Learning Techniques

The most important task in language learning, in my opinion, is the acquisition of vocabulary. If we have enough words, we can make sense of what we’re reading or listening to and we can somehow express ourselves. Vocabulary is much more important than grammar. The grammar you acquire gradually as you become familiar with the […]

Good language learners notice what is happening in a language. They notice the sounds of the language, and the structure and the vocabulary. They notice as they listen and read. They notice when they use the language. How can we train ourselves in the ability to notice, in order to become good language learners?

Breaking News –Special Report: A new way of recording and transmitting information has been discovered, even more convenient than mp3 technology. It’s called reading, yes, writing things down for others to read!   Someone commented on one of my recent YouTube videos where I said, in Japanese, that Japanese people who are learning English might […]

I want to talk about blogging and podcasts as a means of enriching your language learning content, variety and, particularly, as a step from beginner material to the more difficult, more demanding material. I recently did a “Streak with Steve” live stream video. We’re encouraging people to commit to maintaining a streak at LingQ, so […]

For the last week I’ve been studying Serbo-Croatian. We have the Serbian mini stories at LingQ, so I’ve been at it for a week. I’m going to try to speak, obviously, when I’m in Croatia. I’m going to try to understand. That’s why I’m trying to learn as much of the language as I can […]

I have previously talked about whether people are vocabulary builders or vocabulary memorizers and I sort of said that memorizers spend a lot of time with Anki decks or lists and try to nail down vocabulary and that is a large part of their language learning. Vocabulary builders prefer to let the vocabulary accumulate through […]