Part of becoming a polyglot is accepting that you’re going to be less than perfect. That means you’re going to speak with mistakes. Your pronunciation may not be perfect, but you have this sense of achievement and the intellectual stimulus of discovering a new world, yet another new world with all of the people, and as you learn another language, then the people of that language come alive, the history comes alive.
How Our Emotions Influence Our Language Skills has been transcribed from Steve’s YouTube channel. Original video was published on April 2, 2013 Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here. I want to make…
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…
When we speak in a foreign language, there is a very high probability that we will make mistakes. We make more mistakes when we first start using the language, and gradually the…
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.
