How to Give a Toast in (Almost) Any Language
Every country has its own drinking traditions. Now you'll be able to say "cheers" everywhere you go. But beware: don't always clink glasses.
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How to Use Skype to Learn Another Language
Having real conversations with native speakers is one of the best ways to quickly improve your language skills. How can you find a Skype Language Exchange partner, and what should you do once you've found one?
Learn Better Pronunciation While Speaking Your Native Language
Want to improve the pronunciation of your second language? Find out how you can do so while speaking in your native tongue.
New Mission: Russian in 2 Months
As you might already know, my partner Lauren is learning Russian. But she’s been making slow progress. Why? I suspect it’s because something really important has been missing from her project… A deadline. That changes today. We’ve decided to put Lauren on the spot and share her journey with all of you, by documenting her […]
Language Learning for Introverts
Speaking a language is a skill. Like any other skill, if you really want to get good at it then it’s going to require practice. For languages that means lots of time talking, meeting new people, socializing, getting out there and making mistakes. If you’re an extrovert that all sounds great.
But if you’re an introvert – that’s terrifying.
Introverts and extroverts just don’t function the same as each other. As a result, trying to force an introvert to study like an extrovert or vice versa is never going to work as well as finding a learning style that’s tailored to how that person learns best.
Thankfully if you’re on the introverted side of things, all is not lost.
How persistence can get a beginner learner to expert level
The decision I made seven years ago to study Chinese at university changed my life. Right from the beginning I decided that I didn’t just want to learn some Mandarin, I wanted to be proficient. I wanted to speak the language to an advanced level and be able to read a newspaper and write characters with ease. It’s fair to say that I got stuck in immediately, and got completely immersed in my studies!
Seven years later, I can’t say that I’m perfect and don’t make any mistakes, or that I understand and know how to say everything. There’s still a lot of room for me to improve, but I have achieved my original goal. I can speak Mandarin fluently, and I know all the simplified and traditional characters other than the really rare ones. I speak and use Chinese every day, and it has really become a part of my life and a second language to me now.
The Art of Making Mistakes – How and why mistakes help you to learn languages (Guest post by Luca)
“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.”
—Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM
Making mistakes is a fundamental part of every cognitive process, whether solving a math problem, making important decisions, or trying to convey meaning in a foreign language.
What’s more, making mistakes and learning from them is not simply a human skill. According to scientific research (link: http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2012/08/monkeys-mistake-detector/), animals not only learn from their own mistakes, but they can learn by observing their peers messing up. In the animal world, avoiding blunders may dramatically improve one’s chances of survival. Both humans and animals learn to live and live to learn. Human beings, however have a unique skill: the ability to process and ponder their mistakes.
This can be an advantage as well as a disadvantage. Let me explain why.
Standard Arabic or Local Dialect – Which Should You Learn First?
Probably one of the most frequent comments I’ve received on my videos over the last months, usually from people in Arabic speaking countries that are not Egypt, or from elitist academics, all of whom ignored my travel-in-Egypt focus, has been “You should be learning Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)! It’s much better than dialect!”
Now that I’m actually using what I spent months preparing for, in the country itself, I can confirm that learning a dialect is far superior to learning MSA if you plan to speak the language.
How to Get Free French Classes on YouTube
I think the potential of learning online from what most consider something that you must go to classes for, was recently excellently demonstrated by Scott Young, as he successfully learned MIT’s Computer Science four year course in one year without actually going to MIT.
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