LifeInContrast.com

Here are some tips for people who are trying seriously to learn a new language. These come from my experience teaching English, and learning Bahasa Indonesia.

1. If you are speaking your 2nd language and you can’t remember or don’t know a word, don’t “get stuck behind it”. Use other words that you do know, to try to “explain your way around it”. Try to describe it, and chances are good that the person you’re speaking to will understand, and will tell you the missing word.
   

   “I was walking down the street and I saw uh… uh… what’s the word? uh… uh… (WRONG)

   “I was walking down the street when I saw this… big vehicle with many wheels… and many seats… (RIGHT)

2. When you are speaking your 2nd language and you learn a new word, try to use it in context immediately. Here’s an example of the wrong & right ways to do this:
   

   A: “I was walking down the street when I saw this… big vehicle with many wheels… and many seats…”

   B: “A bus.”

   A: “Oh, right. That. So I got on it and went to the…” (WRONG)
   A: “Oh, right. So I saw a bus, and then I got on the bus and went to the…” (RIGHT)

3. If you use a translation dictionary (book or electronic), realize that they are not perfect, and will not explain everything completely. Every language has subtle nuances, common usage, and exceptions that cannot be fully understood by using a dictionary. Furthermore, many words cannot be translated directly, and have no counterpart in other languages. When they say that “jokes don’t translate”, it is partly because humor is largely based on cultural references, but also because jokes often contain puns, phrasal verbs, or idioms. These parts of speech almost never translate well. For example, if someone is playing loud music and you look in your translation dictionary for the words “turn”, “it”, and “down”, you are likely to get a strange look in return.

Hope this provides food for thought. Let me know any additional ideas.