Of course, language learning success depends mostly on the learner. But what about external factors? What does a keen language learner need most of all?
The answer is interesting language content. What constitutes interesting content will depend on each learner, and even on the changing interests of each learner. But the best way to learn another language is through interesting content, listening, reading and building up vocabulary.
I had lunch earlier this week with a college professor who is head of the Asian language department in a large university here in Vancouver. He told me that a majority of…
Many people, even if they’ve only learned one foreign language, may only visit the country where the language is spoken once a year or once every few years, so it can be hard to maintain or improve those language skills. Not being able to maintain a language can lead to something many multilingual people fear: language attrition, or the weakening or loss of a language. In my case, I claim to have 16 languages, and so language attrition is a concern.
I can speak 17 or so languages to varying degrees of fluency. Some I speak really well, like French, Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish. Even in languages that I speak less well, like Swedish, German, or Russian, my accent is not too bad, people tell me.
I think that children learn faster than adults. There is ample evidence of this, for example amongst immigrants to Canada. Rare is the immigrant family where the children don’t speak English, or…
I want to cover the issue of input-based learning that I have spoken about in two past YouTube videos in Chinese and Japanese. It goes by different names but basically amounts to spending most of your time on listening, reading, working on your vocabulary and becoming familiar with the language rather than on output-activities or grammar-focused activities.
Human beings are learning machines. We spend our lives learning. We can’t help but learn. The only question is what we will learn and how it will affect our lives.
Storytelling is a powerful engine of  language acquisition. Apparently Blaine Ray, the originator of TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling), was also the first person to create these circling stories that…
People often say to me, “Steve, you’ve obviously got a talent for languages, that’s why you’ve learned so many. Good for you, but I could never do it.”
To which I say, to myself at least, why don’t you try doing it the way I do it? Maybe, rather than a question of talent, it’s a matter of the method that I use. What is my method? It’s really quite simple. It’s the relentless pursuit of words – words that I glean through content that is of interest to me. That’s basically what it boils down to.
In Stephen Covey’s famous book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People he gives advice for people in many aspects of their lives: advice for managers, for business people and for people generally. His advice can also be applied to language learners, and here’s how.
