How do Mormon missionaries learn foreign languages so quickly? Latter-day Saints who choose to serve missions enter a Missionary Training Center for just 2-10 weeks before they go out into their assigned areas for the remaining 18 or 24 months.

Since many serve in foreign countries, they learn a new language while in training, and many missionaries are fluent after about a year.

What techniques are used to teach LDS missionaries, and how to they get away with doing so in such a short span of time? Would the LDS church claim that it's related to the gift of tongues?
I served as an LDS missionary for two years and I think it can be predominantly attributed to a few simple things.


8-12 weeks in the Missionary Training Center where you study the language for at least 6-8 hours of the day have a big effect. We had experienced teachers that also went through the learning process. After a few weeks of study, we were asked to communicate only in the mission language we were studying, which greatly accelerated the learning process.
Total immersion in the language. I was sent from Salt Lake City straight to a city in Mexico, where I was assigned to work with a companion that was experienced and also knew no English at all. The need to communicate was a necessity, and created a total immersion in the language. The way it is typically set up, you cannot fully function until you learn the language.
This may be an extension of point 2, but you are encouraged to pray, read, and even think in the mission language from your first weeks of training. The program and method is designed to push you.
After leaving the Missionary Training Center, each missionary takes at least one hour out of every day (for two years) to specifically study a foreign language (the mission language if you are not native to the location, and English if you do not already know it).


It also helps when you have full faith that if you're trying your best, God can give you the gift of tongues. When you have complete faith that God will help you learn the language, you tend to have some fairly accelerated learning.

The LDS church provides counsel to missionaries trying to learn a language in their missionary handbook, Preach My Gospel.