5 easy ways to learn a foreign language as an adult

After you master your vocabulary and memorize grammar rules, take your knowledge out into the world around you. Try asking what the platos del día are the next time you visit your favorite papusa joint, or order that pirozhki from the Russian bakery in Russian.

Not only is this a great way to put your knowledge into practice, you'll also build relationships with people in your community that can lead to continued and nuanced learning.

Language exchange programs pair up people in the hopes that they can teach each other their native languages through conversation. When I participated in an intercambio (exchange) program while living in Spain, I talked to my partner using only my intermediate Spanish skills, while she spoke to me only in English. This face-to-face set up allowed us to correct the other person when she used the wrong word or verb tense in real time.

What's more, the kinds of conversations that arose during our time together tended to be much more casual and natural than the conversations I was having in my college-level Spanish class that I was taking concurrently, which led to my partner and I teaching each other colloquialisms from our respective homes.

Do you re-read "To Kill A Mockingbird" every year? Can you quote the first chapter of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" from memory? If you have certain pieces of literature that you are intimately familiar with, consider picking up that some tome in a different language and reading the two books side-by-side.

Since you're dealing with translation, this approach can introduce you to words and idioms that you might not naturally stumble across in a more traditional language-learning curriculum.

Tuning into radio stations, podcasts, or even books-on-tape spoken exclusively in the language you are trying to learn is an especially good way to absorb linguistic knowledge.

Since these auditory experiences are typically designed for fluent speakers, the people talking or singing tend to do so at an extremely fast pace, forcing your brain to synthesize the information faster.