Before starting any learning activity as serious as learning Bulgarian you need to find out who you are as a learner and analyze your strengths and weaknesses so you can make the most of it.
But how? - you may ask.
Well, you can start by doing type of learner test and see what your natural tendencies are. You can be a visual, kinesthetic or an auditory learner or you can have
Logical-mathematical intelligence. ...
Linguistic intelligence. ...
Spatial Intelligence. ...
Musical Intelligence. ...
Bodily-kinesthetic Intelligence. ...
Intrapersonal Intelligence. ...
Interpersonal Intelligence. ...
Naturalistic intelligence.
This will let you see where your natural tendencies go and will give you some insight into what sort of Bulgarian lessons you can benefit from and what sort of practice can bring you best results.
The second step is to analyze your daily routine and see what sort of activities come naturally to you - do you read, or you enjoy watching you tube, do you like Netflix or animation, do you play board games, write in a diary or simply enjoy chatting, perhaps you like bars and flirting or have a baby and a nearby playground, you can find the things you are already doing and try to see where the simple pleasurable fun language opportunities arise. You can then start to add language to these habitual activities, because you know the context that typically comes with them and this provides the chance to script your experience.
The third thing you need to do is to find a stable input flow - to hear the language consistently in context as much as you can. I personally watch videos or animation because it provides additional visual aid, but people also choose to watch movies, TV series, listen to the radio, listen to people talk on the streets, etc. Even if you don't understand anything, you will still gain some benefits from hearing the rhythm of the language, syllables and patterns, this will prove extremely useful when you start learning Bulgarian officially.
Once you have your own profile and input flow in front of you, it is time to decide - do you want to join a Bulgarian language course, get individual tutoring or get a book and start learning on your own, through apps, talking to people and learning through experience.
Once you decide you need to set a certain pattern, goals and an end date. It is important as in any training routine to challenge yourself. Let’s say you want to see whether you can learn on your own only by watching videos and talking to people, so you decide you will spend everyday 1 hour of your time doing exactly that and by the end of a month you will try to evaluate just how much you've learned.
But can you keep going for a month?
That is an experiment of its own, if it turns out that the answer is no, then perhaps you need a teacher to externalize the discipline and rise accountability. If you managed to do a full month you need to access how happy you are with your progress. Many times when people start learning something new they have an unrealistic idea of the speed they will be able to do it in, so they get very frustrated when after a certain period of time they are nowhere close to achieving the goal they have set for themselves. That's why it is good to do some research into how long it takes a person to get to the desired level of proficiency. The amount of hours you will need in order to learn enough Bulgarian to suit your needs may vary somewhere in between 250 - 1000 hours depending on the level you would like to achieve.
That's quite a lot, but do not fear, when you start your learning process the time you spend immersed in the language will exponentially grow as your ability does, so it is safe to say that the beginning is slower than what follows even simply for the fact that you will be able to practice in more and more situations.
Realizing that what makes learning Bulgarian difficult is maintaining your motivation for a prolonged period of time and choosing adequate exercises is key to building a good learning strategy. What eventually makes a strategy successful is it helping you to stay consistent for enough time and providing enough practice for you to step ever so slightly out of your comfort zone and build the language skills that you need. It is important to remember that language learning is something interpersonal, so the final touch is to find a real situation with real people to practice, because otherwise we might under develop some aspects such as speaking compared to others such as listening and comprehension or writing.
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