If you skim through the Internet, you will be able to find virtually thousands of different language learning techniques and methods, some that will prove to do wonders to your progress while others will tend to slow you down. From free language learning courses online, to course books and educational language games, everyone boasts their technique as "the most efficient language learning method". Well I rounded up a few of these methods that have truly proven to be effective and also explained how they work.

The "Study out loud" method

This method involves uttering out words out loud when studying and focusing as much as possible on conversation, self-talk and verbal rehearsal of words. The Study out loud method has two main advantages. The first one is that you will be able to assimilate what you've studied a lot better if you actually say it rather than just say it in your head, since this way you will be using both your auditory and visual memory. Auditory memory is extremely powerful and when it's combined with visual memory, they're unstoppable.

The second reason for which the Study out loud method is great is that it will get your mouth used to the language, which will help a great deal with pronunciation. It happens to most of us, if we don't practice a language for a long time, we can still "think" that language perfectly and pronounce the words perfectly in our heads, but when it's time for an actual conversation you will need a few days of getting used to. Well this method basically eliminates that buffer time, since you'll be constantly pronouncing the words, literally getting your mouth "used to" the language.

Fun learning

Studies upon studies have been made on the subject and they all proved the same fact: we learn something a lot easier and more efficiently if we've studied it while having fun or at least through a more relaxing method. Fun learning can include anything from using flash cards, playing educational language games in that particular language, watching or listening to media in that language, playing memory games or quizzes and so forth. Take note that fun learning is not as fast as the "normal" learning, but it's more efficient. The only problem is that the amount of information you are able to assimilate through fun learning methods is usually smaller than the one you can assimilate from normal learning methods.

E-learning

E-learning is a relatively new teaching method that emphasizes on giving the student as much learning room as possible and it focuses on using interactive audio-video components in the learning process rather than the classic course books and lessons. E-learning also bases itself heavily on the student setting his own learning pace instead of being forced a schedule that could make the learning process stressful or annoying.

Because of their efficiency, these methods are gaining more and more popularity amongst websites dealing with language learning and local language courses alike. Actually, you could try searching for one of these sites and if you're not comfortable with the above mentioned methods, you could try to find other ones that could prove to be more efficient in your particular case. Good luck!