I read this article about why language is power and I though I’d share it with you.

https://jeffflesch.medium.com/4-reasons-why-language-is-power-403ed2f865a0

For me language has a HUGE power. You can reach so many more people if you learn a second language (or more). And I have met some incredible people that I never would have met without another language in my bag and I will forever be grateful for it.

What is the power of language for you?

/ Tuva

Hello all! Lately I have been struggling to feel inspired, even for daily recurrent tasks. What do you do to get inspired? My most effective method is to listen to music but that has not been working. Let me know your suggestions! ☺️

Today, the platform this community is hosted on announced live streams! This is something I've been really interested in using for a while, and now that we won't have to deal with the back and forth of Zoom, it'll be so much easier.

I'd love to have regular online meetups with y'all so we can get to know each other, talk any and all things language learning, and support each other.

That being said, what would YOU like to see in these kinds of events? Some ideas off the type of my head:

....or anything that you'd want to join!

So about 8 or so years ago I stopped teaching German as they removed it from the curriculum in my school. I didn't use it in any other part of my daily life so ended up reluctantly taking a break from it.

When I came back to wanting to focus on my German, I felt really daunted. Would I be good enough? I didn't think so. Had I forgotten everything? I thought I had had too long without using the language to get it back to the level it was at. Major imposter syndrome. In fact that imposter syndrome was why I procrastinated for so long and put off getting back into using and learning German.

When I jumped in at the deepend what I found was quite different though. Yes, I had lost a lot of vocabulary as well as my grammatical accuracy but slowly and with practice that has come back. What shocked me though, was that I was still able to communicate my thoughts perfectly well. I was still "fluent" but sometimes got the grammar wrong although not in a sense that made me difficult to understand. And I had lost my range of vocabulary but I still had skills that helped me get round that, like paraphrasing etc.

Has anyone else experienced this procratination at getting back into a language after time away from it? I'm guessing so but it's good to share experiences and realise that we're more than possible to overcome them.
OK I'm not back to my original level of German but I'm feeling a LOT more confident and know I CAN do this.

Don't you just hate imposter syndrome and procrastination though???




I just started my last year at university last week and I am already so overwhelmed with everything. SO much is going on at once and my brain just kind of want to take a step back, but at the same time I don’t want to do that.

Every time I take a step back from my language learning, it can go from a week long break to a 3 months long break in the blink of an eye. And I do not want that to happen again.

And then I stumbled across this video and it strangely gave me a lot to motivation to continue and enjoy the process of learning. Even if I take a week long break, I still have the motivation to get back after that. So I just wanted to share it with you, in case it could give you something.

/Tuva

SO interesting to see how language learning apps modernize...Mondly and Duolingo now offer family plans! Well, at least Duolingo announced it at Duocon, not sure if it's implemented yet. Mondly is, though!

Do you think this option is more likely to motivate you to learn a language?

Hi there,

Today I decided to take a look at some of my old books and resources and found some great ones that I had forgotten about.

I'm continually trying to sound more natural and also improve my range of vocabulary and structures so I found these two books that I'd forgotten about that I think will really help me with that.

Sometimes, I find myself getting frustrated with the fact that I reuse the same verbs and vocab over and over and, whilst I can say what I want to communicate, I sometimes feel like my structures can become a little samey and I worry I sound boring.

Today, I have set myself the challenge of learning 1 idiom per week AND putting it into practice. I will also try to use 1 new synonym per day too, again putting it into practice. I'm so fed up of the word "interesante" so it will be really nice to shake my vocab up a bit too.

One of these books is 20 years old but I think they'll still be invaluable to me. What are you doing / have you done in the past (that worked or didn't work) to increase your range of ocabulary ans structures?

I'm curious how much time people usually spend per day dedicated to language learning. In the past I would go all out, studying for long periods each day. Then after a week or so I would stop, either due to lack of time, unmotivated, or the realization I wasn't retaining the information (trying to cram too much too fast). I recently started studying French again. Right now I'm doing 15-30 minutes a day on average. I'm not sure if that's enough. I want to make progress but don't want to get burnt out. Any suggestions?

I thought about this the other day, when do you stop learning a language? Well, maybe stop learning is the wrong way to put it, but I am not sure how else to say it. I feel like I stopped “learning” English a couple of years ago without realizing it. I am at a point where I don’t know how to keep going. I don’t know how to get better or if I should. I don’t want to say that I know everything I want to, but I don’t know what to learn anymore.

I guess I am so comfortable in English that it kind of is like second nature to me at this point. I use it every day, on my own, with people, for school, and so on. But I feel lost. I don’t know what I don’t know anymore. I mean I make mistakes every single day, but to just focus on my small mistakes everyday won’t get me anywhere new.

Have you felt like this? What did you do? Any tips on how I should continue?

/Tuva