version 1.11.4: Last updated 2025-01-12

Introduction

Welcome to my guide to how to teach yourself a language, a practical guide containing the skills and strategies you need to learn any language as effectively and quickly as possible. Whether this is your first time learning a language or you’ve already started, this guide will provide you with the essential tools to take you from an absolute beginner through to upper-intermediate in a way that is practical, insightful, and easy to follow.

How this guide works

This guide is not like your typical language learning book. Many books begin by selling you on the benefits of language learning, telling you anecdotes, or ask you to consider a routine, all before you even know where to start! This guide does away with all the fluff and gets straight to the essentials.

The next thing you need to know is that there is no single correct way to learn a language. Because of this, I won’t be simply giving you a single best technique. I won’t even be telling you what I do personally. Instead, I’ve distilled the best insights and strategies from language learners around the world and combined them into a single resource that will let you build a technique that works for you.

You don’t need to read the full guide before you begin learning. The key chapter is Resources, but I recommend you read at least until the end of Activities. After that, you don’t even need to read the chapters in order.

To help you, here is a breakdown of the chapters:

• The Essentials—These take you through the basics

  • Before you start—Key info to know before you begin
  • Resources—The main chapter, containing guidance on resources
  • Activities—The best activities to do with your resources
  • Your Study Routine—Covers your study habits

• Advice for Beginners—These explain how to use your resources well

  • Input
  • Grammar
  • Vocabulary
  • Flashcards
  • Speaking
  • Pronunciation

• Advice for Intermediate Learners—Advice that, while useful for everyone, is more targeted at intermediate learners

  • Moving to the Intermediate Stage—Advice on how your study changes later on
  • How to Learn Your Language—Provides a framework you can use to build your ability
  • Choosing What to Study—Helps you think about your strengths and weaknesses, and provides some ideas for improving

• Extras—Some more advice on specific topics

  • Mistakes—Ideas on how to deal with mistakes
  • Building Your Own Method—Guidance for those looking to diverge from following the standard activities
  • Becoming Conversational in Lots of Languages—Some people like to learn lots of languages less deeply, and this section shows you how it’s done
  • Learning Theory—A set of ideas about learning more generally, applied to language learning
  • The Final Chapter—A quick summary with some parting words from me

Though there may seem to be a lot of information here, think of it as an investment. If you start with a bit of theory now, you will save time in the long run by doing it better the first time.

Principles

Principles are the basic underlying rules and ideas that enable you to be an effective language learner. If there is something I want to highlight as especially important, you will usually find it displayed as a principle in a blue box as seen below. The key to principles is that they apply broadly in your learning, so you should be paying close attention to them and thinking about where else you can apply them.¹

Principle: Example
This is an example principle.

About me

In case you were wondering about me, I’m a long-time language learner who moderates the r/languagelearning community on Reddit. I have spent a lot of time learning languages, learning how to learn them, and searching the web for answers to common questions. Over that time, I’ve gained a lot of insight into what a beginner needs to start. That’s what I’m aiming to share with you here.

Contact

If you think something is missing, you have any queries, or would just like to say thanks, I’d love to hear from you! Please use the contact form here.

Support

The guide on this website is the main section of The Language Learner’s Handbook. The rest of the guide contains even more to help you become a confident and effective language learner and is available as an ebook. Check here for more info.

This guide has taken many hundreds of hours of research and writing to create. If you like what you see, the best way you can help me is to share it with anyone in your life who is thinking about learning a language. If you would like to thank me in a slightly more tangible way, please consider buying me a coffee or purchasing the guide.

Click here to start your journey

1. Many principles you will sometimes hear called “language hacks” elsewhere online, though this is somewhat of a misnomer. Elaboration can be found in the section Why is the term “language hacks” a misnomer? ↩