How to learn anything in 20 Hours?
Learning something new becomes easier when one set small goals.
Recently I read a book written by Josh Kaufman, the author of two international bestsellers,The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business and The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything… Fast!. Josh is one of the top 100 business authors in the world, and has been featured as the #1 bestselling author in Business & Money, as ranked by Amazon.com. The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything…Fast discusses the method of rapid learning. Although personally I do not think you can master a language in just 20 hours, as learning a language requires a great deal of commitment and effort, the strategies mentioned in the book are worth applying. In this blog, we will introduce the strategies mentioned by Josh Kaufman and advise how you can apply them into language learning.
Decide What You Want
Most language learners have a very vague idea of what they want to be able to achieve. Setting a “target performance level” helps you focus on practicing in a way that will help you get better results. Targets like “learn to speak French” aren’t enough: think “book hotels and order meals in French while traveling” instead. The more specific your target is, the more useful it will be.
Deconstruct the skill
Most of skills we think of are actually comprised of smaller skills. Break down the parts and find the most important things to practice first. If you want to learn a new language, learn the most common 2,000 words and you’ll have 80% text coverage. If you want to pass a certain language examination, find out the relevant materials and study them seriously.
Remove barriers to learning
Identify and remove anything that distracts you from focusing on the skill you want to learn. Make a conscious effort to turn off your phone, close the computer, and focus singularly on the skill in front of you.
Practice at least 20 hours
20 hours amounts to just 40 minutes a day for a month. It is actually an attainable goal. Just to find a time to study the target language everyday until you reach the 20 hours rule, you will find out how much you have improved after just 20 hours!
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