How do I avoid asking questions that are too broad?

Question

If my question was put "on hold" or "closed" for being too broad, what can I do to improve it?

This is part of a FAQ to help new users.

Answer 1

As explained in the Help Center (see How do I ask a good question?). However, learning a language involves many things, such as:

• learning to pronounce its sounds correctly (mainly the pronunciation of individual words),
• learning to pronounce its typical intonation patterns (at the sentence level),
• learning grammar (not necessarily by learning grammar rules),
• learning vocabulary,
• developing listening skills,
• learning to read its writing system (at least if different from any writing system you already know),
• learning to write in its writing system (in many scripts, handwriting looks different from printed letters),
• developing conversation skills,
• in some languages, e.g. Chinese, learning how to look up words in a dictionary (handwriting recognition is making his easier now),
• learning cultural aspects, since languages never exist in a vacuum,
• finding learning resources for the above items (digital or in print, online or offline; for some languages, this can be challenging),
• finding tandem partners, teachers, etcetera.

When you simply ask, "How can I improve in language X?" (or in foreign languages in general) without specifying a clearly delimited area, your question will be too broad. A good question would focus on a specific item, such as those listed above. It is also important to bear in mind that questions about getting started in a new language can be difficult to answer because the challenge is affected to issues such as the following:

• What is your previous experience with language learning? Have you learnt languages that are related (i.e. belong to the same language family) or similar (i.e. in a typological sense)?
• How much time do you have available? (Some languages are so different form what you already know that investing less than 30 minutes per day, especially in the early stages, would be insufficient.)
• What are your learning goals? What do you want to use that foreign language for?

If your question was closed as "too broad", please review the above list of areas to get an idea how you can narrow down your question. You may then find that you can split up the original question into several separate questions.