Home
Posted in General chat
Iām starting to notice a really huge difference in language experiences, and Iād love to get your thoughts!
Native English speakers ālearnā a foreign language in school, usually high school and/or college. They donāt learn to speak, though. They just learn some simple vocabulary and conjugationsā¦and also tend to forget it all after their exams.
Non-native English speakers (depending on the country) get a decent English education in school. Itās not perfect, but those who are interested in languages have a good enough base to learn independently. They get stuck trying to learn other languages, though, because language classes that arenāt English are those same ones that are getting native English speakers stuck.
I know there are a few of each of these categories in this group so I have a question: what do you wish you had known to help you in your current language learning? What would you tell your past self?
Native English speakers ālearnā a foreign language in school, usually high school and/or college. They donāt learn to speak, though. They just learn some simple vocabulary and conjugationsā¦and also tend to forget it all after their exams.
Non-native English speakers (depending on the country) get a decent English education in school. Itās not perfect, but those who are interested in languages have a good enough base to learn independently. They get stuck trying to learn other languages, though, because language classes that arenāt English are those same ones that are getting native English speakers stuck.
I know there are a few of each of these categories in this group so I have a question: what do you wish you had known to help you in your current language learning? What would you tell your past self?
Posted in Motivation station
OK so there are various teaching theories out there. Some great, some not so much. One of them is the VARK strategy and I'm curious to know which you think you are. Here's a very basic overview of what it is.
So what is VARK?
V stands for visual. Visual learners like to see what they are learning. They find images and videos etc help them as well as body language, flashcards, diagrams etc.
A stands for auditory. Auditory learners learn through hearing things. They need to hear the sound of the language and learn through discussions, tone of voice, pitch etc. They learn more from hearing a text read out loud than seeing it in written form and repeating things out loud often helps most.
R stands for reading / writing. Reading / writing learners learn most through reading or producting written work. An obvious one, I know.
K stand for kinaesthetic. Kinaesthetic learners learn by moving, whether that be by sorting things into piles, like say sorting words on cards into positive and negative statements or putting a cut up text into the right order. They also learn by moving themselves around for example putting postit notes around the kitchen with the vocabulary on to learn kitchen vocabulary.
You might intuitively think you know which you are but there are also a range of questionnaires out there on the internet that will tell you what you are. Do you even want to know??? IF you decide to do one or if you think you already know let me know which one you are. Do you think there's a value in knowing?
So what is VARK?
V stands for visual. Visual learners like to see what they are learning. They find images and videos etc help them as well as body language, flashcards, diagrams etc.
A stands for auditory. Auditory learners learn through hearing things. They need to hear the sound of the language and learn through discussions, tone of voice, pitch etc. They learn more from hearing a text read out loud than seeing it in written form and repeating things out loud often helps most.
R stands for reading / writing. Reading / writing learners learn most through reading or producting written work. An obvious one, I know.
K stand for kinaesthetic. Kinaesthetic learners learn by moving, whether that be by sorting things into piles, like say sorting words on cards into positive and negative statements or putting a cut up text into the right order. They also learn by moving themselves around for example putting postit notes around the kitchen with the vocabulary on to learn kitchen vocabulary.
You might intuitively think you know which you are but there are also a range of questionnaires out there on the internet that will tell you what you are. Do you even want to know??? IF you decide to do one or if you think you already know let me know which one you are. Do you think there's a value in knowing?
Posted in Mindset
Speaking seems to be the skill that language learners struggle with the most and we tend to assume that to be good at languages, we have to be fluent at speaking. For most of us, our first opportunity to practice speaking a language happens at school. It did for me, anyway. Our experience at school has a massive impact on how we feel about our ability to speak and sadly, I think many language learners leave school thinking ālanguages are hardā, āIām no good at languagesā because they donāt feel confident to speak. I just donāt believe that though. No one is by nature a ābadā language learner. No one.
Donāt get me wrong though, Iām not saying that itās our teacherās fault we donāt feel capable in languages. Sure, a teacher can have a massive impact but the school environment just isnāt the ideal one for teaching speaking skills for so many reasons.
The way see it, the main thing we need to improve when it comes to speaking is confidence, not ability. Ability will come naturally (with time and effort) if we have the confidence to give speaking a go. On the other hand, no matter how able we are, if we donāt have the confidence to speak, our speaking skills will never improve.
Some of the most common issues that affect our confidence in to speak are:
Ā· Not getting enough / frequent enough practice
Ā· Not having (or thinking we donāt have) a wide enough range of vocabulary or structures
Ā· Worrying about making mistakes (which has been covered in another post here)
Ā· Being worried that we wonāt understand a question when asked one
Ā· Being daunted by how quickly native speakers speak as well as their accents
Ā· Not having the confidence to cope with the unexpected
Ā· Lack of thinking time in comparison to reading and writing practice
Ā· Not being confident in our pronunciation
What strategies do you use to overcome these issues? What other issues affect your confidence to speak? Iāll post some of my ideas below later but would love to hear your thoughts too.
Posted in Mindset
I had a conversation with a friend of mine today about why we are so afraid of failure and making mistakes. In the end of our conversation we agreed on one thing, we blame our schools. The older I got, the better my schools became at letting me know that mistakes are good, mistakes are welcome. Even though I am grateful that my 19-year-old self heard that the first day of university, my 14-year-old self needed to hear that so much more. My 20-year-old self still needs a reminder from time to time and I probably will need that for a long long time.
Making mistakes and failure have always been extra hard for me and I think it always will be. But it is okay, and I need to keep reminding myself of that. My friend and I watched this video so I thought Iād share it with you in case you need to hear what we did: https://youtu.be/pwnWFNoe7Pw
ļ»æ
ļ»æ
Posted in Our members
Hi! My name is Linka, I recently turned 25 and I'm from Colombia. I have been passionate about reading and learning about new cultures since I was a kid and that led to being interested in learning new languages. I have tried a bunch of languages but I'm still a little bit far from confident. My target language in this moment is Russian and I really look forward to achieving a lot in this learning path.
ļ»æ
ļ»æ
Posted in Apps & resources
ļ»æ
Which online dictionaries do you like to use?
Personally I tend to stick to wordreference.com. It doesn't just give one or two translations and it shows the words in context too, which I think is really important. What I like most about it, mainly for my students, is that they can also hear how the word is pronounced in different accents too, which helps with both their listening and speaking as well as their knowledge of vocabulary.
In all honesty, I haven't tried out many other online dictionaries so I'd be interested to see what other ones you all use. Or do you prefer just to stick to google translate? Why?
Which online dictionaries do you like to use?
Personally I tend to stick to wordreference.com. It doesn't just give one or two translations and it shows the words in context too, which I think is really important. What I like most about it, mainly for my students, is that they can also hear how the word is pronounced in different accents too, which helps with both their listening and speaking as well as their knowledge of vocabulary.
In all honesty, I haven't tried out many other online dictionaries so I'd be interested to see what other ones you all use. Or do you prefer just to stick to google translate? Why?
Posted in General chat
I am using Webtoons right now to practice my reading in Korean. I find it very helpful with all of the pictures because as of right now my vocabulary is very small. And because of the pictures I can understand the overall story without the need to look up every word I donāt understand.
I would love to make my own Webtoon in Korean one day, sadly I cannot draw to save my life. But if I want it enough I will find a way xD
Have any of you used Webtoons before or something similar? If so, do you have any tips on how to transition from the picture driven stories to like a read driven book?
/ Tuva
Posted in Our members
Hi Everyone! My name's Deborah. I love history and reading. I studied French in high school and a two semesters in college. That was a looooong time ago. I keep trying to pick it up again but haven't found a learning app I like yet. I also would like to learn Spanish as my son is learning this in school, and Japanese as I'm a big anime fan. I finished the Daevabad trilogy recently and that has me wanting to learn Arabic. I realize I shouldn't try to learn these all at once. The language I'll be focusing on first is French as one, I have some experience with it and two, I'm hoping to go to France next year for my birthday. I appreciate and tips, tricks, or app recommendations. Currently I've been going through all of Jamie's youtube videos and reading her app reviews.ļ»æ
Posted in General chat
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 ālearningā English a couple of years ago without realizing it. I am at a point where I donāt know how to keep going. I donāt know how to get better or if I should. I donāt want to say that I know everything I want to, but I donāt 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 donāt know what I donāt know anymore. I mean I make mistakes every single day, but to just focus on my small mistakes everyday wonāt get me anywhere new.
Have you felt like this? What did you do? Any tips on how I should continue?
/Tuva
Posted in General chat
First ļ»æ
Linka Ramos M
ļ»æ , now ļ»æ
Cortland Kirkeby ("CK")
ļ»æ ...y'all make me so proud! Check out his comment on a blog post (it's long but relatable):
I found this blog just recently (July/Aug 2021). For me, it dovetailed perfectly with the all-Spanish "How I Learned Spanish" video you sent out last week (earlier this week?). Why? You guessed it: I was at a crossroads.
First, a rude surprise arrived in the last week of July. Somehow, after 400-and-something consecutive days, Duolingo (apparently) kicked me out of the program. It wouldn't let me log in with my normal password; it wouldn't let me change my password, I got no response to email or voice-telephone messages. It wouldn't even let me start completely over. poof gone. Was I happy about it? No. Withdrawal from anything is a b****.
Next, I read your "stop using Duolingo" post, it made sense, particularly the feeling that I had carried nothing forward into "real life" Spanish fluency.
After that, I clicked on your "How I Learned Spanish" and had a revelation -- "Hey, I'm really following this!" I started covering up the English subtitles - no problem. Ditto mis-pronunciations and hunting for the "right" word. Unbelievable!. Piece of cake - "Hey, I must be better than I realized."
Then it hit me -- "frame of reference." All of us already struggle understanding one another in our "own" language. A lot of it comes down to "why is this topic/concept/objective/assumption so important to you"? Clearly, you (Jamie) and I are operating from a common "frame of reference" established by your earlier blogs so, even in Spanish, little "aha" moments just kept popping like little fire crackers. "How come I didn't think of this earlier?"
Related concept: "tropes" (metaphors etc.), particularly redundant ones that strangers keep wearing out while I'm stuck wondering "how did this become so important?"
Takeaways: (1) Get more of Jamie in Spanish - either persuading you to put up more spoken Spanish offerings like "How I learned Spanish" or having you direct me/us to earlier Spanish-speaking blogs you have already posted elsewhere (perhaps originally targeted toward Spanish speakers learning English?); and (2) Next time I hit a wall understanding third party spoken Spanish, watch out for "tropes" and "frames of reference" that may be getting in my way.
Anyway, I continue as one of your biggest fans and will try to keep "checking in" as I explore some of these other learning sites.
I LOVE to see this message clicking with so many of you!