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thelinguist.com - Steve Kaufmann
You DO NOT Need to Be Perfect

You DO NOT Need to Be Perfect

Why do I want to talk about perfection? First of all, I am a dilettante learner. I also recognize that there are people who need the language for professional reasons because they want to get into a school so that they’re not just dabbling in the language, exploring, having fun like I like to do, they actually need it. So how good do they need to be in the language?

How to Learn Vocabulary

How to Learn Vocabulary

*** This post is a transcript of a video on my YouTube channel. Studying English? Here’s the transcript as a lesson to study on LingQ.   I have said in the past that the…

My Language Learning Motivation

My Language Learning Motivation

I want to talk about history. Why history? Because history fascinates me. I realize that people watch my videos either because they’re working on improving their English or because they find my videos in some way motivating and encouraging and therefore encourages them to continue with learning languages, which in turn motivates me to make more videos.

How Should Languages Be Taught in School?

How Should Languages Be Taught in School?

It’s not a good idea, in my opinion, to demand grammatical accuracy from language learners in school, because so few of them end up speaking the language. What does it matter whether they are able to nail niceties of grammar at the age of 12? To me, it doesn’t matter. If there’s some way of making them enjoy the process of language learning so that they expose themselves to the language, they develop some degree of comprehension, they develop a certain level of vocabulary, that’s good enough.

Common Language Learning Problems

Common Language Learning Problems

What are the main problems that I see amongst language learners? First of all, most people don’t realize how long it takes to learn a language. So people get frustrated. They get particularly frustrated when they get to that first level where all of a sudden they know a bunch of words and they realize just how little they know of the whole language.

Quanto tempo se levar para aprender uma língua?

Quanto tempo se levar para aprender uma língua?

A aprendizagem de línguas depende principalmente de três fatores: a atitude do aluno, o tempo disponível e a atenção do aluno à nova língua. Se assumirmos uma atitude positiva,  uma atenção razoável e crescente  por  parte do aluno, quanto tempo levará para aprender uma língua?

The Importance of Reading

The Importance of Reading

Of course, we want to speak, we eventually want to speak a lot. Our goal is to speak. We want to speak well, but the emphasis should be on listening and reading because it’s something we can do whenever we want, on our own and it really does help our brain become familiar with the language.

I speak 20 languages

I've been learning languages for over 50 years and I've tried all kinds of approaches.

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Steve Kaufmann about LingQ

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