Techniques

What I would call being a lazy language learner doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t being a successful language learner, it just means that you’re being lazy the way I’m being lazy. And so there are seven habits I think that we need to acquire if we’re going to be effective, successful, lazy language learners.

Grammar basically describes usage. So since languages evolve over time, sounds in languages evolve over time, usage patterns evolve over time. Therefore the grammar which describes the usage will evolve over time. So how useful is it to attempt to teach people what the rules of usage are before the learner has had enough experience with the language?

***   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.   We regularly see blog…

First of all, the first thing I think we need to do to study effectively is to improve our reading skills. If we aren’t good readers, we need to become good readers, to read faster, to get better at acquiring information through reading, because reading is very effective, very efficient. It enables us to access so much information, whether in a traditional book or an ebook where we can look things up if we’re on an iPad or on a computer, being careful to avoid the distractions granted. So reading is super powerful.

What is the hardest language to learn? I think that’s a very difficult question because there are so many factors that enter into that.

The biggest thing in a study plan is that you want to develop new habits. I’ve said many times that language learning is a matter of attitude and spending the time with the language. So we want to have habits that reinforce a positive attitude that give us a sense of success.

***   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. Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here….

  ***   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. It doesn’t really matter whether…

I often get asked the question, how do I maintain my languages? You know, I’ve learned so many languages, more or less up to 21. I don’t know them all equally well, obviously. So how do I maintain them?