Looking for a way to vary your language learning activities? Try helping someone else with their language learning efforts.
Whether you’re teaching a complete novice everything you’ve learned so far or assisting a friend practice their conversational skills, helping fellow language learners allow you to take on a different role — one that’s very different from what you’re used to. When you do that, you not only access the skills you’ve built up, you can also gain new insights about the target language and the process of learning.
Just the mere act of interacting with other learners is beneficial in itself. You get to learn the different ways people study the language and the variety in results they get from each one. Almost every time I took on a helper role, assisting someone with their own language efforts, I learned something new. This has held true with learners of all levels — even those who are complete beginners to the target language.
For instance, it’s usually hard to see the mistakes you make when speaking and using the language. Doing that is an acquired skill that regular lessons with even the best language software might not really prepare you for. When someone else slips up the same way, though, the error becomes easy to notice. You can then make note of such faults and avoid them in your own use of the vernacular for later.
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