August Flanagan, co-founder of Lenguajero.com, a startup that helps people practice conversational Spanish, has 5 tips on how to make it happen.

1. Go to a/the country where the language you want to learn is spoken.
If you are like me and want to learn Spanish, it is pretty easy to get to the Spanish speaking country of your choice from anywhere in the U.S. Frequently, flights into tourist hotspots like Cancun or Buenos Aires cost only a couple hundred dollars one way. Once you are there, you can catch either a domestic flight or a bus to just about anywhere for a whole lot cheaper than an international flight.

2. Settle down somewhere and spend time in a new community.
If you take a few months (or longer) and stay in just one place during this time you will learn a lot more of the language than if you just travel from place to place during that time.

Forming a routine means that you’ll see the same people day in and day out. You’ll stop to chat with the same store owner or vegetable vendor, get to know your neighbors, and, of course, you’ll make new friends. Which, in my opinion, is really the best way to learn a language.

When you first get to your new home try using CouchSurfing to organize a few nights out. Aside from being a website that helps you find a place to crash, CouchSurfing is a great place to meet new people in cities all over the world.

3. Find a good teacher and take some language lessons.
I’ve met a lot of people living in foreign cities who are trying to learn a language completely on their own. Some of them have been quite successful. The vast majority has not, and that is where a good teacher comes in.

Finding a good professor who understands the difficulties of their own language, and understands how to guide you through the learning process can be a bit challenging. Don’t commit to spending all your time with the first professor, or the first language school that you try out. It’s usually pretty easy to tell after two or three classes whether you have a good dynamic with your professor. If you don’t, then don’t try to fight it. Kindly explain this to your professor, and then go find a new one.

4. Do stuff in your new language every single day.
Yes, that is an incredibly vague statement, but learning a new language is pretty vague task when you consider everything that actually goes into learning a language.

There will probably be days when you are really tired, and don’t feel like putting in a ton of effort, and that’s OK. It is a long process so take days off from “All new language all the time” mode. Just make sure you do something for a few minutes, such as:

• Read a news article online, or read two or three pages of a book (Harry Potter was the first book I ever read in Spanish).
• Listen to a radio program or conversational podcast.
• Watch a movie in the language you are learning. (Tip: Set the subtitles to the language you are learning. Listening to the words while reading them is a great way to train your ear.)
• Review vocabulary lists (I like using online Spanish flashcards).
• Make up a short conversation between two people in your head as you go about your daily routine.

5. Get started before you leave.
Yes, you will probably be incredibly busy before your trip starts, but if you can still manage to find that 15 minutes a day to study the basics (alphabet, numbers, greetings, etc.) you will be amazed at how much it will help.

You have to learn the basics before you can really move on to start speaking a language, and it is just as easy to learn the basics at home. This means that once you get to wherever it is that you are going, you will not waste time trying to learn them. Instead you can start focusing on the really fun stuff, actually speaking a new language and forming bonds with people in that language.

Finally, I will add that the benefits of learning a new language are tremendous. In addition to adding a marketable skill to your repertoire, you will open yourself up to experiencing other cultures in ways that you probably would not otherwise. Languages are reflections of culture, and to understand a new language is to understand a new culture.

I’ve had an ill feeling that has plagued me for the last year. I first remember it coming on in New Zealand. Then it hit me stronger in Vietnam. I was feverish about it in India. It is the feeling of being in some type of moving vehicle, traveling through a country, and seeing about 25 perfect photographs outside my vehicle window. I would feel ill thinking – “if only I could tell them to stop so I could get out and take a picture.” Yet I sat there helpless watching my beautiful shots go whizzing by, wondering if I would ever be able to capture this image again.

I would get queasy when I saw a group of people intimately interacting, simply being themselves, but I couldn’t get the nerve to go up and ask them if I could take a photograph. Instead, I would linger a bit, and then sulk off mad at myself for not having the guts to be a real photographer! The few times I did get the guts to go up and ask if I could take a photograph (fumbling through this conversation in broken English, pointing at my camera and smiling) they would normally say ‘yes’ and then give me some big, posed, toothy grin – transforming the shot from a nice little intimate, cultural gathering, to a Sears family portrait.

However, I have decided to put an end to this fear…I decided to hire a professional photographer to help me improve my photography skills of people so that I am no longer afraid to go ask someone for a photo or to ask someone to stop so that I don’t have to shoot out of a car window. I had actually been thinking about this for quite some time. I had taken photography courses in New York, but now I’ve been practicing photography on the road daily. When you actually start using a skill you had learned, then you have a ton of questions.

So I’ve been traveling around gathering up photography questions in my head with no one to ask them to. Questions about technique, the profession, using flash, saving digital photos, editing digital photos…the list if long. I have looked into taking a photography workshop in various countries, but none really had worked out until now. I was doing research on travel in Laos when I came across an ad for a photography school in Asia – specifically Bangkok. The ad talked about custom photography tours to Laos, so I clicked through and inquired about more information. After a number of emails back and forth with the photographer and checking references, I decided to splurge on this unique opportunity – I hired the photographer to travel through Laos with me and teach me about documentary photography.

Jonathan Taylor is a professional photographer from the UK living in Bangkok. He’s a photojournalist that has done work for various publications including Time, as well as serving as a photo editor for a publication in Bangkok. He also speaks Thai, which would prove useful in Laos. Plus, the real benefit was that he knew how to go into a town, talk to the locals, talk to the taxi drivers, develop the right relationships with people, and sniff out a good photographical story.

In one of our many email exchanges, he told me that we would go into towns in Laos, find out what was happening there, and then hopefully find some story that we could document, such as a traveling Chinese acrobat team. Little did he know, but the idea of following around a Chinese acrobat team and photographing them was what sold me…it sounded cultural, unpredictable, crazy, and fun! Granted – I knew that I may not find that acrobat team, but I would get further with him than on my own. At the very least, I could have him tell someone to stop the car so I could get out and take a photograph. Plus, I would be traveling through Laos – a scenic, quiet little country in SE Asia that I had been wanting to see for quite some time now.

You can read more about my adventures with Jonathan in the “Destination – Laos” section and below is a preview of some of the photos taken during the trip.

Photography School of Asia – http://www.jonathantaylor.net/photographyschool/courses.php

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