You learn a word today and then shelve it for a while. When it comes back, you’ll try to recall it, and then shelve it again, on and on until you couldn’t possibly forget. While you’re waiting for your old words to return, you can learn new words and send them off into the future, where you’ll meet them again and work them into your long-term

KEY POINTS • Reading without a dictionary is the simplest, easiest way to grow your passive vocabulary. On average, a single book will teach you three hundred to five hundred words from context alone. By reading just one book in your target language, you’ll make all future books and texts of any kind much easier to read. • By reading in conjunction

5. Watch a full season of a dubbed TV show, reading episode summaries in your target language ahead of time. 6. Get a ton of speech practice. Get as much as you possibly can, either through an immersion program, a language holiday abroad, or through teachers on italki.com. If you get a private teacher, talk about the next thousand words from your

At times, a foreign language can feel like a mask. It’s a game of make-believe. You’re playing the role of Some French Guy, and you’re acting out a conversation with some friends. In these moments, you occasionally catch yourself saying things you never would have said in English. You’re more open. You speak more freely. After all, it’s not really

4. Read your first book while listening to an audiobook. 5. Watch a full season of a dubbed TV show, reading episode summaries in your target language ahead of time. 6. Get a ton of speech practice. Get as much as you possibly can, either through an immersion program, a language holiday abroad, or through teachers on italki.com. If you get a private

Google Images as a Storybook To find stories in Google Images, search for a word and scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page. There you’ll see the link Switch to Basic Version. Every image will now show up with its corresponding caption.

Any time you encounter some frustrating group of irregularities you “just have to memorize,” you can create a mnemonic image. You can even make images for spelling—if ch is for chat (cat), then that cat can ride on top of your cheval (horse). We’ll cover more advanced uses in chapter 5. (I use this game for all sorts of nasty things: verb

1. If you haven’t already done so, learn the first half of your grammar book. Make flash cards for everything you find interesting. 2. Learn the top thousand words in your target language. Write out definitions and examples whenever you’re not entirely sure what a word means. About halfway through, you’ll find that you can understand a monolingual

You can dial back the difficulty in two ways: by choosing your first shows very carefully and by reading about those shows ahead of time on Wikipedia. First things first: TV series are easier than films. When