Low-tech Learning 📚 7 Ways to Help you Learn a Foreign Language

Proven to Work || Take Tnspiration from the 1990s to Learn a Foreign Language

Back in the 90s we listened to music on CDs, relied on maps made from paper and waited each week for episodes of our favourite TV shows.

Entire families shared one phone on a fixed line, and an app meant taking a short sleep (see what I did there?)

Technology has put knowledge in our pockets, but there are some old-school techniques that are still relevant for people who want to learn a foreign language today.

Low Tech Learning || Label your life

Low Tech Learning || Repeat, repeat, repeat

Low Tech Learning || Write lines

Low Tech Learning || Talk to yourself

Low Tech Learning || Get planning

Low Tech Learning || Make a pen friend

Low Tech Learning || Make a real friend

Low-tech Learning – Label Your Life

• Good for: building vocabulary

Labelling your stuff helps to reinforce vocabulary with minimal effort.

It’s particularly useful for learning words to do with home life (and school / office space if you can get away with it).

Attach word cards everywhere they’ll stick – on furniture, appliances and doors to rooms. This gives you a repeated visual association between the object and the word, which imprints on your brain and helps you learn a foreign language without you even realizing it.

If you see the same word in the same place every day, it will stick with you in no time.

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Low-tech Learning – Repeat, repeat, repeat

• Good for: spoken fluency

Saying a word or phrase out loud over and over helps you develop the muscle memory of saying it, so you don’t trip over the words or sounds.

It’s especially handy for longer, more complicated grammatical structures where a set of words will always be used together in that combination, like numbers.

By the time you want to use the words in conversation, they’ll trip right off your tongue (like rapping along to TLC).

A great way to improve your spoken fluency when you’re trying to learn a foreign language. Warning: best to do this when you’re on your own with nobody in ear-shot.

Low-tech Learning – Write lines

• Good for: improving your spelling

Remember when you were a kid and you did something wrong, and as punishment you had to write ‘lines’ of a pledge never to do it again? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see the opening credits of The Simpsons.)

Writing on repeat has a similar effect as speaking: it imprints on your mind, and the flow of the words (or characters) quickly feels natural as you build the memory of the action, so grab your pen and get writing:

I will learn a foreign language!

Low-tech Learning – Talk to yourself

• Good for: preparing for your next conversation

-> Need a way to keep improving when you’re not in class or at home?

-> Want to practice your language when you’re on the go without your books?

It sounds weird, but talking to yourself – quietly, or even in your head – gives you head-space to recall vocabulary, practice words and try out sentence structures.

Think of it as a way of mentally preparing for your next conversation by practising the questions you might need.

Get inspiration from your surroundings to imagine what you would say in different situations and scenarios. They say that talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, so use with caution.

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Low-tech Learning – Get Planning

• Good for: homework time 

Is it just me, or was everyone more organized before we all had cell phones?

If you wanted to meet a friend, you had to arrange the time and location – and make sure you weren’t late.

This habit of planning extended to our studies too – we had homework and revision timetables (written out by hand) for scheduling our study hours.

This not only forces you to be disciplined, but it also ensures you’re being efficient, covering everything you need to learn a foreign language and spending equal amounts of time on different topics – not just doing the things you enjoy most. It also means you take breaks and finish on time.

No more ‘dog ate my homework’.

Low-tech Learning – Make a pen friend

• Good for: romance and swear words

In the 90s we wrote letters on paper which we put in an envelope and mailed.

It was how we kept in touch with foreign friends, and because international calls were so expensive, these friendships were exclusively limited to paper.

Having pen-friends is a good way to practice writing and learn vocabulary that isn’t in any of the course materials. Hand-written also means you can’t fall back on spell check, and forces you to focus on the spelling and grammar that are essential to successfully learn a foreign language.

Email makes it easier to keep in touch but there’s a nostalgic romance to receiving a letter that rivals anything Tinder can offer.

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Low-tech Learning – Make an Actual Friend

• Good for: listening and pronunciation

These days we make friends online that we never meet in real life, but nothing beats face-to-face for a decent conversation.

Forging a friendship with a native speaker – especially one with the patience to correct and coach you – is one of the most valuable tools in your learning box.

If you’re fortunate to be learning a foreign language abroad, like Taiwan or China, you should have no shortage of native speakers to befriend. But don’t be surprised if your new pal has similar ideas and wants to practice their English with you.

Get around this by suggesting a language exchange where you spend 50% of your time in one language and 50% in the other.

PS – Our connection kit physically pairs you with two people we select based on your interests. If you take a course with us, we’ll chat to you before coming and find a couple of people we think you will get along with.

These old-school techniques don’t rival the hi-tech comforts we enjoy today, but don’t be afraid to put down your device and pick up a pen.

Mixing up your hi-tech learning with some analogue solutions gives you variety when you learn a foreign language and allows you to discover that no-tech is fun too.

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