How to Learn a Language On Your Own
*** 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…
My Language Learning Goals for 2021
Let me share a little bit about what I would like to see in the year 2021. First of all, in so far as learning languages, I’m going to continue with Persian and Arabic. And at some point I will refresh and try to get back into Turkish.
Languages are for Exploring
I’ve started reading about the history of Iran. Also at LingQ we have Sahra in Iran who has created a series of 26 episodes which I’m now going through. I’ve gone to episode seven of the history of Iran with circling questions.
How Do I Maintain My Languages?
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?
How to Memorize Vocabulary – Is It Even Necessary?
In my opinion, the best way to memorize vocabulary is NOT to memorize vocabulary. I have always found that trying to memorize vocabulary is an extremely low-efficiency activity. No matter how hard you try, some words are going to stick and some words will not stick until much, much later.
Change is the Only Constant in Language Learning
I may not be aware of having changed, but then if I go back to when I started with Arabic, it was just noise to me. The writing system was meaningless to me, and now I’m able to read, I’m able to hear and understand a lot. So there is this gradual, almost imperceptible change.
How Can We Achieve Good Pronunciation in a Language?
So how do we get to good pronunciation in the language? Well, I think there are three elements. One is the attitude towards the pronunciation and I’ll explain that. The second thing is the most important things that we can do that will give us good pronunciation and the third thing is remedial things. If we have what we consider to be poor pronunciation, what can we do?
Interview with Polyglot Olly Richards
My name is Olly Richards and I blog at a website called I Will Teach You a Language dot com. That’s where I kind of started this whole journey. Over the years, I have kind of shifted into teaching languages and creating books and courses to teach people. I have an approach that centers around stories. I call this method Story Learning. That’s how I’m kind of branding it these days. So to help people do that, I create books and courses which all have a story of the heart of it. So we’re giving people lots of nice, fun input at a good level, along with different kinds of instruction to help them learn.
Three Stages of Listening to Get to Fluency
A lot of this content, as in the case of our mini stories, has a lot of high-frequency verbs. You’re certainly going to come across the high-frequency words and verbs often and, therefore, it’s easier to get to know them. As you listen to this stuff whereas when you started everything was just noise and you think you’ll never learn this language, particularly if it’s written in a different script like the Arabic script, but with time all of a sudden you start to understand things.
How to Avoid Giving Up in Language Learning
I’m not saying that I’m an expert on anything. I can only share with you my experience of language learning. I want to talk today about how we can make sure that we stay the course. The secret to success in language learning is to stay with it, not to be discouraged, so I kind of looked at some of the things that I’m doing. What is it that maintains my enthusiasm that keeps me going?
