How To Learn a Foreign Language

Welcome to my guide on how to learn a foreign language. This guide contains 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.

This is the online version of my ebook, The Language Learner’s Handbook: Tools and Techniques to Learn Any Language. Feel free to start here, but to read the later sections you will need to download the book. You can get it for any price you like, from $0 to $20 based on how much you’d like to support my work. Head here for more information.

This is version 1.12.3. Last update: 2025-04-24.

Who am I and why did I write this?

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.

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 of learning a foreign language
  • 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
  • Routine—Covers your study habits
• Advice for Beginners—These explain how to use your resources well
  • Input
  • Output
  • Learning to Read and Write
  • 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 an Activity—Provides a framework to help you choose activities
  • Intermediate Activities—A larger list of activities for you to consider doing
• Extras—Some more advice on specific topics
  • 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 learn a foreign language effectively. 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

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.

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? ↩︎