Yearlyglot

Perhaps the single topic that I read about the most is travel. I have always been fascinated with far away places and beautiful, exotic scenery… multicultured festivals and traditional styles of dress.
So naturally, when I am learning a new language, I go on the hunt for travel blogs in that language. When you’re learning… continue reading

I often see people who are studying a language pass up opportunities to practice. Maybe they’re trying to learn Spanish, but they never say anything in Spanish to their friends from Argentina. Maybe they’re learning Polish, but they never use any Polish words with their coworker from Warsaw. Or maybe they’re in the same… continue reading

When learning a new language, it is important to consume as much of that language as possible, in order to help your ears and brain adjust to hearing that language spoken. Outside of actual conversations, one of the best ways to do this is by listening to the news.

The most important thing part of learning a language is using it. Communicating with people. Unfortunately, finding ways to use a new language is not always obvious to the one learning it, so today I introduce Badoo.

When learning a new language, it’s easy to start deceiving yourself into waiting to use it. But why would you wait when there are so many good reasons for using it now, and so many interesting ways you can already use what you know to help you continue practicing and learning!

If my posts have seemed canned for the past week, or if you’ve noticed a lack of follow-ups on your comments, it’s because I’ve been away for the past week in Tashkent, Uzbekistan…

Io ho stato scrivendo sulla lingua italiana in questo blog due settimane. Quanto ho imparato? Molto! Il mese scorso, ho scrivato alcuni paragrafi nell’italiano. Questo mese, io scriverò tutto il post sul blog in italiano!

When learning a new language through a program or a book, sooner or later you start getting new words for food. It starts with things that you might order in a restaurant, which are hard enough to remember. But before long you’re learning words like peppers, onions, garlic… and eventually you’re wondering what real use you’ll ever have for these new words, why you should learn them, or how you’ll ever remember them. The solution is simple: write your shopping list in Italian!

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?

It’s so common for people to learn counting to ten when they start learning a new language, but as I’ve already discussed, this type of learning by memorization is actually bad.