What’s the best way to learn a new language?

The benefits of language-learning for our long-term brain health and happiness are well noted, so no regrets there. But had my four years of studying a language to degree level conjugating verbs and memorising vocabulary become an outdated way of learning? (Read more about the benefits of bilingualism here).

Krupa Padhy

Along with the promise of becoming fluent at lightning speed, a range of new methods and technologies have transformed how we pick up languages in an increasingly time-poor age. One is “microlearning”, an approach that breaks down new information into small chunks that are meant to be absorbed quickly, sometimes within minutes or even seconds. It’s rooted in a concept known as the forgetting curve, which states that when people take in large amounts of information, they remember less of it over time. 

In addition, there’s a wealth of new technologies, from chatbots offering instant feedback, to virtual reality and augmented reality technologies which drop you into conversations with virtual native speakers. However, some argue that the promise of fast fluency misses crucial elements of actually learning to speak to people in another language, such as developing cultural understanding and nuance.

So, with all this choice, what’s actually the best, science-backed way to learn a language? To find out, I teamed up with two researchers at Lancaster University’s Language Learning Lab: Patrick Rebuschat, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science, and Padraic Monaghan, a professor of cognition in the department of psychology. They let me try out an experiment they designed to mirror language-learning in the real world, and reveal how our brain picks up and makes sense of new words and sounds. The tasks basically simulate how we would cope if we were dropped into a foreign country with an unknown language, and just had to use our innate skills to figure out the new, mysterious sounds around us, and start to make sense of them.