For people who love languages, or would but were discouraged.
- Believe in yourself and have the right attitude
- Put in an hour a day
- Use a system that works... like LingQ
Free04Nov
4 Nov 2022
Want to Learn German? Here’s How I Did It.
In 1987, I decided I was going to put forth a major effort to learn German. I’m going to explain that to you in detail. Long before I decided that I was going to learn German, I did have exposure to the language. My parents were from Czechoslovakia and they spoke German at home, […]
Read more Want to Learn German? Here’s How I Did It.25Oct
25 Oct 2022
The Best Way to Learn Italian
Italian is a language that has always appealed to me, as Italy is such a lovely country. I have traveled and hitchhiked through Italy and, at that time, I didn’t speak Italian, so I was relying on my knowledge of Spanish to communicate with people. With so many fascinating places to visit, great food and […]
Read more The Best Way to Learn Italian11Oct
11 Oct 2022
How To Become Good at Speaking a New Language
You have all heard me stress the importance of input. You have to get the language in you, meaning you have to acquire words, and you have to let your brain get used to the language. I spend most of my time practicing different forms of input, however, the ability to effectively speak is the […]
Read more How To Become Good at Speaking a New Language23Sep
23 Sep 2022
How I learned French
When I was 16, we had the option to do our first year of university instead of grade 12 in high school. I decided to move on to McGill University in Montréal as I found high school to be a bit boring. Not knowing what to study, I chose a number of courses in French and English literature. My professor at university named Maurice Rabotin was great!
Read more How I learned French09Sep
9 Sep 2022
To Improve Language Comprehension DON’T Try to Understand
Experienced language learners accept uncertainty, yet they keep going. They accept that they don’t fully understand. In the above video I refer to two kinds of comprehension, listening comprehension and reading comprehension, but in this post I will simply refer to them as language comprehension. Language comprehension is the most […]
Read more To Improve Language Comprehension DON’T Try to Understand18Aug
18 Aug 2022
How to Expand Your Vocabulary Without Memorization
Accumulating words is the fundamental task in language learning, in other words it is very important to acquire new words. Many learners are under the impression that this is done through memorization. This is not, however, the most effective way to grow your vocabulary. I’ve never been able to learn new words by deliberately trying to memorize them. The more effective way to learn new words [...]
Read more How to Expand Your Vocabulary Without Memorization01Aug
1 Aug 2022
How Long Should it Take to Learn a Language?
Language learning depends mostly on three factors, the attitude of the learner, the time available, and learner's attentiveness to the language. If we assume a positive attitude on the part of the learner, and a reasonable and growing attentivenes...
Read more How Long Should it Take to Learn a Language?18Jul
18 Jul 2022
Listening: Language Learning Goal 3
My third language learning goal is listening. It's the third goal in the hierarchy, but in many ways it's the most important because it's the major activity that I do when it comes to language learning, simply because it's so easy to do. So I can get up in the morning and listen, I can listen while doing the dishes, I listen while I exercise. I listen while in the car, the train or wherever I [...]
Read more Listening: Language Learning Goal 304Jul
4 Jul 2022
Comprehensible Input and Compelling Input (CI)
What is meant by comprehensible input in language learning? Stephen Krashen uses this term, as well as the term compelling input, to refer to the kind of language exposure we need in order to learn a language. The term CI, in language learning, can apply to both. What do they mean?
Read more Comprehensible Input and Compelling Input (CI)20Jun
20 Jun 2022
Language Learning Goal 2: Reading Comprehension
Reading is easier than listening. I can work my way through a text at LingQ, look up every word. Let's say I'm in sentence mode, it's a brand new language and if there's seven words in that sentence, I can look up each word and I can kind of figure out what the sentence means. Fuzzy, maybe not totally clear, but I have a sense of what that sentence means. I have a sense of which words [...]
Read more Language Learning Goal 2: Reading Comprehension