Tips and tricks for keeping your mission language

A total of 128 different languages are spoken on the BYU campus, and almost 65% of students at BYU speak a second language. Many students learned these languages while serving missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Language loss, or language attrition, begins almost as soon as missionaries leave their mission and return to an English-speaking environment. While keeping up a second language isn’t easy, it’s definitely possible. BYU Spanish professor Scott Alvord said even as little as 15 minutes a day could be enough to prevent you from losing a language.

The Daily Universe interviewed BYU professors of language and linguistics as well as several returned missionaries who speak a second language and broke down their best advice into three steps:

• Be realistic. Be honest about your language level and realistic about how much effort it will require to put in practice. Set goals based on your self-evaluation. Realize that language practice won’t just happen; it will take effort.
• Input. All the foreign language material are important for this. Listen to audiobooks, broadcasts and music in your second language. Read books and newspapers and watch movies and TV shows in your second language.
• Output. This means you need to be speaking and writing — constructing sentences. Find a speaking partner and practice talking with them. Practice writing.