Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!
Llevo 5 años escribiendo en este blog y todos los artículos son en inglés… hasta hoy. Sé que muchos de mis lectores no son nativos del inglés y que muchos están aprendiendo inglés todavía. Por eso, vamos a ver qué tal si comparto algunos artículos que no estén escritos en inglés, como el de hoy. Conocí […]
Karen who runs Immersia offers these words of encouragement – I love seeing the same realizations from such a wide range of people, and am happy to share hers with you today, especially since she has such an interesting and different background. Over to you Karen: ——— I was born in the Ukraine and my […]
Let’s share another “Why a supposedly hard language isn’t as impossible as you thought” type post! This time from Cantonese native speaker Brian, who has guest posted here before and who organizes the Add1 challenge (now the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp). One of the challengers, Jan, took on Cantonese for his project and you […]
The issue of parents teaching their children comes up often and I’ve even had someone guest post on the blog about it before. That’s great if you speak the languages yourself, but what if you are monolingual and still want to give your child the best possible head start in this wonderfully global world?
Christine, who blogs at AlmostFearless and who has been travelling with her husband since 2008, has thought long and hard about this while she raises her own son, and is even writing a book about the experience. If you want to help out, see details at the end of the post. Otherwise, enjoy her take on what parents can do to help their children learn languages that the parents themselves don’t speak fluently yet!
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.
From the blog’s origin era (2009–2014) — kept as lived proof of the method. See all the missions. Today’s guest post is from Mariola Czupowska, who blogs at the Language Wanderer. She is from Poland and was recently inspired to learn Norwegian! She set herself an interesting challenge of recording videos in the language, and […]
So, I’m Julie Ferguson and I have nothing on Helen Keller! I am, however, severely deaf and partially sighted.
My parents realised that I had a hearing problem when I was 2 years old, though I didn’t get my first hearing aid until I was 4. Unfortunately, when I was 4, nobody could understand me babbling away in my version of English, except for my mum and my brother. Apparently, I was bad. I couldn’t even pronounce my own name (it sounded like Ooee Fehuhoh).
I was sent to speech therapy for intensive work before I started primary school, and I remember working on all those weird sounds especially “spoon”. My particular hearing loss makes it difficult to hear consonants, especially s, h, and f.
One of the most prominent myths in language learning is that you have to go to the country to successfully learn it. This is so untrue!! I have always said that it depends on your attitude not your latitude and moving to the country may not help at all in some cases. This topic will […]
Today’s guest post is from Will Peach, an Englishman journeying around Spain, keeping regular video diaries to make himself accountable for learning the language. Will found my blog shortly before beginning his adventure and continues to apply my tips in the hope that he will reach his defined level of fluency before September of this […]
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