So, you want to learn a new language (Japanese, English, for example), but you don't know where to start. You've tried a bit of everything, you've done a lot of research on the Internet, you've found a lot of videos and pages promising magic formulas, exclusive methodologies, real miracles and you've even enrolled in those online courses with a bunch of video lessons and exercises, but it hasn't worked? You should know that the reason you didn't learn isn't because you're incapable or not intelligent enough. Learning languages doesn't depend on intelligence. It just depends on using the appropriate form in each case. If you try to learn a new language in the same way you've learned it since you were a baby, you won't get a satisfactory result. Maybe that's the reason for your frustration. If that's your problem, then watch to the end and see the possible solutions.

There are things you can learn on your own or with the help of books and videos, such as cooking, math, geography, science, computers, etc. BUT NOT LANGUAGES.

Devouring books, handouts and watching video lessons won't make you fluent. It only serves as tips on this or that. 

To learn languages, you need someone to practice with who knows more than you do. Otherwise, you have no way of progressing. In other words, if human beings were capable of learning to speak on their own, all they would have to do is give books and videos to a baby and wait a few years. It won't work. 

There are practically two ways of learning languages:

1- as a native language (1st language, since I was a baby);

2- as an additional language (2nd language onwards). 

They are very different processes for learning... We have to know which one to use according to the situation in order to get a positive result.

In the first process (1st language) we all go through it, regardless of which country we were born in. It's the same process that parents use with their children. There is no other alternative for parents to communicate with their children than to talk to them and keep talking, for years, until they learn naturally. No baby is born talking. It takes at least two years on average before they start speaking their first sentences. To start talking, you first need to understand. Babies only begin to speak what they already understand or have learned.

Although many people believe that this process is quick, learning a first language is actually the longest and most time-consuming procedure of all. It takes years and even decades of learning. This is easy to identify when we compare the vocabulary of children aged 3, 5 and 10 with adults. You can see that in each of these age groups the way they speak is different. A 5-year-old child doesn't yet have enough vocabulary to enter the job market as an adult, regardless of their level of education.

In other words, this form of learning (1st language) is only suitable for babies or very young children who haven't even learned their first language completely. This is the case for children who have moved to another country and are starting school in the early grades. The younger the child, the easier and quicker it will be for them to adapt to the new language.

Now let's move on to the second process.

If you're a "big boy" and have already learned your first language, there's no point in trying to learn it using the same techniques of seeing, hearing and repeating that are predominant in the first. This can be effective for learning your first language, but it takes a long time. It's a lengthy process.

The most appropriate way in this case is to use the knowledge you have already acquired in your first (mother) language to learn the second language. Remember, your brain is already filled with the first language. It is the dominant language. The arrival of another language usually generates conflict. It's like the arrival of a new baby: until then they were the only child. They had the exclusive attention of their parents. From now on, attention will have to be divided. This leads to jealousy, conflict, insecurity, etc.  

In this case, what you need to do to ease these conflicts is to learn the new language by comparing it with the first, making use of everything you've learned so far. All the knowledge you have already acquired in your first language (native language) must be reused. In this process we can use word translations. This is a resource that cannot be used when you are learning your first language.

For example, what would be the best way to explain the word "overtime"?

The answer is: it depends on the student's characteristics.  

For a 5-year-old, you can't use the second language methodology (comparing, translating, etc.) because "overtime" is not yet part of their vocabulary and they don't understand the concept. In this case, an explanation has to be made using various other words + phrases that are already part of the child's vocabulary.

For an adult, who already knows the meaning in their first language, it's enough to use a translation into the language being learned: "Zangyou" in Japanese, or "over time" in English. There's no need to explain as if she were a child, limiting the explanation to the vocabulary she has. This actually discourages rather than encourages. This way you spend much less time learning than if you use the first method.  

• If you are Brazilian and have children studying at a Japanese school, you may already have this question: What do my children study in the Kokugo subject? Is there a difference between Nihongo and Kokugo?
• Thousands of foreign children and teenagers, studying in Japanese schools, have problems mainly because they don't master the language of the country where they live. Perhaps the explanation given by the teacher has not been properly understood by the student due to language issues. 
•  In Japan, there are a lot of children of Brazilians who have recently moved from Brazil to Japan and entered Japanese schools without knowing enough Japanese to be able to follow the lessons. Many parents think it's only a matter of time before their children learn Japanese, as they think they'll have Nihongo (Japanese language) lessons all day long. But therein lies the problem: in Japanese schools there is no "Nihongo" subject (Japanese Language). Instead, there's a subject called "Kokugo", which means "language of the country". Which means they are two completely different things.  
• Nihongo is aimed at teaching Japanese to foreigners (non-native speakers). In this case the methodology used compares languages. It is taught how to make sentences, join phrases, learn new words and grammatical structures.
• Kokugo, on the other hand, is aimed at native speakers who already know how to speak, form sentences, express themselves, etc. So what is the focus of Kokugo? Reading and interpretation. From an early age, Japanese learn to read and understand (interpret) what they are reading. In addition to writing (Hiragana, Katakana, Romaji and Kanji), they have to learn to read and interpret correctly.