Intro #2: Some Helpful Ideas
So clearly learning a language from complete scratch is never going to be an easy task, but hopefully I can make it as painless as possible for you. In this special introduction page I’m simply going to give you a few pointers and hints that I believe will really improve both your learning skills and your memory.
Don’t worry if you think it’s really hard - that’s part of learning!
This first thing is practice! This may sound obvious, but it’s essential you practice over and over and over again and then practice even more. It’s a psychological fac that in order for information in your brain to pass from your short term memory into your permanent memory it needs to be repeated. Make sure you read over every lesson several times, then go back over it a few days later and read it again. Repeat this until you are confident you can remember it.
Something I feel is essential to you, whatever your level of Hindi, is to look over Hindi texts or watch Hindi films (ie Bollywood ones!). Try and see what words you can recognise or what phrases you know. Get a ‘feel’ for how the language is used. This 'real life’ Hindi is going to improve your knowledge massively.
Websites that will give you a feel of how real Hindi looks include BBC Hindi and Wikipedia Hindi but of course there are thousands, if not millions of websites you could look at. Even if you don’t understand what you’re seeing it’s great to familiarise yourself with Hindi so be don’t afraid. Before you know it you’ll be recognising words and phrases!
For example, here’s a print screen from a BBC Hindi article from 30/10/10;
Of course this wont actually make any sense yet, it’s simply an example to show you what 'real life’ Hindi looks like! One idea might be to try and pick out some of the symbols that you see repeating though the text and write them down. We’ll be covering what they all mean very soon!
