What should I do to have success on learning new language? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

One of the best ways to become more successful at learning languages is to better understand the language acquisition process. To begin with, acquiring a language is not just acquiring a body of knowledge; it’s acquiring a skill. As with other skills—like cooking, driving, surfing, or playing a musical instrument—the more you regularly practice, the better you will become.

And, like other skills, you will often be frustrated while you are learning a new language. You will make mistakes and it will feel hard and uncomfortable. You may even feel lost at times. This is a normal and unavoidable part of the language learning process; in fact, if you don’t feel like it’s hard, then it’s probably not working very well and you probably aren’t learning very much.

The good news is that after a few weeks of diligent practice, you will feel yourself getting better. You will remember more words, understand the meaning of phrases without translating them in your head, and your comfort and confidence will grow.

One thing you can do to make that practice more enjoyable is to find things to read, watch, and listen to that are interesting to you. For example, you can try to find news stories in the language you are learning that you want to know about (or that you’ve already read about in your first language). You can find YouTube videos in the language you are learning on topics that interest you or that you are already familiar with. Listening to music that you like in the language that you are learning is a great way to enjoy your practice. You can also try changing the language settings on your phone or computer—doing everyday tasks, like listening to navigational instructions, in the new language is a great way to get real-world practice.

And that leads to the next point: to be successful at learning a language you will need to do more than just listen to audio recordings and watch videos. You will need to actually use the language to accomplish tasks. Finding ways to communicate with other fluent speakers of the language you’re learning, either virtually or in person, is a very important way to becoming a more successful language learner. The more you can integrate your language practice into your daily activities, the more you will enjoy it, and the more successful you will be.

This question originally appeared on Quora. More questions on Quora:

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