Posts Tagged ‘fluency’
Feb
Feb
The most important step you'll take toward fluency
I’ve chosen to learn to speak Italian fluently this year, but I have yet to complete the most important step I’ll perform this year. There are a lot of important steps involved in becoming fluent in a new language: learning vocabulary, figuring out those strange new grammatical constructs, opening your ears to hear the language,…
Feb
Feb
You’ll never be fluent by translating in your head
When thinking about learning a new language, it’s common to think about it in terms of “what’s the word for this” and “how do I say that“, as if all that differentiated one language from another was the words they use to say things. This is a very common fallacy. It’s also wrong.
In reality, there’s much more involved. It’s not just knowing the words, but also knowing how they are pronounced. How they sound. How they are combined. Grammar. Usage. Implications. Subtleties.
Mar
Mar
Updated goals for Italian
When I started this blog, I made a point that it is important it is to have clearly defined goals by which to measure success, and then I laid out some goals for this year. As it turns out, I think those goals were a bit too easy.
Mar
Mar
How much Italian can you learn in one month?
Okay, so what if you still don’t think it’s possible to be fluent in a new language in one year? Or, maybe you believe it’s possible, but just not possible for you. Or, maybe a year sounds fine, but you think anyone who claims to do it in two months is a pure genious… or just crazy. Right?
Apr
Apr
Esperanto one week later – am I fluent?
One week ago, after taking a brief look at Esperanto, I made the comment that it looks so easy that I could see how it’s possible to be fluent in one week, which led to my one-week Esperanto challenge. Now, one week later, how did it turn out? Am I fluent?
Apr
Apr
Language learning is not a race!
I often see learning advice based on lists, flashcards, progress meters, etc., and it drives me crazy, because these things are encouraging bad learning habits! Always remember, it’s not a race. This is very important to keep in mind, because you can’t take your test scores with you to a conversation. You can’t show an Italian your successfully completed stack of flashcards and expect that to help you communicate. You can’t fly into Russia and show the taxi driver your progress chart. You can’t order a meal in Spain by pointing out how far back your bookmark is in the lesson book.
Sep
Sep
Is it important to speak correctly?
When you start learning a new language and reading all the motivation and instructional blogs, you find that there are a lot of strong opinions on whether or not it is important to speak correctly. Today, hopefully, I can help you cut through the dogma and the loud voices to figure out the answer for…
Jan
Jan
Setting clear expectations
Just as I did last year, I am going to get my year started by setting some goals and laying out a clear set of expectations with the language. It is always important to do this with big projects, and learning a language is definitely a big project.
Saying you want to learn a language…
Jun
Jun
Fluency is not perfection
I see a lot of people talk about “redefining fluency”. The irony is, however, that the ones doing the complaining are, in fact, the ones doing the redefining. When pressed to describe fluency, they will often admit to expectations that a fluent speaker have a native-like accent, or a vocabulary of countless thousands of words,…
Jun
Jun
How do you keep languages separate?
One topic that seems to come up often in conversations I have with language-learners is the subject of mixing up languages in your head. Often people ask me “how do you keep all those languages separate?” and others ask, almost in disbelief, “don’t they all eventually blend together?”
But they don’t blend together, and it’s…