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illustrations, too, which will be relevant to and help with the understanding of the text. Magazines are good, too, as they present relatively short pieces of text, a variety of style and subject matter, and even browsing through the advertisements is useful language learning. As with listening, you'll find that with practice your vocabulary builds quite quickly and you're able to tackle longer and more complex passages. Resist the temptation to look up every word you don't know, as this will slow you down and you'll soon get bored and give up. Often you'll find you can guess an unknown word from the context: if you can't, but the sentence still makes sense to you, then don't bother about it, just read on and keep the thread of the story, and your interest, going.

Speaking is probably the most difficult skill to practise, especially if you're learning the language at home by yourself. Yet surely if you're learning a language, this is what you want to be able to do. There will no doubt be speaking exercises in the course work: role-play situations, completing conversations or interviews, that sort of thing. But, valuable though these are, they're not like spontaneous conversation where you don't know what the other person's going to say and you need to understand and respond straight away without the luxury of time to look up the right vocabulary and verb endings. Scary stuff! But remember that what is important is communicating and being understood: you don't have to be word- or grammar-perfect. You won't be, in fact: you're going to make loads of mistakes at first, but that doesn't matter. If you can get your point across, if others can understand what you're saying and talk with you, it's a great feeling. Just like the other skills, speaking confidently comes with practice. If you attend classes, take every opportunity to speak to your fellow students. If you have a friend who speaks or is learning the language, get them to speak it with you. Try and find a tutor who runs conversation sessions, either one-to-one or for small groups. Failing all else, talk to yourself. I'm not joking: it's important to get used to the sound of the language, to get used to getting your tongue round awkward sounds and words and practise pronunciation and intonation. So, wait till you've got the house to yourself or you're on your own in the car; talk to the house plants or the cat if it helps, but get talking!

Above all, enjoy it. Learning a new language will take some commitment and hard work, but it can be great fun and tremendously rewarding.

Learn more about this author, Pippa Norton.
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