People always ask me if I use Duolingo. I’ve tried it. Multiple times. Always hoping it will get better. I just reinstalled it for probably the fifth time in my life to give it a fair chance, because I don’t want to be bashing it before trying out the latest and greatest version. And to …
So you’ve found some amazing music that you really love in your target language. You’ve put together a playlist and have been listening to your favorite songs, acclimatizing your ears to these foreign sounds. Now, hopefully this language doesn’t even sound so foreign anymore – less like a bunch of random, jumbled sounds that you can’t …
Read more “Learn Reading and Pronunciation with Songs You Love”
After you’ve spent a good amount of time training your ears to HEAR the sounds of a new language (with music for example); You’ve LISTENed carefully to all the different ways these sounds interact with each other, getting used to the unique patterns of the language; Well, now it’s time to start SPEAKing! With who …
Read more “Language Exchanges – Free Practice by Talking to People”
People always ask me how I learn languages. My response is very simple: I listen to tons of music, then have a crapload of conversations and learn from many mistakes. As you’ll notice from the title of this blog, I think languages are generally taught ass-backwards. When we jump right into written words, traditional grammar …
Read more “Music Language Learning – Fun, Personal, Effective”
Asking someone to teach you a language is like going to the gym and telling a trainer to build you muscles. Languages are so huge and there’s so much to learn that no one can download all of the info into your brain. Here’s the hard truth: learning to speak a language well takes a …
People always learn languages backwards. What do I mean by that? Well, they start by learning “words” instead of sounds. Most people don’t recognize the truly ridiculous amount of time it takes to train your ears to clearly hear the sounds of a “foreign” language. And then it takes even more effort to wrap your …