The Absolute Best Way to Learn Swedish (Part 2)

Alright, so let’s pick up where we left off last time and finish my list of the TOP 5 WORST WAYS to learn Swedish.

Just to give you a reminder, the first three were…

1) Buying and Reading Expensive Grammar Books
2) Buying Expensive and Fancy Computer Programs
3) Wasting Your Time With Flashcards

Well, at least flashcards won’t break your wallet. Let’s not forget however the old adage “Time is Money”. Instead of throwing away your precious time on this planet struggling with flashcards in vain, you could be using those hours to make more money and buy a plane ticket to Sweden. If you already have enough money, then you can use the hours saved to spend some quality time with your friends and family.

I am trying to save you both time and money, so here we go with #4 on my list…

4) Learning From Online Drills and Quizzes

As you will notice, most of these poor learning methods share common glitches. Here we see once again a failure to intergrade the language into your everyday life and get you thinking in Swedish.

By this point, I am sure that you have googled the words “Learn Swedish Online Free” or something of that nature. I’ll even bet that you have spent hours clicking on all the links to the pages in a desperate attempt to find a website that will help you reach your goal of fluency in Swedish. I did the same thing, so I know.

There are various grammar quizzes, verb drills, vocabulary multiple choice etc that will keep you occupied for quite some time. None of these sites however (even after weeks of exploring) will make you feel comfortable in Swedish. As soon as you try to read a swedish wikipedia page or turn on a swedish film without subtitles, you feel lost at sea with no land in sight.

Why does this happen? Again, we see the same pattern of not making the drills anything like real life. Nobody speaks the way the drills are structured. Not only that, but staring at a computer and doing drills does nothing to get you hearing Swedish the way it is spoken by Swedes. When you can’t here the language in its true context you will not only get the wrong feel for the language, but you will also have zero interest in the sentences that you are working with.

This brings me to the 5th and final WORST WAY to learn Swedish (for now).

5) Buying and Using the “All in one” language learning books or CDs that claim you can “teach yourself” at home or in your car

This category contains some of the most atrocious language learning products out there. Not necessarily because their methods are any worse than the ones used with other products I’ve mentioned, but because they are the most popular. Millions of these books and CDs are sold every year and most of the people who buy these products are so bored that they never finish the courses. The ones that do manage to finish the courses (like me) find themselves only being able to understand and speak a tiny limited fraction of the language.

These programs claim to prepare you for speaking and understanding the language, but they never do. It doesn’t matter if you master all the advanced levels, you will still be a dolt when it comes to REAL Swedish. Why? Because you can’t possibly drill every sentence that can be spoken in any situation into someone’s head through repetition. Even if you had 5,000 CDs and all the time in the world, it’s not going to happen.

Let me say this in an all caps rage…YOU CANNOT LEARN A LANGUAGE THROUGH DRILLS, REPETITION, OR ROTE MEMORIZATION!

That’s all these books and CDs are doing. They try to get you to memorize sentences you would never say whilst using vocabulary you will only use once a year.

Honestly, when was the last time you said “Good day Sir, I would like to buy 3 loaves of bread and a hard rock candy. By the way, could you tell me where the nearest post office is? I would like to send an overnight delivery to my cousin in Stockholm. Do you know if I will be able to pay in travelers’ checks? Also, do you happen to know what the rate of exchange is today? I would like to trade some american dollars for swedish crowns, find a hotel with a queen-sized bed, and book a one-way ticket to Gothenburg with a private sleeping compartment” ?

You’ve never had a conversation anything like that ever in your life, have you? In reality, you go to the store, put the bread on the counter, give the cashier your money and go home. Maybe you slip a “Thanks” or “Have a nice day” in there somewhere, but otherwise it’s a fairly simple procedure. These books act as though you are gonna be out on the town all day going to museums, airports, and hotels.

These are things that tourists do. In real life tourists don’t normally speak the native tongue of the country they are visiting. They speak broken English with the Swedes in the trains and at the hotel, then go to museums and take guided tours given in English. They leave a week later for the next stop on their european vacation. They never learn Swedish.

The people who learn Swedish are the ones who have a swedish lover, a swedish circle of friends, or who are immigrating (or have immigrated) to Sweden. These people need to learn how to communicate with their friends and family in Swedish and they need to learn it fast. They don’t need to know how to book a museum tour paid in cashiers’ checks.

Truth be told, these books and audio programs are worth very little when it comes time to learn REAL Swedish for communication with Swedes. They teach you phrases that tourists would use if tourists actually ever spoke the mother tongue of the country they were visiting.

So that’s it…

Those are the 5 Worst methods for learning Swedish. Of course there are many more ineffective yet popular ways to try and learn Swedish, but I don’t want us to spend all our time discussing them. What I do want to do is give you some insight into the most EFFECTIVE ways to learn Swedish (or any language for that matter). If you know how to implement these methods then you will accomplish fluency in less than half a year.

Tune in next time to find out more!

Ha det bra!

Prof Paul
PS. In the meantime see what people are saying about the “Find Your Flow” course at www.SpeakSwedishStupid.com . It’s the first and LAST program you will ever need to learn Fluent Swedish!!!

Tagged As: Learn Swedish, Speaks Swedish, Swedish Language