What I would call being a lazy language learner doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t being a successful language learner, it just means that you’re being lazy the way I’m being lazy. And so there are seven habits I think that we need to acquire if we’re going to be effective, successful, lazy language learners.
Grammar basically describes usage. So since languages evolve over time, sounds in languages evolve over time, usage patterns evolve over time. Therefore the grammar which describes the usage will evolve over time. So how useful is it to attempt to teach people what the rules of usage are before the learner has had enough experience with the language?
The last 15 years have brought revolutionary change to language learning. Amongst the most popular new opportunities is the possibility to connect with native speakers of the languages we are learning via…
*** 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. Back in 1968, I was…
The most important task in language learning, in my opinion, is the acquisition of vocabulary. If we have enough words, we can make sense of what we’re reading or listening to and…
*** 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. We regularly see blog…
First of all, the first thing I think we need to do to study effectively is to improve our reading skills. If we aren’t good readers, we need to become good readers, to read faster, to get better at acquiring information through reading, because reading is very effective, very efficient. It enables us to access so much information, whether in a traditional book or an ebook where we can look things up if we’re on an iPad or on a computer, being careful to avoid the distractions granted. So reading is super powerful.
I was about 60 when I started learning Russian and my approach to language learning had always been that you shouldn’t focus on grammar. You need to get used to the language through lots of listening and reading. I had done that with Chinese, with Japanese.
Wie lange braucht man, um Spanisch zu lernen? Wie lange dauert es generell, irgendeine Sprache zu lernen? Ich höre diese Frage ziemlich oft und es gibt keine universelle Antwort darauf. Es liegt…
What is the hardest language to learn? I think that’s a very difficult question because there are so many factors that enter into that.
