The fastest way to learn your target language is by direct practice*. This means immersing yourself in target language content and listening and speaking from day one.

However, unless the language you’re learning is very familiar to a language you already know, you’ll probably be quite lost when you dive in head first and start listening/reading content in your target language.

Being lost is totally fine. But to make it easier to get over this initial hump, there is some preparation you can do to make it easier.

You’ll learn the following basics of the language, so you know what to expect:

1. Phonetics: be able to hear, distinguish and produce the sounds of your target language
2. Writing system: learn the alphabet or basic characters
3. Vocab: learn the 1000 most common words (which cover ~80% of daily speech)
4. Grammar: be aware of grammatical differences with your native language, but don’t memorize any rules (yet)

We’ll go into more detail for each of these now. But first, you’ll learn about the most effective way to study any of these: Spaced repetition flashcards.

Don’t spend more than 5-10 hours in the preparation stage before moving to first practice in A1: Simple content and conversation. You can always come back to learn more basics.

👨‍🏫Spaced repetition flashcards

👉[ACTION] Vocab: 1000 most common words

👉[ACTION] Written Language

👨‍🏫Mnemonics