10 useful tips to learn a foreign language

Learning a foreign language can be difficult, and could be one of your hardest classes if you don't fully apply yourself. Learning a language takes hard work, dedication, and a lot of time. Learning a language in a semester or two may seem difficult, but it's not impossible Use these 10 tips to get the most out of your foreign language class and become one step closer to learning the language.

1. Go over class work each night after class. You want to be sure you fully understand what you learned in class. This will also help generate questions for the next class.
2. Read materials out loud to yourself. Reading to yourself is helpful, but reading out loud will largely improve your pronunciation.
3. If your teacher provides extra materials to look over, like internet resources, look at them! A lot of students don't want to do the extra work if it's not required or graded. But these resources can be very helpful, so at the very least check them out. You don't know what you may be missing!
4. Go to EVERY class. Missing just one class can put you far behind.
5. Find a classmate to work with. Working with someone who is learning the language at the same time as you can be really beneficial. You can switch off reading your class material, work on the questions at the end of the chapter with each other, or exchange memorization tips. Whatever you want to work on, there is power in numbers and you will gain more knowledge working together.
6. Keep some kind of translator with you. There will always be words you don't know when learning a new language so a translator is vital to the learning process. This can be useful for any homework or questions you may have.
7. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Come up with questions while completing class work. During class, if you don't understand something ask right away! I'm sure if you don't understand something, there are other people in the class who don't understand either. Instead of feeling embarrassed, feel good because you're probably helping classmates out who may be too shy to raise their hand and speak up.
8. Watch a movie or listen to music spoken in the language. It will help more then you may realize. And you'll learn to appreciate the culture more!
9. Record the class. This way you don't miss anything and you can listen to the recordings while driving in your car and before you go to sleep.
10. Record yourself. You'd be surprised how different you sound after listening, and you can learn to correct your mistakes this way.