10 things to do once you have passed your MLAT.
1. Firstly, congratulations! Most people do not pass the MLAT so good on you for preparing well and putting in the work to succeed. The first thing to do is take a well deserved afternoon off.
2. The second thing we recommend to do is that if you are on a monthly subscription to MLATstudy.com and you genuinely will not need access to the study resources again then you can cancel your membership via 'My Subscriptions.'
3. If you thought that the materials within the MLATstudy.com portal were useful and assisted your test performance, send a link to friends who are looking to learn a language through their organisation. If it worked for you then it will work for them and it’s nice to pay things forward.
4. Determine which languages you are now qualified for. This will be different for every organisation that uses the MLAT.
5. Received your language? I hope you got your #1 choice but if not, hey, you are still about to start a language journey that will open up a world of possibilities. Now, if our experiences are anything to go by, the language courses that have an MLAT test requirement prior do so because the courses themselves are very demanding. As such, it is definitely in your best interests to start learning now. This has multiple advantages. You can:
- Be exposed to and come to understand the grammar structures of the new language
- Lock in some key vocabulary prior to the course to get a head start on everyone else
- Identify key pronunciation characteristics of your language
- Figure out how you like to study language
Our recommendations on the best way to prepare for language courses
6. Download a language learning app. There are obviously many apps on the market such as Duolingo, Rosetta Stone and others.
7. Signup for a short course prior to your real course. The value of an actual course is the accountability you get from having to show up and have set tasks. Also, you are told what to learn and how to learn it from seasoned professionals.
8. The most important aspect of learning a new language is vocabulary memorization. This is the foundation on which fluency, accuracy and pronunciation are built. There are many different ways to memorize vocabulary but far and away the easiest way to do it is to have language stickers throughout your home, office and classroom to help you pick up new vocab with minimal effort. For Japanese, click here to see a great example.
9. Contact your language school and ask to be able to access course material early. I wish I had known this prior to my intensive course. Once I began the course I found out that all the vocab lists and sample sentences were available to anyone under an existing Quizlet user account. If you are able to access this what I recommend is to learn say 10% of the words from each course week. Choose what you think are the most commonly used words from each vocab list and learn those. This will mean that instead of learning 10 new words per day on course like everyone else you will only need to learn 9.
10. Lastly, the very best way to consolidate your new language skills is to use them in authentic situations. There are an ample amount of local language meetups in both large and small cities that you can join so that you can try out your new language skills for real. This has the added benefit of what is called stress inoculation. Essentially speaking a new language can make people feel awkward and nervous but the more you do it the more you will inoculate yourself against this feeling.
If you complete these 10 steps then there is no stopping you! You will have a great time learning a new language and we wish you all the best in your language journey!
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