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

09Sep
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
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
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
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
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
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 Comprehension06Jun
Monolingual or Bilingual Dictionaries for Language Learners?
Which is better for language learners, monolingual or bilingual dictionaries? This question often comes up.A monolingual dictionary explains the meaning of a word in the language that you are learning. A bilingual dictionary provides a translation...
Read more Monolingual or Bilingual Dictionaries for Language Learners?23May
Language Learning Goal 1: Learning Vocabulary
The number one goal in language learning is to acquire words. Keep that as your goal, your major activity, be conscious of the fact that you are acquiring these words. Even though at times it seems that you can't remember them. You can't remember when you need to use them. You keep on forgetting their meaning. None of that matters.
Read more Language Learning Goal 1: Learning Vocabulary19Apr
My 7 Goals of Language Learning
My hierarchy of goals is what I consider to be more important at what stage in my learning. There are seven of them and I'm going talk about the seven today, and then I've been giving some thought to doing one video on each of these seven goals. In other words, how do we achieve those goals? How do we use those goals to improve our ability in the language that we're learning?
Read more My 7 Goals of Language Learning24Mar
Language Learning Distractions
We live in an age where there are lots of distractions. The multiplicity of media has made it easy to be distracted from whatever task we are engaged with.
Read more Language Learning Distractions