Learning Languages While Reading

Yes, it is possible. You can improve your language skills without actually studying it. How? Now, that’s simple. All you have to do is read in the language you want to improve.

What do you say? That doesn’t sound easy? You are afraid you won’t understand much of what you read?

Ok, let’s have a look at the requirements you need in order to achieve this:

Grammar

You need to have some basic grammar understanding. With basic, I mean that you should know at least the different tenses (you don’t need to be able to use them all on your own yet, you only need to recognize them) and the personal pronouns (and the object forms for direct and indirect as well as possessive objects).

Sentence Structure

You should know how a sentence is structured, that is you need a basic understanding of main clauses and subordinate clauses and of conjunctions.

Vocabulary

You need a basic vocabulary in order to understand at least part of what you read without a dictionary. This vocabulary should include question words, above mentioned conjunctions, the most commonly used verbs, the most commonly used adjectives and the most commonly used nouns. To learn them, you can look at your local library if they have some books on basic vocabulary in your target language.

When all these requirements (and, come on, they are not that difficult to achieve) are met, you only need a book which interests you and a good dictionary.

Have fun reading (and learning)!