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
Free02Apr
The Linguist Newsletter
First of all I want to express thanks to Tony for his words of encouragement in his comment. Of course in hockey you can only have 5 skaters on the ice at one time. However, our team having a short bench with only 10 skaters in all, put us at a di...
Read more The Linguist Newsletter30Mar
Book excerpt: Creating your own language world
Exploring Languages at Home Without going outside, you may know the whole world.Without looking through the window,you may see the ways of heaven. – Laozi It is always easiest to learn a language when you are living in a society that speaks that l...
Read more Book excerpt: Creating your own language world26Mar
The Linguist book: Excerpt
I am going to post a few random excerpts from my book over the next few days. This book is entitled " The Linguist, A Personal Guide to Language Learning." The book is available in print form in English and Chinese and in e-book version in French,...
Read more The Linguist book: Excerpt22Mar
More on making mistakes
We now have another comment on making mistakes supporting Pako's view that we should not make mistakes. I suspect we are not really in disagreement. The important points are: 1) You should not be afraid to speak for fear of making mistakes. Your m...
Read more More on making mistakes22Mar
Why you should make mistakes
Pako writes in his comment here that we should avoid making mistakes in our English learning. He also encourages English learners to spend more effort on input rather than on output, and on that point I do agree. The more you prepare yourself with...
Read more Why you should make mistakes21Mar
The bottom line
In this blog I have touched on a variety of questions that relate to language learning. I have talked about learning techniques. I have talked about the importance of choosing content of interest to learn from, about the importance of repetitive l...
Read more The bottom line13Mar
On learning many languages
The following is an exchange on The Linguist Forum. a question from your book Posted: Mar 12, 2005 12:22 PM Reply Hi,My name is Zhen-ting. I bought your book about six months ago and found your language-learning journey fascinating! I read your bo...
Read more On learning many languages12Mar
Why I am against teaching grammar
I am hoping to get some feedback on these views. I often hear learners say that they want to know why a certain structure or sentence is wrong. They are disappointed when a native speaker cannot tell them "why". There are all kinds of teachers who...
Read more Why I am against teaching grammar05Mar
Written and spoken contexts
In trying to copy from the Writing correction area of The Linguist web site I ran into problems with HTML text. The result looks a little messy. I am sorry. However, this text is interesting in that it deals with the issue of grammar based learnin...
Read more Written and spoken contexts03Mar
Trigger words
I want to try out this idea of trigger words as a key to learning a language. To learn a language, like English for example, you have to master the phrases. You have to be able to use phrases correctly. You have to use phrases almost instinctively...
Read more Trigger words