You learn a language by making mistakes
There is no way you can learn a language without blood, sweat and tears. This is one of my how to learn a language mantras. Why? The way your brain remembers things is through a series of mistakes and failures until it self corrects.
Learning a language is not much different than playing a sport. For the first year you are very awkward and clumsy. But latter after many mistakes you learn coordination and grace.
Mistakes are natures gentle guide to reshape the neorons and connections in your brain. Learning from mistakes is a deep evolutionary program in our brain that allows us to survive.
The same is with language learning. You need to make mistakes or your brain will not experience what it needs to really gain fluency in a language.
Memory and language learning
Most memory problems are a retrieval problem not a formation problem. This means it is not that hard to form a memory but to retrieve it you need to practice and suffer and struggle until the pathways and highways of your brain are strong. If you make wrong turns and make mistakes you feel bad and the road signs along the way to retrieve a particular grammar idea or vocabulary will be strong.
There is a Spanish school that teaches its students with humiliation. That is, if you make a mistake they drop an egg on your head. Wow, for me that is extreme and too stressful but the point is with the emotion of failure, as long as you are not disheartened, you will learn.
Science tells us how to learn a language, with mistakes
The reason I know about this is I teach and learn languages. Any person I know who as achieved any success in languages have experienced the pain of toil and mistakes. And do you know what? Science confirms this. They looked at a group of language learners that were taught with the idea that there is not wrong answer and did little practice work more just theory, and compared it to a more success group.
That is a group that used language flashcards and drills and did exercises and corrected themselves and learned from their mistakes.
Outloud problem solving for accelerated language learning
One practical application of this idea that you learn a language with mistakes is something called ‘outloud problem solving’ written about many times in teaching literature. It is the idea that two people try to solve a problem together, it could be grammar or vobulary or translation of a book. It is the act of publicly making mistakes in front of a partner that is part of the process of learning and teaching a language in an accelerated way.
Therefore, how do you learn a language? Make mistakes, publicly admit you are not good with languages, do many countless drills and more important flashcards.
Do not listen to those who say they are gifted with languages and just pick up a language because it is in the air. This is not true.
The end result from this lesson in humility will be you will be able to speak the language of your dreams faster than those who walk around looking for a magic bullet for language learning.
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