To learn a new language you need talent" or "to learn a language you need to be immersed in the country that speaks it are statements that the psychologist and linguist calls the two great myths of language learning.
Lonsdale compares language with tools. We only learn to use the tools that serve us for an end. Once you find the utility generated by the language, you will learn it much faster. The use of the best chinese language school in angmokio happens to be essential there.
This is what children do. Instead of studying at home just to perform the exercises that the teacher tells you, use the language to communicate with other people.
Lonsdale talks about a phenomenon already studied and proven, the "comprehensible input". Studying only through formal methods of learning is not as effective as learning through comprehensible input, since it is more important to understand than to accumulate knowledge.
Learning a language implies learning to recognize and produce sounds that you did not know before, and to which neither your brain nor your body are accustomed. For this reason, you must train the muscles of your face so that they can produce the characteristic sounds of the language you want to learn, just as you would when practicing a new sport: "if your face hurts, you're doing it right".
If you are distressed, upset or tired, you will not learn. You must be in a good mood to learn faster. Also, you must be a person who can tolerate ambiguity. If you try to know 100% of the content of the language you will get frustrated too quickly, especially in Chinese, where similar sounds can have different meanings according to the context.
From these 5 principles, the expert proposes some concrete actions to quickly learn a language. The first is to listen a lot, even if you do not understand. In this way you will be familiarizing yourself with rhythms, sounds and language patterns. You should also pay attention to the body language of its speakers, as it can convey a lot of meaning. Another advice that Lonsdale offers is to concentrate on the basic words of the new language and from that "get creative". It does not matter if what you say is not perfect, what matters is that it works.