Three Golden Rules for Dutch Learners:
✒1) Put in the time. (There are no shortcuts.)
👀Never forget this number: 600, six hundred. Since Dutch is a category 1 language, it is a lot easier to learn than Chinese or Arabic.
It will take you, as an English speaker, about six hundred hours to become fluent in Dutch – according to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI). It will take you 300 hours to reach the B1 level.
The time you put in is the best indicator of your progress. Therefore, your main focus should be spending more time doing things in Dutch.
✒2) Choose one resource and stick to it.
👀Focus.
It is way too easy to hop from one thing to the next. Don’t do that. Choose one book or video series and finish it. Then go to the next one.
Why?
Well, books and video series for beginners or intermediate learners are carefully structured.
Just like I structured my book in such a way that it’s perfect for beginners, other language books do the same. We, as teachers, we really know what our students need. We select words and structures with love and good reasons. If you constantly switch from one book to the next, you will never benefit from this.
Instead, you will learn a little bit of everything and never get to the real Dutch. Because that is where you want to get to as soon as possible: real Dutch. Dutch meant for Dutch people.
Things like the news, books and podcasts are the best learning material. But you don’t understand them now. So first you work your way through something easy, like my book. Or another text book. From the start until the end, until you’re ready for the real stuff!
✒3) Reading and listening will get you fluent.
👀You probably focus waaaaaaaay to much on your speaking skills.
First listen, then talk. You need thousands of words to speak well. You’ll learn those words by reading and listening.
And again: you start with something easy and you need to finish it. Finishing means: reading the whole book, or listening to the whole auiod book. Preferably both. It does not mean you need to understand every word. Just reading it is good enough, as long as you grasp the gist of the story.
Then you move on to a book, video series or podcast that is a bit harder.
Then one that’s even more challenging. Until you can understand truly interesting Dutch content. That’s where you want to be.
When you finally are able to understand a Netflix series in Dutch, your language learning session will basically look like this:
Day 1: Watch episode 1 and 2
Day 2: Watch episode 3 and 4
Day 3: Watch episode 5 and 6
Etc.
Reading subtitles in Dutch counts as reading time!
Those are free minutes you can add up and up, until you get to your 600 hours. No shortcuts, just binge watching.
Good luck,
Max from Neandertaal
