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
Free08Apr
Book excerpt: Write like you speak and speak like you write
Obviously writing a business report, writing an essay on philosophy and writing an academic paper all require you to organize your information in different ways. You need to be more formal and structured than when you engage in casual conversation...
Read more Book excerpt: Write like you speak and speak like you write04Apr
Motivation and writing
Writing is a powerful way to improve language accuracy. Unlike when you speak, in writing you control the situation. You can take your time. You can experiment using new words and phrases that you have learned. At The Linguist we encourage learner...
Read more Motivation and writing04Apr
Motivation and interesting content.
The comments below certainly confirmed the importance of motivation in language learning. It was also pointed out that we need to communicate in the real world. Of course, in an ideal situation we have the opportunity to speak with native speakers...
Read more Motivation and interesting content.02Apr
Motivation in language learning
You would think that people living in places where English is not spoken, like Japan or Taiwan or Finland, for example, would not be motivated to learn. You would think that new immigrants to Canada would be very motivated to learn. In fact that i...
Read more Motivation in language learning02Apr
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 line