Cliff Kwok, in a comment to my blog, asks about my experience in learning Japanese. Cliff has read my book in Chinese and would like to know more about how I learned Japanese in 6 months. I learned Japanese in Japan. I had a very preliminary expos…
I was driving home the other day and listened to an interview on the radio with a certain Jean-Paul Nerriere, who has written a book and “invented” a language called Globish. It appears that Globish refers to a simplified form of English which use…
I often see people working their way through newspaper articles and writing long lists of words into an exercise book. It is painstaking and time consuming. Usually the learner does not choose the article for study. The teacher chooses it. The wor…
Language learning is a long road, but it can (or must ) be an enjoyable one. At times the progress seems slow, as Autumnsky points out in a comment to this blog. It is important to enjoy all the wonderful moments when we are communicating in anoth…
Attitude is key in language learning. I say it accounts for 70% of a person’s success in learning a new language. I discuss the many different aspects of a successful language learner’s attitude in my book, The Linguist, available form our website…
First of all thanks to the blog reader who pointed out an error in one of my posts. Running a blog is a new experience for me. In a way it is a lonely experience. There is very little interaction with the readers. I do not know what kind of posts …
We have been enjoying some warm spring weather in Vancouver and it sure picks up everyone’s spirits. The temperature does not vary dramatically from season to season in Vancouver . Winter temperatures rarely go below zero centigrade. Sometimes, ev…
I think a key concept in language learning efficiency is simplicity. The greatest damage has been done to language learning by the complicated theories of the academic linguists. Once we get into terms like interlanguage, sociolinguists, phonemes,…
My wife is away in Toronto visiting her 89 year old mother. Next month I will go to Europe.One main purpose is to visit my 93 year old uncle in Sweden with whom I am very close. I guess we are all getting older. Tonight I went to dinner in a small…
There have been two comments on the subject of pronunciation and intonation. These both came from Hong Kong from Cantonese speakers who have a high level of fluency in English but who want to achieve as close as possible to native speaker pronunci…
