Good language learners aren’t born—they’re made. Anyone can improve and become a better language learner with the right mindset and approach. So, what does it take to succeed? And what’s the best way to learn a language? In this post, I’ll share the key traits and strategies that have worked for me throughout my language learning journey.
The Three Elements for Success
1) Motivation
You need to enjoy your language and believe that you can succeed. Without a positive attitude, learning becomes less pleasant and more difficult. An essential component of language learning is staying the course. This is much less feasible without motivation.
2) Consistency
Interact with your target language daily. Personally, I aim for at least an hour a day. Sometimes, this consists purely of listening to audio while I complete other tasks. For example, I’ll listen to a podcast while washing the dishes. I also recommend at least half an hour per reading per day.
3) Notice Patterns
As the Sufi saying goes, “you can only learn what you already know”. Languages are full of patterns. As a language learners, we need to stay attentive and aware of a language’s features. Through ample exposure, certain sentence structures or traits of the language will become more visible.
The Best Way to Learn a Language, Step by Step
1) Find the Right Content
To learn a language, you’ll need to spend a lot of time reading and listening. The more you read and listen, the more chances you’re giving yourself to notice. You’re going to need a steady flow of interesting, level-appropriate content.
Advice for Beginners
If you’re an absolute beginner, I recommend investing in a starter book. The goal with a starter book isn’t to memorize the material, but rather get an overview of the language.
While learning Greek, I mostly used the mini-stories available in our Greek library on LingQ. The stories are short, full of repetition, and cover a wide range of daily topics. It’s ideal material for a beginner.
Again, I don’t stick to one story until I feel that I’ve mastered it. I don’t even answer the comprehension questions. I jump around. I move on to the next story. I’ll notice and forget things, but my goal is simply to give myself significant exposure to the target language.
Advice for Intermediate & Advanced Learners
Authentic content—material created for native speakers—is the ultimate goal in language learning. Fluency requires a large vocabulary, and early on, that means lots of repetition with simple, familiar texts. But as your comfort grows, so should the challenge. Gradually push yourself toward more complex material like newspaper articles, YouTube videos with predictable structure, or books on familiar topics. These help you absorb the natural rhythm and cadence of the language, even as repetition becomes less central.
I try to transition to authentic content as early as possible. With LingQ, I import articles, songs, and full books into my library, making it easier to break down and digest native-level material. Over time, ebooks, podcasts, and audiobooks become my main tools. I’ll still revisit beginner resources like mini-stories for review and confidence—but the real progress comes from regularly engaging with the language as it’s naturally used.
2) Balance Repetition & Novelty
As Manfred Spitzer points out in his book Learning: The Human Brain and the School of Life, we learn best when we have a good mix of repetition and novelty. Through repetition and novelty, you’ll strengthen your ability to notice aspects of your target language. You’ll become more intuitive as a language learner.
The Importance of Repetition
Learning a language is like walking through a forest. The first time through, you’re just trying not to get lost—you don’t notice much. But with each visit, the trees and landmarks become more familiar, and your knowledge of the forest grows richer.
The same goes for new words or grammar structures—they don’t stick the first time. Especially in the beginning, repetition is essential. Language books often skip this step, favoring explanations over repetition. However, we need to see the same patterns again and again.
The Importance of Novelty
However, repetition without novelty leads to boredom. We need variety—new stories, new voices, new ideas—to keep us engaged and progressing. Just like in the forest, where a new path reveals the same trees from another angle, new content makes old vocabulary feel fresh and helps patterns click in different ways.
When repetition is paired with novelty, we stay motivated and make progress naturally. Your success as a language learner depends on a constant flow of repetitive (but interesting) content. Read and listen to material that is both understandable and interesting enough to bring you back into the forest again and again.
3) Track Your Progress
The most important task in language learning is to continue feeding your brain comprehensible (or almost comprehensible) input through listening and reading. This cannot be overstated.
However, it’s important to pause and see your progress. Review and reflection boost your motivation and guide your learning.
Review on LingQ
On LingQ, I save lots of words and phrases. The more the merrier. Without pressure to memorize every word and phrase that I’ve saved, I review on LingQ as a means of additional exposure. Choose the review activity that you enjoy: flashcards, dictation, multiple choice, fill in the blanks, etc..
I review on LingQ because it’s entertaining and stress-free. This is a solid example of combining repetition with novelty to enhance your learning experience.
I find it helpful to re-read a familiar text, but change the words and phrases I focus on each time. As I revisit these stories, I gradually move certain phrases to “known” in the LingQ system and save new ones—especially those that still feel strange or unintuitive. This lets me review patterns I’ve seen before, but in a slightly new context, which helps deepen my understanding while keeping the experience fresh.
Put Your Knowledge to the Test: Speaking and Writing
Reading and listening will help us develop our passive knowledge of a language. Speaking and writing, on the other hand, provide us an opportunity to turn this passive knowledge into active knowledge.
When speaking with a tutor or writing a journal entry, we’re drawing from language that we’ve accumulated through reading and listening. We’re discovering what words and phrases are immediately available to us. We’re also identifying what subjects or phrases give us trouble.
Speaking and writing in our target language is an opportunity for feedback. An outside perspective can point us in the right direction and provide us with additional insight.
Tip: When working with a tutor, I prefer new phrases, vocabulary, and corrections to be given to me afterwards on a separate document for later review on LingQ. Corrections can be helpful, but also distracting. I’d rather use my time with a tutor to engage in spontaneous conversation.
Final Thoughts: Why This Works
So, what’s the best way to learn a language? It’s not memorizing grammar rules or sitting in a classroom—it’s surrounding yourself with content you enjoy, at your own pace, in your own way.
This method allows you to be an independent learner. You don’t need to stress about exams or subject yourself to boring drills and grammar exercises. Your priority is simply to read and listen to content that you enjoy. Especially nowadays, this content is mostly free, widely available, and (with LingQ) portable.
You don’t need to sit in a classroom to learn a language. Motivation, consistency, and the ability to notice will get you where you need to go.
Flood your brain with compelling, comprehensible input. Stay curious, enjoy the process, and watch as your vocabulary, comprehension, and confidence grow.
If you’d like to try LingQ 5.0, here’s a coupon to get you started.
23 comments on “The Best Way to Learn a New Language”
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Eu tenho aprendido muito com suas dicas sobre aprendizagem de línguas. Gosto muito de assistir aos seus vídeos no YouTube. Muito obrigado.
Thank you very much! it list help me in my polish language process
There is only one tip language use it or lose it
Certainly not my experience.
With regard to your fifth point, I have seen advice that suggests against writing translations of words in books and articles that you read. I see that you don’t suggest this in particular, but I’m curious to know what your take is on this piece of advice.
I have no idea but I don’t like to do it.
I love the idea of point-of-view stories and I have stumbled upon several courses using them lately (Unlimited Spanish and Real Polish). I understand how useful they can be, but I have one worry: aren’t they boring for most people?
Repetition is still something I need to get used to. I’m learning Russian with Assimil and I really see its value now. But I had a hard time listening to the same content several times when i was learning German for example.
Listening to the same content again and again is a great idea! Especially when we find a funny audio to listen to or a funny video to watch.
Laughing really stimulates our brain. We memorize the new language faster.
The most important is to enjoy learning so that we keep motivated.
Comprehensible Input; something that all language teachers need in their instruction! Fabulous article and Lisbon is one of my absolute favorite cities in the world!!
Nice Suggestions!
I am very much inspired by your post. Learning language which is predictable and sequential stages of language development it was my addictions and passion to learn a new language.
Learning new languages has really become so easy with all your posts. Learning any language needs continuous practice. I’m really very much impressed with the way you are explaining the new language.
What is the best way to utilize Lingq for learning Chinese. Can you really learn to write in Chinese with Lingq, or is it mainly for learning how to speak and understand?
Thanks a lot for writing this article, Steve. I agree with you, repetition and exposure to the language is essential in the first learning stages. When I was learning English, I remember listening to the Beatles and repeating their lyrics — even when I didn’t know exactly what was being said.
I liked that you had mentioned that having a teacher or conversation partner while learning another language can be very important because they’ll be able to point out things you might not notice. My wife is from France and has been wanting to go back for awhile now, and while I’m willing to take her, I want to surprise her by learning French before we go. I might have to start looking for a local teacher to kind of help me as I learn the language to see if they can catch things that I otherwise would have ignored.
I liked what you said about taking note of what things are different in regards to pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. My friend is thinking about learning French, but hasn’t really learned a language before. I’ll be sure to pass this article along to him and hope that it helps him.
Thanks for the great tips for learning a language. I’ve always wanted to learn Italian, and so I’m going to try finally. My biggest problem will be putting an hour in every day, but I’ll try to follow your advice!
The key I find most interesting is “noticing.” Let me tell you why. Right now I am keeping a journal comparing the way I learn French, a Chopin Mazurka on the piano and the game of bridge. Contrary to what some might think, there is a lot in common in the learning of these three things, of which I will not go into here. Except to say that music and language are very closely related, my appreciation
forever shaped when I was young when I learned the violin and influenced by the teaching of Shinichi Suzuki. He believed that learning an instrument at an early age is like learning the mother tongue at an early age – it should come naturally. I watch my granddaughter, not quite two, speak her native language, French, how she is motivated to communicate, repeating words and phrases over and over to get what she wants. On the violin many years ago, I played the same songs over and over, never tiring of it and then years later, I taught these same songs, folk tunes and classic repertoire that belong to our collective human culture. This is one of the keys: that repetition should bring reward – my granddaughter gets the ice cream she is calling out for, or that I adore a piece of music or poetry, or that I make my contract in bridge, having effectively communicated to my partner in this unique bridge language.
“We can’t learn what we don’t notice.”
This is absolutely false in language acquisition, and possibly in other types of learning. Even the Noticing Hypothesis doesn’t make such a radical claim.