5 Ways to Master a Second Language

When Robert Cramer signed up for a Spanish class at a technical college in Madison, Wisconsin, he knew it would be a good mental challenge.

“I wanted something that would work my brain differently,” he says. But after about six weeks, Cramer, then 67, was ready to quit. Younger students in the class seemed to absorb the lessons quickly, while he felt overwhelmed. 

“It was just awful,” says Cramer, who spent his career in academia and business. “I didn’t know what was going on.”

Fifteen years later, Cramer, now 82, can go well beyond chatting about the weather in Spanish. He speaks the language whenever he gets the chance and even gives his instructor input on a new curriculum.

Finding ways to stimulate your brain as you age can enhance your cognitive reserve, according to AARP’s Global Council on Brain Health, a collaborative of scientists, health professionals, scholars and policy experts. In its report “Engage Your Brain,” the GCBH recommends learning a language as one way adults can “maintain or improve their cognition.”

But it can feel daunting to take on such a big challenge. How can you start — and stick with it?

Here are five tips from experts and adult learners for studying a new language later in life:

1. Set clear goals

Before you start, think carefully about what you want to achieve, says Roger Kreuz, a psychology professor at the University of Memphis and coauthor of Becoming Fluent: How Cognitive Science Can Help Adults Learn a Foreign Language.

Do you want to learn just enough French to get by during a trip to Paris, or are you hoping to dive into French literature and culture?

“Those are very different kinds of goals,” Kreuz says. Deciding ahead of time will help you determine how to study the language and how to measure your progress, he says.

Once you’ve set your goal, make studying and practicing part of your daily routine.

2. Make it social

“One of the most enjoyable aspects of learning [an] additional language is developing relationships with other people, becoming part of new communities, really expanding your social networks,” says Dianna Murphy, director of the Language Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And being social is one of the six pillars of brain health.

When Cramer signed up for his first Spanish class, he had a partner: his son, who was in his 30s and wanted to learn the language to help his business. The two men agreed to make it a friendly competition, and when Cramer’s will faltered, his son wouldn’t let him quit.

“He said, ‘No way, Dad, we're in this together,’ ” Cramer recalls.

Now, the elder Cramer has a social life connected to his Spanish classes, including an informal group of students that meets with a native Spanish speaker once a week for two hours. One of the rules? If you speak any English during the gathering, you have to buy cookies for the group. 

3. Don’t worry about sounding silly

Adults are often reluctant to test out their budding language skills on others for fear of making mistakes. The solution? “You have to learn to be shameless,” Kreuz says.

As a self-described “wallflower,” Kathy Delfosse, 70, a retired copy editor who lives in Wisconsin, took up Spanish last year. She says putting herself out there has been one of the biggest hurdles for her. She is perfectly happy studying at home with her textbooks and other resources, but she doesn’t like practicing on strangers. She’s willing, though, to participate in informal meetings with her fellow students because she knows it’s the only way she will improve.

“If you don’t try it, you don’t learn it,” Delfosse says. “[And] most people are patient with your stumbling.”

4. Experiment and have fun!

Sarah Diligenti, executive director of the French language school Alliance Francaise in Washington, D.C., says taking classes and interacting with fluent speakers is the best way to get started with a language, as that helps to fill in nuance in vocabulary and pronunciation. She recommends supplementing your learning with a range of other activities, from reading children’s books to watching movies.

“That will increase very rapidly your understanding of the language, your pronunciation, your capturing of the vocabulary and the grammatical sentences and structures,” she says.

Murphy says it’s crucial to connect with the language in ways that are fun for you. If you love yoga, for example, find an online yoga class in your language of choice and learn the vocabulary. Can you say “downward dog” in Greek? You can also listen to music, read the news or find a podcast.

“It has to come from what inspires [and] … sparks that sense of curiosity [in you] as an individual,” Murphy says.

5. Learn more than the vocabulary

It’s fun to soak up the culture of a place where the language is spoken, Kreuz says. You can plan a trip abroad to test out your skills.

“If you put in the expense and time of planning a trip, that's going to really focus your efforts on learning French this year, as opposed to learning French someday,” he says.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bronwyn Rae, 67, a retired anesthesiologist who lives in Illinois, decided to study Sanskrit. It might be a dead language, but “for 20 hours a week, I was in another world, another time, another culture.  … It was very absorbing,” she recalls. “It saved my reason during the pandemic.”

Experts say that although children usually pick up languages more quickly than grownups — particularly in an immersive setting — older adults know a lot more about how to study and what works best for them.

Negative assumptions about whether adults can learn a new language “don’t line up with what the research tells us about what we humans can do,” Murphy says. “Our brains remain plastic for a very long time.”

Cramer says he’s going to keep taking classes, even repeating some if needed. “I’ve worked so hard to get this [far]. I’m not going to let it slip away.”