How to Learn a New Language as an Adult (Masterclass)

1. Unedited Introduction: but that she only hung go our show Whoever this dagga could a ah Higaki Manandhar docket This she can't see em at the Hana No Ryoko Tani Ocean damos. Do you know? Do you know what the hon Go take a look at this. You're open on your sale. How will my tell motel Hunger Okay, Cheap Internet Union Chundo hung. Okay, Sarah Soil Ah, she going hung my tidal Your soil could a door on Jenna Hung. Okay, can go Sue Yeah, Jule, Tow a hell. Okay. Uh Ah. Also mine. Deutsches off nine am evil off them each. Ah, and respect for stay on food and can be in Fear Creek After Eubank before the show also knocked for soc um forehead Mine Deutsche suit You been on solar? Uh uh. Very dissipated uber My tomato day That's rushed back in Don't francais, Jake Ambiance. We stunk a common saying Contra francais. I don't care. Alico Crimea On the continue on the doesn't own discovery of a city A My leg was mostly different tones about the leak. I could leave. We could take a Christian song. Japan's really wants to be an attic. Came often say the damage Espanol and Don't says no gap in the Espanola. Nice squealer. Better comparison, Chantel Italiano. No Kaitainen Publius intended Marcelino told en espanol. Pero Cuando Ablow abnormally small your moy Italians had off four cases in Espanol TV's rap 11 Italiano Topolanek Italiano forces separated Yamagata. Everything restore packing milk or so separate. Okay. You someone to look toward Dallas? Tatiana Angry. Is it? Okay, but not C. L. Italiano keeping busy. And I speak English as well. And Owen, Chinese data. How? Ah, so we will show our essential afraid. Sai Sachin Tracy John 13 So machine swishy do you get you in? Which is it was inside the queen would somehow cushier anyway was censored by Taiwan's we will g way computer and Jaguar competing. And she sweet would you whether you like you how? Okay, And that was it. Um So as you can see, I like languages a lot. I enjoy languages and I spoke to you in the seven or eight languages. I guess um and I left out a couple of it languages that I feel a bit less comfortable speaking to you in going to teenies or what thing about I g on and those Those were, by the way, ah, Ticino dialect from the Italian part of Switzerland and Taiwanese. By the way, the languages I spoke to you in were Japanese, Korean, French, German, Spanish, Italian and English. Not necessarily in that order, but more or less anyway. As you can see, I'm someone who enjoys languages. However, I'm not someone who's very good at languages, and I know this because I met people who are very good at languages. We could pick up languages like that, and they can just start conversing in those languages. And not only that, but they can ah can switch from language to language. And I'm really bad at that and the only reason I could really do it here. In fact, maybe you notice me hesitate at the beginning of each language is because I use what I call trigger sentences or trigger expressions for each new language, and I'll get into this in the course about what I use and how I use it. I I also know people who can go for, say, like, two years without speaking language, and suddenly they're thrust into a situation where they have to use that language. They can do that. I can't. At least I can't just naturally, I have to. Ah, again, I have my own regimen, my own method for being able to do something like this so that when I go to Germany or to Korea or whatever might be, I can make sure my language level is at the level where I left off. So basically I haven't lost anything. But I need my own method, my own regiment, for doing this. And I'll cover this in my course as well. So this course is for anyone who wants to learn a new language. This course is for anyone who has been struggling to learn into language and who maybe has thought that since they're an adult and they're grown up, they can't learn another language. I'm here to first of all tell you that's not true. In fact, very often, this kind of used as an excuse, But you can learn a new language, and I'm here to show you how I'm here to show you. The mess is that that I've seen that I've come up with because I've had a lot of false starts like I said, I'm not very good at learning languages. I thought I was, and I realized that I wasn't and that it was quite hard sometimes for me to learn a new language. And so I need to figure it out, and this all depends on what, exactly you want to do it. So this course starts from basically a 10,000 foot point of view at a Narrows and hones in . Basically, it starts from first of all, which language going to learn, I assume, you know, but you might not. So we start there. But then also, what your goal is, why you want to learn that language. Is it for business? Is it for a classic for a test? Is it because you're traveling there? Do you want to converse in the language? Do you want to read books in that language, all these air a bit different, And being adults, we can gear what we want to learn toward our goal so we can achieve this goal. That's what this course tries to do. Now I have my own method, and what you'll find is right at the end. I have a template that you can follow that you can fill out so you can create your own customized, own personalized schedule for your own language. So it's helpful if you take this course from beginning to end and you keep all this in mind . So at the end you can fill out this template. Now, the final lesson in this course is me going through the template point by point with you. But it should be someone self explanatory, and that way you can create your own schedule. You can create your own template for learning your language. Another thing I should point out, by the way, is that because I have this online course, I'm not very flashy as you might have noticed. Or if you've taken any of my other courses, you know that I'm not very flashy. I don't have a bunch of cool effects. I won't have all these cool background sounds and noises and whatever things. I don't do much of that. But what I do is I try to detail everything that you need in a logical manner, and I will, and that's what this course does. So if you are interested in learning a language you can get all the information from this course, and that's what I try to show you as an adult. That is very possible for you to learn a new language and I show you how to do it. So without any further ado, let's get started. 2. 1 Why "As an Adult"?: So why, as an adult, why are we learning a new language? Quote unquote as an adult? Well, first of all, we're told, ever since we're young, our pretty much our whole lives that Children learn languages a lot more easily than adults . But is this really true? Well, there's been quite a bit of literature and quite a few articles writing on this subject, and a lot of people are saying, Yes, it's true. No, it's not true. Or many times it goes down into the nuances like it says, that Children seem to pick up languages more easily. But then adults retain more of it. Or maybe that adults can learn languages just as well as Children. But Children are better with the accent and with pronunciation, etcetera, etcetera. My approach to this is that, quite frankly, adults and Children learn languages in two different ways. First of all, Children don't even think of it as learning a new language. Usually, when a child starts learning a new language, it's just because this child is surrounded by that language, has friends who speak that language, has other adults, says people around who are speaking this language and so It's not thought of as a school subject or an endeavor, but just that something that's happening almost naturally. However, this doesn't mean that right away we should give up. Adults do have quite a few advantages. First of all, we know why we're learning. If we decide to learn a language, it's our decision and we decided to do it. And we know what our end goal is. And this is very important because Children don't have this. Second of all, we know what we're getting wrong and right if we make a mistake, as adults were very conscious about it and Ah, and we'll notice because we have a teacher, we have a textbook or we just know that we're making a mistake. And so we know that we have to correct it, and this very often is not the case with Children. We also know how to improve on any mistake we make because we know where we can look it up and how we can look it up and where we can find the solutions rather than having to rely on somebody else to correct us. At some point we can correct ourselves, however, obviously there quite a few descent. Disadvantages as well when we're learning as adults, first of all is the mistakes. And I said, we're conscious about our mistakes, but that could be an issue as well. We are adults, and we're used to making decisions were used to being correcting. Our decisions were used to kind of having some control and knowing what we're doing most of the time released, trying to act like we know what we're doing most of the time. And Children tend to not have this issue. Children are told all the time. Oh, do this, do that. No, that's wrong. That's right. Don't. You're gonna be punished. You're gonna be grounded. Whatever might be for making a mistake and so Children and have no problem a making mistakes and be kind of laughing it off and laughing at themselves. Adults are really not good at that. At least we tend not to be we. Usually if we make a mistake, we're embarrassed about it. And that means we don't want to make mistakes in the first place. And so we tend to be very tentative or not wanting to speak because we know where X is gonna be off. We're going to use the wrong word, etcetera, etcetera. This is also a big reason, by the way, why people say it's easier to learn a language while drinking or Ah, or partying. Or either way consuming alcohol or something along those lines, because you basically have lowered your inhibitions, and so you don't care as much about mistakes. We'll get into all of this later because actually making mistakes is a big part of learning a language, and so it deserves its own section. But here I just wanted to mention that this isn't disadvantage, usually for adults. Second of all, we don't usually get as much exposure as an adult. If we learn a language as an adult, we already have friends who speak our native tongue. And so we're gonna keep speaking our native tongue to our friends, to communicate for work or to, ah, research stuff online, or to look at videos or to read books or whatever it might be while a child. Very often, the reason that a child is learning a new language is because the child is being exposed to a whole new culture country or, you know, set of people who speak that language. And so it's very easy for a child to just go to a playground and suddenly be surrounded by people who speak a different language and just start using it right away. As adults, we rarely are in this kind of situation, even if we're surrounded by people who speak a foreign language, we still want to rely on our dictionary or, you know something are trying to find someone who speaks our language or something along those lines. And lastly will last in terms of this advantages, there plenty other ones. But last of the main disadvantages that we can have as an adult is our method of learning if you think about it. Most Children, they start learning, as I mentioned, say, on the playground or talking to other people. But most adults, we learn through our textbook or our teacher starts teaching us vocab or how to write or grammar. In other words, we learn through writing and reading, while Children tend to learn through speaking and listening. Now we'll get to all the different components of language learning later on. But these are two very different methods for learning a language and because of this we have a very different way of learning. And many times when it seems like Children are making a lot of progress because they can see a few words or few sentences. This doesn't necessarily mean that they speak it that much better than adults, who in the meantime have been learning a bunch of grammar and vocab but can't really express themselves that well. It's just a different method of learning that adults have been concentrating on the textbooks and on the text itself, while the Children have been speaking on the playground. 3. 2 This Works for ALL Languages?: So I confessed that I really did not want to teach a course like this because teaching all languages is well, it's impossible. But teaching how to learn all types of languages sort of feels like the same thing. Now, as I mentioned, I'm a translator and by profession. And so I talk a lot about translation and translation tips. In fact, I've done courses and books on becoming a translator in a freelance translator. And there we have the same issue because there's so many languages that you can have a different source. Language and target language and so many combinations that it's almost impossible to teach translation per se. Likewise, if you learn a new language, you have your native tongue and then you have the target language language you're trying to acquire, and these could be all combinations. I could be an English speaker who wants to learn German or a German speaker who wants to learn English. These are two very different classes that will be taught, even though they both deal with the same two languages. Likewise, I could be a Spanish speaker who wants to learn Arabic or a Chinese speaker who wants to learn Swahili, etcetera, etcetera. Obviously, there are all these different combinations, and so it's very hard to come up with a method of learning languages that would apply to everything. However, there are quite a few things that come up with learning a new language, no matter what the target or native tongue might be. The fact is, if you're trying to learn a new language, you're dealing with a different grammar structure, different vocabulary. You're dealing with different idioms and expressions and also different pronunciations, and all of these are things that need to be acquired and need to be learned. And so there are certain systems and structures that can be put into place to learn these new languages. Now these two languages could be quite similar, like, say, Italian and Spanish. Or they could be extremely different, like state, Chinese and Arabic. However, by following certain structures and systems, it should be a lot easier to learn a new language. And by the way, when I say easier, I don't mean it's passive by any means. It has to be an active endeavor by anyone who wants to learn a new language. No one can learn a language passively, But I mean easier in the sense that you don't start learning the wrong things or start getting frustrated because you feel like you're like you're studying a lot, but you're not picking up anything new or you concentrate all your efforts and something that really doesn't give you many rewards, etcetera, etcetera. So when you're trying to acquire a new language, there are certain systems and structures that can really help. And these are the ones that I want to touch upon that I wanted to talk about during this course. I'm also obviously going to talk about a lot of tips and tricks that I've come up with her that I've seen that I've encountered over the years. And at the very end, I'm going to have my own method that I'm going to walk you through. This is after I talk about all the components of language learning and all the different aspects of it, and the different types of ways you can decide to learn a new language and how you can continue it in different ways. You can schedule all this in all the different types of tips and tricks and advice that I give you? What I've created is basically consolidated all into one system restructure that I like to use and I want to share that. But I'm going to share that at the very end after I run through all the let's say theory behind it and all the various different options that you have when you're trying to learn a new language. So if you're ready, let's get started. 4. 3 Have You Picked Your Language?: So, first of all, first things first. Having pick your new language, many of you might not have picked your language yet that you want to acquire. Now, if you have picked it and you already know which language you want to learn, then you can skip ahead to the next lesson. But maybe you haven't. You're not sure trying to pick between a couple different languages. And so I just want to touch upon this quickly so that maybe it can help you in making your decision. There are a couple of questions you should ask yourself when you're trying to pick your new language or pick the language that you want to learn. First of all, who who are you going to be speaking with? Who are you going to be talking to? Who are you going to be using this language with? Try to picture yourself using this language and the type of people that you're going to be speaking this type of language, whatever language it might be and with whom you will be talking second of all, where where will you be when you speak? This language will be in another country, will be in a business setting will be at the bar with some friends. Where you going to be when speaking this other language and when using it, by the way you might not be speaking at you might actually plan to use it in writing or something along those lines as well. So you can ask yourself these questions from that point of view as well. And the third question is, what? What will you be discussing? Will you be discussing? Are you going to be reading something like I mentioned? Or will you be discussing business topics with clients? Or will you just be shooting the breeze with friends? Will you be traveling and asking questions about travel and food and transportation? What will you be talking about? And the reason why I say you need to ask yourself these questions who wear what is because you want to come to the final question the most important one, Which is why, why you want to learn this language, because this will give you your target or your goal, your objective for learning a new language. And of course, you can ask yourself this for any language you want to learn. But hopefully, after asking yourself these questions and arriving at your why or your goal, then you'll have a clearer idea and hopefully you'll feel a bit more inspired toward one language rather than the other. At this point, Once you've gone through this exercise, I mean and you've asked yourself why you've come to your goal. Hopefully, you do feel more inspired toward one language and the other, and that's the languages should be picking, because whatever language you more inspired to learn is the language you're more likely to learn. As I mentioned, language, learning cannot be passive. It has to be active, It takes effort, and you're only gonna put that effort in if you're inspired to do so. So asking yourself these questions can really try to put you in a place and in a setting and in a mind frame where you will be using this language and so you can see which one inspires him, or and which one makes you want to learn the language more 5. 4 Your Goal: so the first thing you should do is decide on your goal. If you worked on the previous section, then you've pretty much already done that. But regardless, even if you have done it or if you already know which language you want to learn, you should decide upon your goal for this language because they're very many different types of goals. If you want to learn the new language, why do you want to learn it? What is your ultimate goal? And in this sense, you should try to picture yourself. Picture success. Picture yourself being successful at whatever your endeavor is in learning this new language. So what? What does success look like? Does it look like hang out with a bunch of friends and speaking in that tongue? Does it? Are you trying to learn a new language? Maybe you're trying to learn, say Spanish so you can read bore heads or Isabel Allende and the original. Or maybe you're trying to learn Chinese so you can conduct business in Chinese. Or maybe you're just traveling to a certain country. You want to learn enough of language to be able to travel without any issues. Maybe you want to be able to hold the conversationally evening. Maybe you want to. I don't know. It could be any one of these or obviously any other. Whatever success looks like to you, try to picture it in your mind. Try to picture yourself being successful in using the language the way you would like to use it, and this will give you an idea on your goal. And once you've done this, try to break this gold down. So, for example, if your goal is hey, I want to be able to hang out and hang out all evening with people in the in. Speak Chinese to them, right? That's my goal. With learning Chinese to be ableto hang out and have a conversation all evening over dinner and Chinese Great. Can you break this goal into intermediate goals into smaller goals? So instead of all evening, let's say I want to be able to have a conversation for five minutes back and forth in Chinese and be able to do that, be understood and be able to understand everything. And once you've done that, tried to break it down even more say okay, I want to be able to, you know, have a back and forth like I asked the question. Get a response, Ask another question, get a response or, you know, maybe have a question as to me and give a response. And that would be another breaking down of your goal. And once you've done that, tried to break it down even more. Maybe you want to be able to ask a question and get a response and understand that. So in other words, what I'm getting at is trying to break down. Whatever your goal, whatever success is for you tried to break it down into smaller, more manageable goals. Because what you can do then is try to achieve these smaller, more manageable goals. And once you've achieved one, then you can go on to the next and then to the next and then to the next. And before you know it, you'll be successful and you'll have attained success. Also, you should keep in mind when you're setting these first goals to kind of set a range. Uh, you don't want to be too precise, you know, if you decided that because of your goal, you need to learn, say, 50 new words a week. Make it say 30 to 50 new words, because when you're setting up your system and when you're making your flash cars or whatever might be for learning new vocab at the beginning Now you have no clue, and you don't know how good or bad you're gonna be at it. So if you can, especially for the first goals, because later you can revisit that the next goals in the whole plan by the first goals try to set a bit of a range because you don't know if you're gonna be on the lower end of that range of the higher end. And so, until you get an idea, you're kind of gonna want a range once again. I'm gonna go through this more in detail later on when I go through my personal system that I recommend. But for now, I just want to touch upon the main aspects of learning a new language and how to go about it. I should also mention that when I say you want to picture success and what your goals are, this does not mean that you can skip parts of a language. As I mentioned before, language consists in reading and writing and as well, a speaking and listening. And just because you decide you want to be able to say, speak Chinese with a bunch of people doesn't mean you can neglect the written language altogether. This is for various reasons which will get into later. And obviously, once you've learned, say, the introductory level or an elementary level of reading language, you can then concentrate a lot more onto the spoken language. If that's the case, you should still learn a little bit at the beginning and not just neglected altogether. There are no real short cuts in that sense when you want to learn a new language. And while you may be able to say sentences back and forth and you may even be able to hold a conversation without learning any of the written language, chances are you won't nearly get enough out of it, and you won't be able to continue that conversation any longer than X amount without at least having looked at the written language and understood it a little bit 6. 5 How to Learn (Auditory, Visual, Tactile): So how do you feel that you learn best? Most people will find that they are a combination of these three options. Basically, that you learn more with an auditory style on. This means more listening and hearing or visual style, where you have to see something in order for it to stick or tactile and tactile means that you need to interact with it. Mawr. I mean, it literally means you need to touch something. But it means if you have mawr interaction with it than you're more inclined to remember. Now most people have. You know there are combination of these three, but they tend to be influenced more by one than the other. And so they'll some people are very visual or some people are very auditory, some people very tactile and uh, and so you usually find that some of these systems works better for you than others. By the way, when you translate this into, say, the components of languages, an auditory person, usually this means that they learn very well with listening and speaking. If if they have ah, verbal conversation with someone, then they learn very well. Ah, visual person will learn a lot better with reading and writing, while tactile person will learn quite well with stuff like speaking and writing. In other words, when they have to do perform the actions themselves. If they have to speak on DSA art saying things than these things will stick. Whatever they say, they have to write things themselves. These things will stick. By the way. This is also a reason why very often, people who write their own flashcards retain the knowledge so much better than people who just download the flash cards or get him off the Internet or something like that, because the act of writing it down means that you remember it more. And that's the tact ill part of learning. Ah, you'll notice here that there is no combination, which would just be receiving stuff. So listening and reading because only receiving information, even though it's a bit more passive, many times more easy because you can kind of just do it without thinking, almost really doesn't help. You need some sort of active component to be able to learn the language, and so either speaking or writing or both. Now, if this sounds a bit complicated, don't worry about it too much. All I want to do is try to ah, make you aware of the fact that they are. There are these different ways of learning and that you're probably more inclined toe one than the other. So as you learn, try to see if one way helps you more than the other. Or maybe from past experience, you've already noticed that one way helps more than the other. And just keep this in mind while you're learning the courses, because that means that certain matters of learning will be easier than others and will be more effective than others as well. 7. 6 Components: So what are the components of language learning? Basically, I've divided the components of language learning in tow four. And they are as follows. First of all, there the verbal ones and under the easy find, listening and speaking. So in terms of language learning, you can learn by listening when people talk to you or when you just hearing it spoken. You can also learn it by speaking at yourself. The other two are the textual versions, and that's reading and writing. And these are the four components for learning language You can learn either through listening or through speaking or through reading or through writing. And we're going to cover each of these in a bit more detail just so you get more of an idea of what's entailed for each one and what the possibilities are in terms of concentrating on these different facets because the issue is, you might learn, say, reading and writing very well. But if you neglect listening, speaking altogether than, ah, the first time you try to have a conversation with someone that's really gonna show, like was the other way around. If you just concentrate on listening, speaking, it's really gonna show. If you haven't done any reading and writing since, he won't know you know the words in the grammar behind it. Like I mentioned before, quite a few people think they only want to come concentrate on conversation and the neglect reading, writing altogether, which can be a big mistake, at least up until you reach a certain level. 8. 7 Listening: So, first of all with listening their various examples, and I'm sure you can come up with more than I have listed here. But obviously podcast TV shows, movies, language exchange partner This could be either online or face to face their people around town to practice with. You know, people who won't say a restaurant or ah, or a business that deals with a certain country might speak whatever language you want to learn, you can listen to music in that language. You can watch TV or movies like I mentioned before, um, own with subtitles, and I'll cover that a bit later on. But you can also follow people online again. You get videos through YouTube or other types of videos Facebook video, stuff like that so you can listen to what they have to say. You can also find people who t shirt language online and listen to them in that way. YouTube and also other online courses such as, you know me and places like that 9. 8 Listening 2: listening is often quite hard for adults, and I mentioned this briefly before a swell. But it's because it's one of the last components we usually concentrate on. When you're a child, you start learning a new language. Usually start with listening and speaking because you're there on the playground or surrounded by other kids and speak the language or other people. And that's just the way you learn. And it seems like a much more natural way to learn. However, adults don't learn this way. We usually learn by through text through reading and writing, and because of this, various their various issues, it might seem that we don't learn is quickly. But things usually stick longer because we learned the grammatical rules and invoke behind it. However, we might learn all the grammar and Texan vocab that we want. But then, when it comes time to speak and to hear people speaking the language at the rial speed that they speak it and with their you know, slang and pronunciation we can use, we can often find it very hard. So what you need to do in these cases is try anyway, when you are listening to people And if you do find it hard, go for the gist. Listen for keywords and what I try to do is jot down any new vocab that you hear. So and again, very often, Children will do this too. They might not understand everything, even in their native tongue, that a grown up sets to them if they're speaking at full speed. But they kind of get the gist, and you become much better at this as time goes on. So try to do is go for the gist and listen exactly for the key words that you know the words that define the phrase and this can mean different things in different languages. But you kind of get a feel for this as well. And then what I try to do is every conversation or something like that. If I hear some new word or new vocab or something like that, I tried to jot it down so I can remember for next time. And ah, at least this helps me slowly, slowly learn new words that I get to hear in conversation 10. 9 Listening Speed: Now. What about Speed? A zai mentioned when people speak in, ah, their normal tongue. Very often it's very fast. In fact, if you if you're taking a course and you hear the teacher speak to students or you here ah , you hear dialogue, that's, um, that's done. As you know, it is an example or something like that. It's usually very slow compared to the normal speed people use when they speak. And a good example is cartoons. Cartoons tend to have slower audio, and they get. They tend to speak a bit more slowly and more simply. They'll use simpler vocab and stuff like that. So if you're first starting out with the language, that's why very often you start with shows like cartoons because they are slower, more simple. Ah, thing that I would recommend is being careful with cartoons. If you watch cartoons tryto watch cartoons that are from the country itself, and not that have been dubbed into that language because unfortunately, it happens quite often with cartoons and also with comic books that they are translated from another language and translated somewhat badly and because not much thought has gone into it or something like that, and so it's kept very simple, but sometimes it's done sort of badly or incorrectly, and so that could be an issue. Sometimes eso trying to go for cartoons that are from that country, if you can. I mean, if you can. Otherwise, any type of cartoon is better than nothing. And once again you get a bit more simpler World Cup So it's easier to listen to now. On the other side of the spectrum, however, there's the news. In my experience, at least, the news is usually the fastest and most complicated type of language to listen to in any language. In fact, very often it's people's goal in a certain language, to be able to follow the news and to be able to follow it in real time and the way it's being spoken and be able to understand everything that's being said precisely because of that, the newest will end up talking about, you know, economic sanctions or certain standards of living, or this ah, GDP of that and ah, certain other governmental structures of this other thing. I mean, it's not simple stuff, it's quite complicated, and they usually race through it. So keep this in mind when you're following certain different types of audios and other things. And don't forget that you can always slow down or speed up any pretty much any audio these days. Any time you're listening to an audiobook or to a podcast or watching video, see on YouTube or even here on you. To me, you can make the audio slower or faster, depending on ah, on your level of understanding. And so keep this in mind if you're watching cartoons and it's a bit too simple than speed it up a bit if you're watching the news and it's too complicated and slowed down of it, and I do this quite often. In fact, if I'm watching TV shows, I need to slow it down a little bit because it's too fast for me or if I'm following a class and maybe I find it a bit too easy. I tried to Ah, in fact, with most classes. What I tried to do is by the end of the semester from doing an online class by the end of whatever online classes of semester, whatever you want to call it, I try to see if I can speed up the video that they give us just to see if I've been able to learn enough to listen to it a bit more quickly. Another aspect you should not neglect is dictations now. I haven't seen much of these, let's say, in recent years since I left school. But I think that could be quite useful. And especially if you have something like a private tutor. This might be something you want to ask them if they can help you out with or if they could just give you dictations. And ah, obviously this entails the teacher, the tutor, someone reading something out and you write it out. So this also has to do with writing. But the main thing is, you need to understand what's being said. Word for word, which, um, you know, goes a lot more than the gist. And if you're able to follow a dictation, actually write down what's being said, then you no, that text released what's being said. You know it inside it out, and it's a good way of testing yourself as well 11. 10 Listening Subtitles: now. Subtitles are quite interesting. Watching a TV show or watching movies with subtitles is something that a lot of people do when they're trying to learn a language and their several aspects to this. First of all, when you are watching a movie in a foreign language, then you can decide to turn on subtitles in your own language. So you can in the movie that will be speaking the language you're trying to learn, and the subtitles will be in your native language. This. However, as attractive as it might be, it actually doesn't really help at all, because you'll end up just reading the subtitles in your own language. And you'll hardly gain anything from watching the TV show or the movie in the foreign language. The next step is to watch the TV show or the movie without any subtitles. And however, the best option that there is is to watch the foreign movie or TV show with subtitles. In the foreign language that you're trying to acquire. This might seem a bit counterintuitive. In fact, a lot of people would think that the order should be a bit different. The order should be first number one should be the subtitles in your language. But then number two should be the subtitles in the foreign language. And the best option should be watching without any subtitles. And although this might seem counterintuitive, there was actually a study out of Spain recently that showed that this was not the case. They, uh here they tested a bunch of Spanish speakers who were learning English, and they would watch English TV shows someone Spanish subtitles. And here they saw an increase in ability of 0% and some washed it without any subtitles. And here they saw an increase of 7%. However, the biggest improvement was in people who were watching English TV shows with English subtitles, and it was almost 17% improvement. And so this pretty much should apply. I mean, until further studies are done either confirming or negating this this should pretty much apply to any language you're studying. And I found that this is the case with the the languages I'm studying in. If you are studying any East Asian language like Korean, Japanese or Chinese, it's very common to have subtitles in the in their own language. For whatever TV show you're watching. And I found this to be a tremendous help, and so I highly recommend it. Ah, And to keep this in mind when you are using subtitles to keep in mind that if you subtitles in your native tongue you are hardly gaining any improvement. And so you should try one of the other options. And the best option will be to have subtitles in the tongue you're trying to acquire. By the way, what you can do is when you're watching TV shows. If you absolutely need subtitles in your native tongue than what I try to do is every time I watch one of these shows, I try to listen out for new vocabulary. And so I try to be a bit active about it. And if I here word being repeated or being used, quite obviously I'll jot it down. So at least I feel like I'm learning a new word for every TV show or every movie that I watch 12. 11 Listening Songs: another form of listening, which is very popular, is songs, and I wanted to cover this a bit because songs are great, first of all, because they're fun. Everyone. Usually when you're studying language, you can find at least one type of song or one Johner of songs that you like that you enjoy in the target language. And so you know, it's a great way to be able to learn to listen to the songs in that language. However, they can be bad because first of all, songs often are sung in a way that's different from how people speak. So if you learn a phrase that someone used in a song, it might not necessarily be the same way people would use it in day to day language also, Very often, what ends up happening is you follow the sounds, but you don't really pay attention to what you're saying toe what the words were saying, and so you kind of just follow the sounds and maybe you understand every other word or something like that. But you're not paying too much attention and wants to get you get kind of passive because you're just listening to the song itself. So just keep these things in mind when you are, listen to songs or if you look, if you're using songs to learn a new language again, What I try to do here is the same as I do with subtitles. I tried to notice at least one new word per song. So if I have a new, catchy song that I'm listening to, and I realize that I'm just listening to it passively, I try to listen hard and find one new word that I don't know, and then I'll jot it down. I'll look it up something like that. So at least I'm able to learn some new woke up for every new song that I listened to once again. This is saying that I do with subtitles and TV shows and stuff like that. It's just, ah, something that's simple and easy, but you can do every time you listen to things so you can learn new vocab At the same time , 13. 11a Listening Songs Verbs: There's also another interesting aspect about learning songs, but this only applies to learners who are a bit more advanced because it has to do with verbs. Now. I learned this, actually, for my mother, who's an Italian teacher, has been an Italian teacher for about, I think, more than 20 years, definitely anyway. And she for some of her classes. She likes to use songs a lot because it really helps with learning the verb tenses. And she pointed this out to me, and I've noticed, is for several languages now. Usually, if a song is singing, say, in the past tense or the past perfect or whatever tense it might be of a song, it stays the same tents throughout the whole song. So if you're trying to learn verb tenses, especially in some of these dramatic and romance languages that convey quite difficult, then songs can be, ah, great place to learn them because they'll if they used to say the in perfetto in Italian, they'll be using it throughout the whole song. And so we get to hear it applied to many different types of verbs. So try this, especially verb tenses. An issue with the language that you're learning. It could be very useful to try to listen to songs and try to catch what the verb tenses first of all, and then try to see how it applies to all the different verbs being used throughout the song. 14. 12 Listening Commercials: advertisements and commercials are another great way to, Ah, learn a new language by listening. What I try to do is I try to guess what they're advertising as quickly as possible. And what I mean by this is if I hear a commercial even see a commercial on TV, where he went on the radio or whatever it might be in the target language in the language that I'm trying to acquire, I try to see if I can guess what's being advertised as quickly as possible, preferably before they named the product would usually tends to be toward the end of the commercial, but I tried to see if, based on the clues and the keywords that here, or if I feel much in a video, obviously it's easier. But based on the queues and what they say, I try to see if I can guess what they're advertising. And if you're with some friends and you're studying together, you can turn into sort of a game and see who is able to guess it more quickly, or what weird and says you come up with when you're trying to guess what's being advertised 15. 13 Guess What These Commercials are about: So now I'm going to show you two commercials. Oh, are possibly three anyway. The first ones will be from their Italian commercials from 1990 1991. These they're all TV commercials. But the 1st 1 would be a bit more like radio commercials and that there's a lot of talking . You can't really tell what's happening just due to the background and the other commercial can be a little bit deceiving. At least it was for me. And so let's see if you can guess what these commercials air about without speaking the language. The first commercial or two will be in Italian. The one after that will be in Chinese. I last time after the younger was called the Phoenician Vincente. So little area. I haven't checked article in Ankara in my problem area and not I I don't know about that. So how did you do? We're able to guess what the commercials about chances are in the 1st 1 You just heard a bunch of talking, and maybe you caught a couple key words. If you're studying Italian and for the last one, you probably thought I had something to do with taxis or transportation. At least that's what I thought. But in the end you found out, or at least I found out that it was something completely different. 16. 14 Speaking: so the next component is speaking. Obviously, you can practice it in many different ways. One example is with a language exchange partner. This can either be face to face or online, and they'll give you practice with speaking. Also, you could just find people around town to practice with. This could be in your local pub or your local restaurant or whatever it might be, Um, and you can find people who teach that language online on DSO. This will give you a chance to either speak with them or to, ah, you know, to listen to the pronunciation and be able to repeat on your own. And usually they have a way that you could test yourself. And by the way, the these lists of for the different components like here was speaking is by no means exhaustive. I mean, there many other examples like you could go singing. Karaoke is a great place to practice another language as well. And you know there many other ways and opportunities that you can speak whatever language you're trying to acquire. 17. 15 Speaking Expressions: So in terms of expressions and idioms and stuff like this, this obviously has to deal more with stuff like metaphors like similes, innuendos, etcetera, etcetera and these air Definitely more for the advanced learner. Once you've got the basics, once you have the basics of grammar vocab, and you can string sentences together and have a decent conversation that you could start concentrating on these other types of expressions. And so here I'm talking about stuff like having skeletons in the closet have an axe to grind. Stick out like a sore thumb, beat around the bush. All these types of expressions that might come very natural to you in your native tongue but don't necessarily make sense if you hear them for the first time. In a different language, however, they're usually used all the time. Definitely used, wouldn't slang, and so they're useful to learn as well. First thing with these is to pay attention to the usage. You want to pay attention to the person using them the context in which they're being used , and also to the reaction, because it's very easy with these to say something offensive. You don't want to say something to informal to someone who is your superior. You also don't want to say you don't want to do the opposite and use something to former with someone who's younger than you, because it might just sound off. You also definitely want to make sure that you don't offend someone by using something in the wrong context. So that's why I also this is for more advanced learners, and you want to pay attention to this. You want to pay attention to the context in which they're being used. Now humor is even more advanced than expressions and idioms and metaphors and similes, etcetera. Humor is very different for those of you who speak more than one language. You know that humor can be very different in every language. And even if you translate a joke correctly, it does not necessarily translate well into the next language and isn't necessarily funny. I find that the best way to learn about humor is toe watch, stand up comics in whatever language you're trying to acquire, because these will obviously speak the local tongue and they'll also be conveying the local humor. And they'll do so in a way that's very local. Unfortunately, when you watch TV shows, many times they're dubbed or translated or else they try to go for different types of humor , and it can be kind of fake, depending on the act thing, etcetera. And so watching stand up comics and comedy I find is very useful when trying to get to understand the humor of the language or trying to acquire curse words should be avoided. You should always of would curse words you should definitely and generally they're the fun things to learn. And there's some of the first words that people learn a new language. And when you're a bit younger, it might be cute, and or you can think it sounds cool just because you could say this word or that in certain language. But at a certain point, definitely what you're an adult, you shouldn't be learning them at all. And the danger with learning them is that you get used to saying them, and you might inadvertently say a curse word when you really, really shouldn't. Now, if you're learning a language and you don't speak it well, then you're kind of given a pass because people assume that you were just taught the wrong curse word under the wrong circumstances or something along those lines. But still, it's definitely best not to risk it. Also remember that cursing isn't necessarily the same in every language. In some languages, it might sound like cool, like what the cool kids are doing or the cool actors or singers or doing but another language or in another country. It could be very different. And maybe it's what the ah slimy businessmen are doing. Or, I don't know, curse words can be very different. Uh, not only in what they mean or and how they're used, which can be very colorful, by the way, but in how they make you be perceived by other people. And so it's better not to use them at all until your in advanced learner. 18. 15 Speaking Pronunciation: now in terms of pronunciation. Pronunciation, as I mentioned before, can be very difficult and there are many things to give in mind. First of all, remember, just because something is written with an N o. N o or in our doesn't mean it's pronounced the same as with your native talk. Are is probably the biggest example for those of you who have studied any pretty much any other language than you've seen this, you know, and are as I pronounce that right now, er is very different from the that you hear in Spanish or Italian, which is also very different from the are that you hear in French or in German and even in speaking German, the are can be different with your in Switzerland as compared to, say, northern Germany and stuff like that. And so it can there many different variations of our obviously them. When you go to Asian languages, they have you know that they have their own sound, which is kind of a cross between Arnell, especially Korean and Japanese, and so are is this is pretty much a problem. Ah, a problem letter and in pronunciation, almost any language. But there are many other ones that you'll notice Oh, can be one. And because you find, oh, the sound you find a well, you find all. And this could be an issue even within the same country if you speak Italian and you might have been two. Cuomo Cuomo is a place which is in northern Italy and in northern Italy. They tend to pronounce their vowels a lot more closed. So if you're from Cuomo, you'll actually pronounce a cool so it can be more open. Which is how many foreigners are people from other parts of Italy will pronounces like Cuomo. Or, if you're from Cuomo itself, It's almost like a you sound. It's Kool Moe, so you can find it even within the same country, but definitely with within different countries. And when you're learning a new language, you find this a lot, and I have End is an example, because this happened to me personally when I was learning Korean, I was taught that end was written in a certain way, and so every time I encountered this character, this syllable I pronounce it is and except I remember I was hanging out with some friends and they kept saying a new got to got to go and sound to me like D D u G a or something. And I was like, Oh, you know what? What does that mean? They're like, Oh, it means who was like, Isn't that new guy like movies sale? And I don't know. And I heard this every now and then, Like the end sounded a bit off until years later was finally explained to me that the n in Korean usually is pronounced with like an end, but with your tongue in between your teeth and which gives you that sound when you see something like yoga, it sounds like booga sometimes when you pronounce it that way and so and isn't necessarily the same end that I was used to, and you need to keep Dietz take this into account for many different sounds when you're learning a new language because they can be quite different from your native tongue, just because you use the same letter to spell it out doesn't mean it's pronounced the same way. I wanted to mention tones here, and the main thing to say about tones is that if you don't have them in your native tongue , and you're learning them in another language. They suck. They're very difficult to pick up. Tones are the, uh, these air the tones that you hear in Chinese. Most people know that you have four or five tones in Chinese, depending on how you count them. But if you're learning Vietnamese or Cantonese or tie, you also have. In fact, you have more tones in these languages, and tones can be very difficult to discern for the ear that's not used to them. And so they could be very hard to pick up on first of all, and then to pronounce and to remember for every single thing you say, it can be almost impossible when you're first starting, and it's very difficult to pick up. It's time goes by an inflection and intonation matters as well, and this convey an issue. The most obvious example is when you ask the question in most languages, not all languages but many languages. When you ask a question, you kind of raise the tone toward the end of the inflection, I should say, or the pitch is cold now is different from its cold Now. Basically, you're questioning someone or something. If you say it that way, however, many languages just have him pitch inflection and different intonations just in general, just the way the languages spoken. And so you need to take this into account when you're learning a new language as well, especially with pronunciation. If you want to sound like a native speaker, you want to sound mawr like someone who knows the language. I find the best way to do any of this is to imitate native speakers, especially when you're dealing with sounds that are a bit odd or, you know they're a bit different from your native tongue. Then you should imitate speakers who are native in the language you're trying to acquire. So what do this mean? If you're learning, say Chinese and you're having trouble with the tones, Then ask a native speaker to pronounce something. And if you pronounce something and people have difficulty understanding, you ask a native speaker to pronounce it may be recorded, or at least keep track of it somewhere, and so you can refer back to it so you can pronounce it correctly the same way as a native speaker and usually this is the best way with when you're dealing with stuff like tones and also inflections and different types of pronunciation. Because if you can hear the native speaker and imitate the native speaker, then you'll sound more like a native speaker. And slowly, slowly, you'll start getting more used to the native sounds until they come a bit more naturally to you. And you don't have to rely on the neighbors speakers. Another thing you can do is record yourself, and I try to do this, especially if I say something and it's not understood correctly or someone has trouble understanding me. I try to record myself saying it. If I get a chance to speak to a native speaker, asked him about it, then I can see what the mistake was and what I need to correct. 19. Speaking - Using "but": Another thing you can do to increase your speaking ability is to try to disagree with people. And what do I mean by this? By this, I mean, that is one thing. When you're listening to someone and you heard them speak to basically constantly say, Oh, that's true, you're right. And in fact, I find when I'm learning a new language, I become very good at saying that I say something like made swap meets or it's in Italian, maybe a bit of vidoes had I joined a dual still. And you find yourself saying this while someone's talking and you're kind of nodding your head and agreeing. But it can be quite useful if every now and then you decide to disagree. So maybe you just memorize the phrase that says yes but yes however or something like that. As in C, Chad, I join it but all yes, you're correct. But however, something like that, this means that you're disagreeing with them and you're trying to add something to it, and what does it do? This forces you to actually add another sentence on rather than just saying yes, you're right. Yes, that's correct. You have to say yes, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes. However, don't you think then? Yes, you're right. But in my experience does something like that. Now, obviously, I'm not saying that you should be disagreeing all the time and be disagreeable all the time and just find fault with everything that everyone says. But just try to add something more than just saying. Yes. Okay, that's fine. And saying but or however or something along those lines is a very easy way to do that because you have to add something after that. Now of course this goes for any other conjunction, so feel free to use any type of conjunction, any type of phrase or expression that could combine two different phrases or that could just allow you to add more to it, however, therefore, so if OR et cetera, et cetera. And all of these will force you to not just say, oh, you're correct, you are correct. But actually add your own sentences, create your own sentences, create your own thoughts in the target language so that you are forced to create more sentences and become more comfortable doing so. 20. 16 Reading: So as for the reading component, there are obviously many ways that you can practice your reading and that you can get reading done. You can keep a notebook, and this lets you read all the notes that you write down. The same goes with shopping lists, especially if you shop for more or less the same things every week that you start getting used to reading all the same types of food or other things need to buying. This could be quite helpful there also many online games. Ah, then you confined usually whichever language you're studying. If you can find all in games of that language that really helps with reading, you can change your computer, your phone to the target language to the language that you're learning so you can go under settings in your phone or tablet or computer and change it so that everything changes into that language. I wouldn't recommend this if you're just starting out because you might not understand what you're looking for and then get quite lost in your phone and not access to the stuff you need. But after a certain point, it can be very useful and helpful. You can also find Children's books or adult books. Ah, that are in whatever language you're learning, and this will depend on your level as well. And just remember, with obviously Children, books or more simple adult books tend to be more complicated. Unfortunately, many times Children books are just not interesting for adults to read. So what you can do if you're not ready to read adult books yet is to try to find comics that are maybe geared more towards older young adults or even adults. You confined very often historical or political type of cartoons or comics, I should say, and ah, and these types of comics tend to have more of an adult seem but are still written in a way that's they have less text, and it's more simple than pure books. You can obviously follow people online who speak whatever language you're learning. This is on Twitter, on Facebook or anywhere else. You can also find a pen Pau Pen pal could be these days. They tend to be online over email or else the old fashioned way, where you actually have to write down whatever words you're writing. Either one can be very helpful in terms of reading and also in terms of writing. Obviously, flashcards once again are very helpful. I usually recommend writing down flashcards, however, in terms of reading they, whether they're written down already for you or you write them down yourself or type them up or whatever it might be, they obviously help for reading as well. And so flashcards can be quite useful. And once again, this list is absolutely not exhaustive. There many other places where you can practice your reading, and this can go from anywhere you know, slogans and road signs to your textbook to whatever else that might be. 21. 17 Reading What Can You Read?: so with Children's books, I should mention this, and once again, I already mentioned this with cartoons. But you should, if you can try to find local Children's books and not stuff that's been translated because once again, the translation sometimes can be a bit off. They try to keep it simple, but sometimes the translations can be a bit odd, and they aren't completely natural. So I usually try to find stuff that was originally written in that language, not translated into that language in terms of other types of reading and confined. First of all, you have classics. Classic books can be very useful because most classic books will teach you certain aspects of a culture that locals take for granted. This is because locals grow up knowing these classics, or even if they haven't read them for, say, they know the story is more or less think about. For an English speaker, you could think about Shakespeare. Many people have not read Shakespeare, and they might not remember the exact stories or this that and the other. But they they know the general theme. And if someone talks about Romeo and Juliet or most of the main themes from Shakespeare. They know what it's about, and they know the imagery behind it and this goals for most local literature. If you confined classics in whatever language you are studying, then it can teach you a lot, not only about the language, but about the culture itself. Plays can be very good as well. Usually, plays are shorter than actual books, and they're also written in dialogue. So there a lot mawr, the way people speak rather than literary. So when you read plays, the language you're gonna be reading is easier to go through, and it also will be a lot mawr, similar to what's being spoken. Short stories can be very useful if maybe you've already progressed past the comic book stage, but you're not ready to tackle. Ah, full book or a full novel just yet. Short stories are away in between, and so if it does take you longer to read the target language, then it would toe a native speaker. And so maybe a novel would take you too long to read. A short story is usually a great compromise, because it's right there in between. Another tip I would suggest is to find an author you like. When you're reading all of these. If you find it also you like, then try to find all the other works that you can buy that same author. Chances are the author will not only write another work that you enjoy and that you like, but will also tend to use a lot of the same expressions and idioms and a lot of the same structure, so you'll find it a lot easier to get started on the book right away and to be able to understand everything that you're reading. 22. 18 Reading Reward Yourself: I find an important aspect of reading is to reward yourself and to reward yourself for the job you've done, because reading is something that can take a long time no matter what you're trying to read , whether it seems like a short comic book or full book or anything along those lines, reading kind of takes effort and you have to concentrate and it can take a while. So I recommend rewarding yourself for certain goals or milestones as you achieve them. Now this could be something like once you finish a book or a story or something along those lines that you reward yourself with whatever award your choose. But it can also be something like having to look up fewer words. So if you are able to read a whole page without having to look up a word in the dictionary , or if you only have to look up so in so words per chapter, whatever it might be ahead of time, try to set some goals or milestones after which, or at which point you can reward yourself. And this kind of keeps you moving along because it can be quite slow and it can be quite TDs to try to keep reading something, especially if you're trying to stick with and have to keep stopping all the time to look up new words or expressions and along those lines, my recommendation is not to look up too many words when you are reading, if you can get the gist of it. If you can sort of understand what's being said or what's being talked about, then try to keep going without looking up a word. And chances are you can still catch up and you don't need to look up every single word you see that you don't recognize because every time you look up a word you're going to break the flow of what you're reading, and it really makes him more mature. Makes it more tedious than it has to be. So what I usually do is when I'm reading a certain text. If I see the same word repeated many times, they don't market down and decide that I need to look it up. And likewise, if a certain word is just pivotal to my understanding, then I look it up and this usually happens. If I'm reading through something, I decide to skip a word and keep reading. But I noticed maybe a couple sentences later that I really don't understand what's going on because of that one word or expression. Then I'll go back and look it up. In other words, I only look up words that seem important. Otherwise, if I don't understand them, I try to move on and keep going with it, and usually I can pick up the gist of what's being said. 23. 20 Reading Change it up: so a way to keep it interesting when you're reading also is to change it up. And there's several ways to do this. One way is to find textbooks in your target language that teach your native tongue. So this means, if you are, say, an English speaking, you're learning Spanish. Try to find a book that's written for Spanish speakers who are learning English, and this will be interesting because it will show you a different aspect. Many of the same sentences will be there, such as John likes to eat the apple, but it will be explained in native Spanish while using very little English. And so it could be an interesting twist to how you learn a language. And this could be done by finding these books either your local bookstore. So this could be an interesting way to change it up. And to make it more interesting when you're learning your language, another thing you can do is laddering. Now what laddering is This works for people who speak more than one language already, and this allows you to use one of your other languages when learning the language you're trying to learn. Right now, I know that sounds complicated. But for example, let's say I speak English and I speak Italian and I'm trying to learn Chinese. What I can do is try to use my Italian when learning Chinese rather than just using English textbooks that teach Chinese. I could try finding Italian textbooks that teach Chinese, or I could just decide one day to right Oh my vocab that I learned in Chinese. I'll write the Italian definition rather than the English definition. Now this does a couple things. First of all, it helps maintain any third language any other language that you've learned in the past that you might want to keep in the background. But also it gives you a new way to look at the language you're learning. And so, rather than always equating vocabulary with a certain word in your language, sommelier, equating it with a different word in another language. You speak, and it helps to give you a new sense of the language, and chances are it will help you remember the language you're learning a bit more. However, you can experiment with this. This is different for every single person and also obviously depending on the languages you already speak. But it can be a fun way to change it up 24. Reading: Staggering Textbook Lessons: Now speaking of textbooks and other thing you can do with textbooks is to treat them not so much as a lesson per day, but treat them more in a staggered way. So what does this mean? This means that maybe rather than doing a full lesson on one day, just do half the lesson. And the reason for this is the next day you can come and finish the second half of that lesson. Plans start the first half of the following lesson. And this allows you to revisit the things that you learned in the lesson before, Plus start a new lesson, which then you will revisit the next day. Usually with textbooks, each lesson is divided by a certain rule or a new thing that you need to learn. So you learn one thing per day and it makes it much easier to forget it after a day or two because you've only been learning it during that day. However, if you stagger them, This means that you have to revisit it the next day and you're that much more likely to remember it if you actually spend two days visiting one rule rather than just having it all on one day. Many of your lessons might be divided into at first you'll learn the rule, then you have exercises for it. Well, leave the exercises for the second day. That way you're forced to remember the rule at least 24 hours later and then start the first half of the next lesson at the same time, and so on and so forth. And this is staggering the lessons, rather than dividing it by less than one today, less than two tomorrow lesson three, the next day you have less than 1.5 to 2.5, and the next day you have 2.5 to 3.5, et cetera, et cetera. Now in theory, you could do this with podcasts, you could do this with YouTube channel or something like that, but it's a lot more difficult and a lot more of a pain. And when you have a textbook, it's a lot easier just to put a bookmark right? Wherever you stopped and then continue on the next day. 25. 21 Writing: now, in terms of writing, there are various options out there and to go through them quickly. First of all, one is keeping a notebook. Ah, we're in your writing inside the notebook as you'll notice a lot of these will coincide with the ah reading components just because writing and reading go hand in hand, obviously, shopping lists when you're writing down the shopping list now, as opposed to reading where if you buy the same things are more or less the same things every week. It's good practice to retain it. It's actually good practice for writing when you can write different things. But either way, the other two sides of the same coin ah, finding online games in that language, obviously here, this is only valid if these are games that you write for or chat on, or you know things along those lines where you get to use your writing skills now finding people who teach the language online. Uh oh, this could be in Twitter and Facebook. Obviously, I don't put you to, because here were emphasizing writing once again. And once again, this is stuff that's interactive, wherein you can write back to someone whether it's beyond Facebook or Twitter or just a language teacher online that allows you to write with them now. There are some drawbacks to these, which I'll get to in a minute. But right now I just wanted to cover various options for writing again. Find a pen, pal. This could be either online or else just writing on pen and paper and flash cards once again as long as you write them down. Because flash cars can be pre printed and you want the type you can write down because thes are, ah, a lot more useful to you, obviously, and they're only useful for writing if you get to write them yourself. 26. 22 Writing Online Resources: now I should talk about online. Resource is because I mentioned a couple, and I'm sure you come across quite a few. Ah, you should beware of these because a lot of the options for online resource is, and a lot of the options I just mentioned for the writing component involved not writing but typing. And you should be careful about this because typing can be very different from writing now . This depends on the language you learn. If the language use the same alphabet that you're used to, then there's not that much difference. So say, if you speak English and you're learning Spanish, then chances are you'll be typing using the same alphabet. Every now and then. There are some differences. As you know, there's some letters that exist in some don't exist, and also you have the various different accents until does and stuff like that. And this applies. If you're learning. Most say European Western European languages, then the alphabet. It's more or less the same, however, if you're learning other languages that involve different alphabets, say you use the Roman alphabet for your own language, but you're learning a language with the Cyrillic alphabet or the Korean or Japanese alphabets or cilla Berries or with Chinese characters, say, or Arabic or something along those lines, then you should be aware of online resource is because typing is very different from writing, and especially at the beginning, you should concentrate more on writing out stuff. Using a pen and paper. It might sound old fashioned, and it might sound something that's not done much these days, and that's true. Very often. When you go travel to these countries, very few people are using pen and paper, and they're all typing on their phones or on the computer. But it still helps when you're first starting out to actually write these out. So this applies for all the stuff that you're doing online or on the phone. And when you're when you find yourself typing rather than writing, see if you can find an alternative that allows you to write down with pen and paper because this will help make the alphabet or the characters or whatever you might be learning, stick that much more 27. 23 Writing Flashcards: now awarded to about flashcards. First of all, when you first start out, you're not sure how it's going to go. And so I usually recommend setting arrange for flashcards and in terms of memorizing new vocab words, etcetera. Because if you say I want to learn 50 vocab words per week, you might fall a bit short. Likewise, if you say I want to learn 30 that might be a bit too easy. So if you give yourself range of, say, 30 to 50 I mean, these were just rounded numbers, but say 30 to 50 vocal boards per week. Then you can see after a couple weeks, whether you usually end up on the low end of this or on the high end, and you can adjust accordingly. And so give yourself sort of arranged to work with at least the beginning until you get used to it. You should also try to be smart about flashcards. Now, I've already covered this, and this basically means that you don't have to look up every single word. You don't have to write down every single new word you come across, especially at the beginning where you're going to come across very many new words, So try to be a bit smart about this. As I mentioned, if you come across words that very often, or you've become across words that you can tell are very important, then you can write these down. But you don't want to risk inundating yourself with way too many flash cards, and you can handle. So try to get a feel for how many you can handle and what's and what works for you when you're dealing with flash cards and not just go overboard as often is the case, and many times people just start writing down any new word they come up with and they can't keep up, and they don't memorize them at all, in which case of flash cards don't do much good. Now, Anke Droid is an app that is, Ah, it's basically a flashcard app that you can use on your phone, and it's a very useful I tend to recommend to make this a habit for your spare time, though once again this ties into the fact that it doesn't let you write out the vocab. You can type it, obviously, but it's a lot better if you can write it down the old fashioned way. I still use Anke Droid, and I think it is very useful. And I think when you are traveling or in your spare time or something is, ah, great that you can just whip out your phone and start looking at flashcards. So it's definitely something extra, but I wouldn't make it my main source of flashcards. 28. 24 Writing How I Use Flashcards: So the following videos from my YouTube channel, and it's ah, just where I talk about how I use flash cards. And I thought it would be an interesting tip at this point to, ah to share with you because it's a bit different from just a normal way of using flash cards. And I find it really helps me in terms of space repetition and in terms of concentrating on the flashcards and on the vocab that I need to concentrate more on while not having to waste time on on the flashcards and on the vocab that I already know. Anyway, I just want to share this with you quickly. Once again, it's from my YouTube channel. So that's why the format is a bit different. But hopefully you'll find it helpful. See that spin you? I'm sorry. Okay, well, I'm gonna have to lift these up. I have three bowls here. One has a smiley face, one has so so face. And as you can imagine, this one has a sad face. So what is this? Okay, let me let me explain. What I'll do is when I see my new vocab and when I see my new index cards. I always find in next cards very helpful just because I can leave them anywhere leaving next my bed. I leave them lying around and I can always be working on them. I could take them with me, put in my pocket, so I like them. And so what I'll do is I'll look at certain words. And so this is how I write out my index cards for Chinese. I usually have a character with the tones right above, and so I'll take this word and say, You know, it's dangle Stangel is to block and you say OK, I'm familiar with Dong Ju to block. And so I'll put this in the little smiley face bowl Perricos and what I mean by that. So the little smiling face bowl is a bowl of the vocab that I already know that I know quite well and I don't need to revisit it for a while. And then I'll take this word. Yoli Joey is you know, I'll say, Oh, I know that it means intentional, but, uh or doesn't mean interesting. No, wait, no, It means intentional interesting with us. Okay, I check. And yes, it means intentional, but I was a bit iffy about it. So what I do is I put it in this one where I know it. But it didn't come like that. Like the other one. Then here I have doing doing his pronunciation. I know that very well. So once again, I can put that in there in the smiley face. But then say I get something like this to junk toe young. If I'm pronouncing it semi correctly and this junk is, you know, so I can't remember what it is at all. It means, uh what does it mean? What does that mean? I can remember. And so I check on the back and it says characteristic. Or maybe I don't even know. I could only remember how to pronounce it, but that's still but I don't remember how to pronounce the other part. How do I say that? How do I say that? I can remember. I have to look it up okay to junk. And, um, at this point, if I don't know it at all, then and if I can't think of it either the pronunciation or what it means I put it in this part. And so what I do with these piles is that when I have to revisit it later on during the day or something, this sad face pile is the one I visit first. Because this is a book of that I know least and the one I know least So these are the ones that I will be going over more. And so if I see this again and I know it right away, then I can put it into I usually upgraded just by one. So then I'll put it right into here. And But if you know, I have this other one hope and I don't remember it at all put in the sad face. And later, when I revisited later it during the day, I still have no idea and can't remember it all. It goes right back in here. This one gets revisited most often. And then this one and the smiley face hardly used to be revisited at all. In fact, I could probably forget about it for this session or for however long because I know these right away. So And you know, the way I think of it is my goal is to make all of these be smiley faces, and I want them all to be smiley faces in the end. And so gradually, I want them all to move up there. And so it's just a mess that I keep. That is very easy. All I need is three bowls, as you can imagine, my wife isn't very thrilled with this, but, you know, we had these extra so it kind of works out, and, uh, and it's a very easy way for me to not have to repeat all the vocab that I know really well . And instead I can concentrate on the vocab. I know less well and it helps me improve more quickly. And it helps me use space repetition, but in a more efficient way. And so I really like this method, and obviously this is for Chinese, but it can work for any type of language and anything you're trying to memorize. In fact, any time you have index cards, you could just do a system like this. So if you're trying to learn new vocab, I highly recommend it. I think it's very easy and it's a thing that you can keep around and you see these three bowls with three faces on them? It reminds you as well. You know, your if your waltz waltz in or you're not doing something I don't like. Oh, yeah, I should look at it. Look at those okay. Toe junk, junk. I still come on. What? It means old characteristic feature. Characteristic feature. Okay, okay. Put it back in. I revisited whatever works for you for me. I try to leave at least a couple hours until I revisited the next time. Because otherwise I remember it too easily. And yet that's pretty much it. It's a very simple system, but it works quite well for me. 29. 24b Writing Translation: Now another method to practice writing is actually translation. And in order to do this is quite simple. What you should do is you should pick up a book, an article, or a magazine, or whatever it might be. This'll depend obviously on your skill level. And just pick up something that you wish to translate and have your go at translating it. Now, I should mention a couple of things. First of all, if you're a beginner, you should probably translate into your source language. What does this mean? This means if you're just starting out to learn Chinese, take a Chinese texts and try translating it into your native tongue stays English. Because otherwise, you'll sort of just make a mess of it and you want to make sure you understand. And if you have issues with understanding, then you're just starting out then tried to translate into your source language from whatever language you're learning. If however, you are past the beginner intermediate, anything. In fact, even advanced beginner, I think you should translate into the target language because this gives you real practice. And for any of you who are out there who are professional translators, you might sort of cringe at this because you're always supposed to translate into your source language if you're a translator. However, at least for ridden translations, however, for practice, I think it's very good to translate into your target language. So if you are once again learning Chinese, but you're pretty advanced and you know how to say things, you know how to communicate. Then I suggest reading something in English and translating it into your target language, and then seeing how that goes. Now, of course you need to, you might want to, let's say usually you can tell by enlarge or you can ask someone, but you might want to check to see how good your translation actually is. In that case, you should pick a book like a famous book that has been translated many times before and maybe that is available on Wikimedia comments or it's just available in the public domain and that you can find a translation for. Otherwise, you'd find an article or magazine. Very often you can find articles or websites that are available in both languages. And so there you can just have your go at it and just find any website that is available in both languages. And then you can just start translating there and then later check the translated website and see how yours compares to theirs. 30. 25 Scheduling: So now we're going to get into scheduling once again. At the end of this course, I'm going to go through a precise schedule, the one that I follow and that I recommend. But for now, I just wanted to go through some of the points of scheduling and some of the good points and bad points and some of the tips and tricks and tidbits that I've come across. So first of all, you should set a schedule, even a crummy one. And remember all the time the crummy scheduled that you stick to is a lot better than the awesome schedule that you don't sick to. If you decide that you're gonna review all this vocab first thing in the morning and then you're gonna work on this other stuff at noon and you're gonna watch all these videos and learned them in the evening and then during a spare time, you're going to do this and you're going to get something else done. You know, that's not gonna last more than a day if that On the other hand, if you just schedule a couple things, but you're able to stick to that schedule and do it every day, then that's actually a good schedule. And ah, and you can build on that. And that's the key you can. It's a lot better to create a small schedule that you can build on overtime than to create a very complicated schedule that you deduct from over time. And we'll get into this a bit more later. Also, your schedule you should revisit it. I suggest revisiting it weekly and then monthly, but for different reasons. Now, when you revisit the schedule weekly, you should try toe check every week to make sure that a you're keeping to the schedule and also to see if it's too easy or boring or too difficult, maybe, and just try to assess how the schedule is turning out for you week over week when you re visited monthly. However, this is for different goals. You want to make sure when you revisit the schedule monthly that you're getting the right goals out of it. We've already discussed your goals and that you should set your own goals and target for language learning. And this is what the monthly revisits or four and the months of reviews. They basically allow you to go back and make sure that you're actually striving. You're actually on the road to attaining your goals, and you want to make sure that you're heading in the right direction with these monthly reviews and these monthly revisits because otherwise you might end up sticking to a schedule that kind of leads you in the wrong direction or leads you nowhere. And so you want to revisit for this purpose about every month, I'd say. Also, try to find a way to test yourself now. This is obviously for people who are not in courses or have ah, Tudor or anything like that. If you're learning by yourself, you kind of want to find a way to test yourself. Whether this be through just exercises that you find online or available in some random textbook or somewhere else. It's important that you try to test yourself and see how you're doing and be honest with yourself about it and so see if you can figure out a way to do this and maybe give yourself a test. I don't know every months, every couple months, whatever you think is best, and treat it like like if you were your own annoying teacher that has to test you. And I only say annoying because many times you don't want to create a test for yourself, so you have to put yourself in those shoes, Uh, also put you keep yourself in those shoes when you're correcting the test. Obviously, another thing is, you want to make this your new lifestyle, and this is another reason why you don't want to create a crazy schedule, because this new schedule that you're creating should become part of your daily schedule, part of your life. And so you want to be able to fit for it to fit accordingly. No one can fit too much into their life because they have a job. They have other errands. They have to run. They have other duties they have to fulfill. And so you want to make sure that this scheduling into learning a language can fit into your lifestyle So it becomes your new lifestyle if you will, and the way you conduct your life is you have a certain amount of time spent for work, for family, for this side of the other, and also for learning language. And so try toe make this fit in as part of your daily schedule. Obviously, you should make use of downtime. There's a lot of downtime if you look at it correctly while you're in the car commuting while you're cooking while you're ironing, running errands, waiting in line walking from place to place. These are all great times for downtime in terms of listen to podcasts in terms of checking app, some phones, etcetera. So keep these in mind. These quote unquote downtimes in mind for times when you can schedule extra little tidbits that you can, ah, make you self for learning the language. But do something every day. Even just glancing at one flash card is better than nothing. And while you're learning the language, you should try to do something at least once a day, even if it's something small, even if it's maybe not part of the schedule you've set. But going for more than a day without even looking at the language you're learning can be detrimental. And chances are you're going to forget what you did learn. Even just looking at something kind of even for the brief minute puts you in sort of a mind set of the language you're learning. So it's useful to do at least something little, even minuscule, every day 31. 26 Scheduling Kaizen Method: So now I'm gonna touch upon the kaizen method or the kaizen process because I found this very useful in terms off sitting up a schedule for learning languages. So if you go to the Wikipedia page, the for kaizen, it says kaizen is the Japanese word for improvement and business guys in all from the 1st 2 activities that continuously improve all functions that involve all employees from the CEO to the same land workers. Now, obviously, when you're dealing with languages, it will be a bit different. But as you can see, it's been applied for many different facets of life. So if we scroll down a bit, you see small step work improvement approach. This is how you can apply it to language learning. This small step that's minuscule. Step improvement approaches, and here it goes a bit more into detail. Instead of encouraging large radical changes to achieve desired goals, the Mets is recommended that organizations introduce small improvements, preferably ones that could be implemented on the same day. So how does this apply to language learning? Well, starting small like I mentioned before, rather than trying to set up the awesome schedule right away, start with a very small schedule. If you haven't awesome schedule in mind, keep it written down somewhere. But start very small and you congratulate Build up to it because once again, you're trying to make this your lifestyle, and you can't change into a whole new lifestyle right away and expect to stick with it to small changes and build up to them. An example of this will be toe. Have one flash card per day and you'll just take one flash card. Look at it and look at the definition in the meaning and that's it for the day. And that's what I mean. You can start ridiculously small, and you can add on to it as time goes by. For example, with the one flash car per day. If you add one flash card every day, se over six days. This turns out to be 21 new words. Obviously, I'm talking about you have one flash card the first day. Then the second day you add another flash card, so there you have to. The third day you add one flash card. You do this for six days. That's 21 new words in the first week and that's not too bad. Then you use the seventh state to review these 21 words and, uh, and continue on in this manner. In fact, if you keep adding one flash car per day, at a certain point, you realise that it will be too many flash cards for day and you'll have to stop. So it's a good way to start small and gradually build up to it so you don't have to start right away with 10 flashcards a day, and suddenly you find yourself overwhelmed right in the beginning. But to start small and gradually build it up, and this can apply to anything. The trick is once again just to add a ridiculously small amount at every step. No matter what your method is, start very small and then add a ridiculously small amount. But do this every single time you study and try to do this every single day or every single session. Just add that very small, minuscule amount, and before you know it, you'll actually have quite a packed schedule. But it'll feel like you're normal daily schedule a lot more than just if you try to change your schedule at once, 32. 27 Scheduling Monthly Review: So here I want to talk about the monthly review a bit more in detail. I mentioned it before, and I mentioned how it's different from the weekly review, and but here I want to talk a bit more detail about how you can use this monthly review. You can use it once again to Rio to refine your schedule so you might find that difference . Exercises each day might be counterproductive. You might find that an exercise that you've been, ah, working on every day or every other day or one of the exercises that you've committed to actually don't help you much or interfere with one some of the other original exercises. There's something along those lines. Basically, they don't work the right way. And so this monthly review allows you to pick the exercises that work best and also, by the way, the exercise that work best are the ones that you can sick to the best. So these exercises that you're reviewing and everything you're going through it it has to be things that you can stick to. For example, if you have been going through flashcards and podcasts and also a language exchange, but you find that you're not really sticking to the podcasts, and you're never listening to them or downloading them, and you can't really stick to them. Well, then, that's not working out for you. And so you need to use this in your monthly review to ask yourself, OK, is there any way that can do it? So it's easy? Should I download them all at the beginning of the month? So I have them accessible? Should I find a different time to listen to them? Or maybe I should get rid of them all together and find a different way to concentrate on my listening or something along those lines. So the monthly review allows you to review this and make sure that a your schedule is going in the right direction, and B you're actually able to stick to the schedule. You should also ask yourself if there were any obstacles going back to the podcast, where there any obstacles and listening. Maybe your phone is usually out of batteries or you don't have a chance to listen to your podcasts for one reason or the other. Or was there anything that stops you from learning or keeping to a schedule, whatever it might be, you should think about what these obstacles are. Think if there's any way to avoid them, circumvent them or maybe find an alternative so that you don't find these obstacles in your way. You want to make it as easy as possible to be able to learn the language, and it's difficult. That's possible, too. Have obstacles in your way. And, Ah, so this will depend on each and every one of your different scheduling, your different needs and the different points they're concentrating on, but tried to identify any obstacles there that were there a lot of the times. By the way, this could just be pure laziness. It can be procrastination or something along those lines, but try to go a bit deeper. What made you lazy? How did you procrastinate? Where you just on YouTube the whole time? We'll find a way to block YouTube then, or were you chatting with Friends will then set aside a time where you get rid of your phone and you don't chat with friends stuff along those lines. Another thing to remember during this monthly review is that may be your motivation has changed Maybe your and goal has changed. Maybe at the beginning, you wanted to do it just so you could chat with a bunch of friends in a new language. But now you've decided. Hey, actually, I'm pretty good at this. I want to do business in this language. I want to get a job in the new country or something like that. So keep this. Keep these changes. Even if they're slight changes in your goal, keep them in mind as well for your monthly review, because you might want to switch the direction in which your going and, ah, the direction of your learning based on any change there might be in your end goal. 33. 28 Scheduling The Long Term: So another component of scheduling, by the way, is the long term. Just remember language learning never stops, and it's not like you can say one day. Okay, I learned the language. Now I can just quit. And in 20 years time, if someone speaks to me in this language, I'll speak to them perfectly. No, unfortunately, it never stops, and I'll talk about this later about how me to maintain a language over time, how to maintain multiple languages, and I'll go over my regiment for doing so. But for now, just remember that language learning never stops. And along these lines, no one can intensively learn a language for average. So you might come up with a great schedule and you're able to stick to it even where you learn for several hours a day and you get a lot out of it. But chances are you're not gonna be able to keep to it forever. Remember, you still have a job, and you might have, say, a family, or you might have other interests, or you might have other duties and obligations. And so even if you can stick intensively to language learning now, you might be able to do that and maybe only plan on doing that for a few months or something along those lines, and that's fine. But just remember, you cannot stick to it forever. So just personally, what I prefer to do is actually I prefer to be really intense about it for a short period of time and then take a rest. Like I said, I build up a schedule. I build up a schedule I can keep to. But one of the reasons I can keep to it is I feel like this won't last for the rest of my life. But it's just a short burst, if you will, even if it's a short burst of quite a few months, I see it as a short burst of very intense language learning. And so Aiken delve deep into it, and then I take arrest. But obviously this will depend on your schedule, and you should see what you can do based on your schedule and how much time you can dedicate to language learning in the short term and over the long term. Generally, though, I find that being really intense about it for a short period of time, is very good because allows you to delve deep into learning the language. And then you take a break and, quite frankly, breaks or good. If you take a short break from a language and then you get back to it, I think A you'll be surprised how much you've retained. In fact, many times I feel like I've improved over the break for some odd reason and be you'll be that much more motivated when you get back into it because you took a break and you feel like you've been slacking off a language learning, and now you want to jump right back into it. So this is what works for me once again. So I do recommend it generally, but of course it will have to depend on your own schedule. But just keep this in mind over the long term, 34. 28b Scheduling Things to Keep in Mind: so a couple things to keep in mind. First of all, after a while, you'll notice that Syrian waster and methods and certain choices that you make in language learning work way better than other ones. Now, this could mean that maybe listening to a podcast works a lot better than something else. Or it could also mean that listening to a podcast while you're running works a lot better than listening to a podcast while you're cleaning the dishes. Say, anyway, try to figure out which ways work best for you and which ways help you the most in learning these language. And make sure that you stick to these. Make sure that these are the methods that you use and see if you can keep using these methods for any other aspect. So if while you're running, it really helps to listen to podcasts, see if you can do anything else while you're running. Maybe listen to some lessons or something along those lines. Now, if these results in a gap of knowledge, try to see if you can adapt this method once again. Maybe all the podcasts you listen to a really great but all the flash cards aren't helping , and this means that you'll be really good at listening to stuff, but not so good at writing stuff down or necessarily speaking or something like that. So try to see if you can adapt these methods to something else. For example, if you find that every time you talk to others and you have, ah, language exchange, it really helps you a lot. But every time you use flash cards, it doesn't help you at all. Well, maybe try to change it up a bit, and maybe you can discuss writing flashcards with someone else. You can bring your flashcards to these discussions and see if there's any way you can find a way to combine these two. So try to adapt whatever method works to whatever you need to learn, but regardless, better knowledge of one component leads to better knowledge of others. So if you become better at speaking and more more comfortable speaking, this will eventually also help you with the other aspects, like reading and writing. Also keep in mind that language learning isn't always steady progress. In fact, it's hardly ever stated steady progress. It goes in steps so you'll start learning the language and by virtue of the fact that you start from zero right away, you'll start seeing some progress and you feel like you're getting better. And then you'll feel a plateau after a while, and then later we'll see basically another jump and you'll start getting better all of a sudden very quickly, and then we'll plateau. In fact, sometimes you'll even feel like it's regressing, and it's getting a bit worse, even though you're studying as much as he can. Now. For some reason, language learning is like this, and many times it seems like you're not making progress or you're hardly making any at all . It helps if you can try to quantify the progress you're making, but that's hardly ever possible with language learning. So just keep this in mind while you're learning your language that sometimes it can be really frustrating. But once you get past the frustrating level, then you'll see a huge jump and you'll be able to progress all of a sudden, and hopefully this will keep you motivated to keep you going 35. 29 APP Mania: so something you need to remember something you need to be careful about is application mania. Basically, you shouldn't start going too crazy for APS applications. This is on your phone on your computers on your tablets. Because remember, every time you have an app, you're just one click away from a whole bunch of distractions. And this could be chatting with your friends on your phone to scrolling through Twitter, YouTube or instagram or obviously, in your computer, you've got a whole bunch of other things that you can waste time on. And so every time you have an app, just be aware of this and keep this in mind. So I find the best thing is to hold yourself accountable. What does this mean? Once again, this means that you need to be your own teacher. You need to be their own boss, breathing down your neck and making sure that you're actually getting your studying done and not getting distracted. Look, the main way that I do this is I tried to make it as difficult as possible to get distracted and as easy as possible to get my language learning done. This means that on my computer. I have a various different applications that block time wasters like YouTube and stuff like that when I'm trying to either get work done or get my language learning done. This also means that on my phone, I try to basically do this at times when I know it won't be distracted. I have. Ah, you can either use an extra phone if you have an old phone where you don't have y fire Internet and you only have language learning APS, Um, or you can try to just block your WiFi or Internet when your language learning or something along those lines. This will depend on each person's schedule and on each person's APS and what they have. Basically, just in case you think you don't need to pay too much attention to it, this is actually a huge reason why adults can't achieve success in language learning because our first choice is to find something online. There's so many different options in there, so many opportunities to use these APS and podcasts and videos and online courses, etcetera, etcetera. However, if we don't have teachers support, we don't have a language class. We don't have a tutor and we don't have basically other people to keep us in line. Then it's very easy for a study to become unstructured, and so were the ones who have to do the structuring ourselves. So you need to keep this in mind, and any time you use an app rather than pen and paper, keep in mind all the various ways that you can't get distracted and especially during your weekly monthly reviews, try to look back and see if and how and when you were distracted. 36. Which Apps should You use?: Now in terms of apps, which apps should you use? Unfortunately, this really depends on your language combination, on your level, and also what you want to concentrate on. However, there are a couple of generalities that can be said. First of all, if you're a beginner, there'll be lots of choice. And so my recommendation is to explore the free options. There are a lot of apps out there that teach you the beginnings of any type of language. And so you can just explore, you probably know some of the main names like Duolingo, Pixlr, et cetera, et cetera. Feel free to explore these and see what options there are in the language you want to learn. However, as you improve, you'll notice that there's a lot less choice. And this will depend also on the language combination. If you are studying a more common language like say Spanish, then there will be more choice. But if you're studying not very common language, chances are, you will find quite a bit of choice for the elementary level. But as he progressed, there'll be less and less choice. However, if you've been exploring the free options as a beginner, you'll have a lot better idea as to what works for intermediate and advanced. And chances are you've come across one or two apps that have lessons that keep going past intermediate level. Or you've found some other program or something like that, that works just as well. So before you start paying for anything right off the bat, These are some things to keep in mind and I just recommend exploring the free options at first until you get a better idea. Now, technically, this also applies to podcasts, YouTube channels, textbooks, et cetera. Once again, depending on your language, this means that it's very easy to find podcasts, YouTube channels, et cetera, that teach you the elementary rules and grammar structure, et cetera, et cetera. But once you start getting intermediate or advanced, it's a lot harder. So try to keep this in mind as you're studying and when you do find podcasts and YouTube channels, apps, textbooks, what have you that deal with more advanced facets of the language and keep those in mind for the future. 37. 30 Mistakes: mistakes now. Mistakes is a very important part of language learning. And this is a biggy, especially for adults. We are used to knowing things, and now we know nothing in terms of learning a new language. And quite frankly, this is the biggest advantage the main advantage of Children have. Children are used to being told what to do there used to not knowing something and having a teacher telling them what to do, making mistakes and being corrected, making other mistakes, being corrected again, and then finally getting to know it. We're not used to this. We as adults are used to knowing stuff already and maybe even telling other people what to do. But we're used to looking knowledgeable, sounding knowledgeable, being knowledgeable, and we're used to be able to speak with authority, and all of a sudden and we're learning a new language and we're going to make mistakes, we absolutely are going to make mistakes, and we have to learn how to deal with it. So what do we do? We have to become comfortable when we make this mistakes. And so try to remember that every time you make a mistake, this mistake is going to stick with you? Was that mean? That means that you're going to remember the mistake you made. And chances are you're never gonna make that mistake again. In fact, if you ask language learners how often they make mistakes, then ask them how often they make the same mistake twice. You'll get some pretty interesting answer is chances are they'll make mistakes. Very often, they'll say, Oh, yeah, I made mistakes all the time. I've made mistakes here and there and they'll have some funny anecdote Funny story about how they made a mistake in an embarrassing situation and either said complete the wrong thing. They ordered the wrong thing at a restaurant at a coffee shop, or they made everyone laugh around them. But then ask them how often they made the same mistake twice. If they made that mistake ever made that mistake ever again, chances are they didn't on. The reason for this is that any time you make a mistake, it sticks with you, you're going to remember your mistakes, and the more you embarrassed about your mistake, the more you remember it. So you should try to use that use mistakes to your advantage. Mistakes are actually a good thing because every time you make a mistake and you make it in public and you get embarrassed about it, you're going to remember that mistake and you're not going to make that same mistake again . Look and understand. As an adult, very often it's hard to actually want to make mistakes. If you're still embarrassed, you contrive various different things. You can try talking to Children. Now I use this for Chinese. I am lucky enough that I have a nephew who's ah, who lives in Hong Kong and speaks Chinese, and he's only about four years old now, and so I can speak to him in Chinese and we can, you know, communicate and I can make mistakes and not feel too bad about it. So if you have this opportunity, you can do that. Another thing you can do is talk to other people who are learning the same language. Obviously, if you talk to other language learners and you make a mistake, chances are they've either made the same mistake or they know exactly why you've made it. And so if you talked the language learners who are more advanced than you are. This could be very helpful because they will notice the your mistake, and they will either notice it as a common mistake or as a mistake that you are likely to make learning that language, so this could be very helpful as well. In my experience, I've found that people who can laugh at themselves and at their mistakes are much better at learning new languages. And the reason for this is obvious. It's because if you get embarrassed, get too embarrassed by mistakes. That means you don't want to make them. And this stops you from talking from speaking in public. And this, in turn stops you from learning. Because if you never get to use your language, then you're never going to improve it. And using the language when you're learning it, unfortunately means making mistakes, people who can laugh it off. People who can laugh at themselves, even if they get embarrassed in my experience, tend to do much better. By the way, this is a big reason why a lot of people say that you learn languages better while you're drunk, or having fun with friends or stuff like that, because your inhibitions go down, and when your inhibitions go down, you don't care so much about the mistakes you make and it becomes easier to laugh for yourself. Of course, when you're drinking than you remember these things less. And so I would advise trying to find a way to laugh for yourself even when you're sober and especially when you're sober, because then you can make the mistakes and actually remember them so you don't make them in the future. Ah, solution that I implemented that I recommend, is to reward yourself every time you do get embarrassed every time you look stupid because you look stupid and you'll feel stupid at the moment. But you realize right after that that actually you learn something new and that you've improved because of that mistake because of that embarrassment because of that perceived stupidity that you thought you got embarrassed about. And you're like, Oh my God, I can't believe I said that later on, you'll think, Oh, no, actually, it was good that I did that because I made a mistake that I won't make again because I don't want to be in that situation again. So try to reward yourself every time you make a mistake. And in fact, right now, as part of my schedule, I try to make a mistake every day. Now this is also because, as part of my schedule, I'm speaking to native speakers every day, and so it gives me a chance to make a mistake. But I actually try to push myself, order more complicated things, talk about more complicated things. So I do make a mistake every day because that way I feel like I'm actually learning. So rather than trying to avoid mistakes, which is what you learn to do in your professional life and as an adult, try to seek them out and try to make mistakes, because that's how you're improving. 38. 31 Language Structure: so here just wanted to discuss language structure. Don't worry. I won't get too much into detail with weird terminology, but just to give a brief outline of how languages air structured in a very broad sense just to give a better idea so it can help you along when learning language. First of all, they're varies aspects of language. There's vocab, which is words. And then there's grammar. And then this pronunciation. So just briefly for each one vocab is, as I mentioned, words. This is the most important part of any languages, the main part of any language. Because words are what you used to say. Anything you say this could be. Now these can be verbs, adverbs, adjectives. You're always using words to say anything you're saying, and so these very much compose any language. And generally speaking, the more vocab you know, the more words you know, the more you can communicate in any given language. So any time you have a chance to learn more vocab, you always should, and any opportunity have for learning more words is always good, and this can be through the myriad ways there are to learn these new words once again of anything from YouTube videos to podcasts, the textbooks to flash cards, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, the nets expect is grammar. Grammar is the way to describe grammar is basically the glue that keeps the vocab in place . Vocab is just a bunch of words, and the way you put them together can be nonsensical or can make sense. Grammar is what makes sure that they make sense and grammar needs to be learned. And unfortunately, it's the most underappreciated aspect of most languages. This is because if you get grammar correct, people don't really notice it because you just spoke of sentence and you said it correctly and use the correct grammar structure. But if you make a mistake, people notice it right away. If you use complicated words, invoke have people tend to notice that more. But if you use the correct grammar, people notice it. People hardly ever notice it at all. They only noticed the mistakes. For this reason, it's usually very underappreciated. However, having said that, the good news about grammar is that there is always a finite set of rules. Now, with pronunciation. Now, we already covered pronunciation under the speaking section for language components. And so I won't get into the nitty gritty about learning different pronunciations. You can always check that. However, from a more theoretical standpoint, pronunciation is where it all comes together. Let's say when you learn the vocab and then you learn the grammar structure later, especially with speaking, in fact only was speaking in terms of pronunciation. This is where it all comes together because you need to be able to pronounce things correctly. And this goes back to the arguments we had before about pronouncing R's in different languages or even ends or peas or any other type of letter might not be pronounced the same way in a different language. So you need to take this into account when you're pronouncing your vocab and using your grammar structure. Pronunciation is a big part, and once again, the best way to learn pronunciation is usually to imitate native speakers. However, when speaking and when listening, pronunciation is something that needs to be taken into account 39. 32 Things to Keep in Mind: now some other things to keep in mind. First of all, learning a language is not just learning it. It's also having to remember it now. What this means is that once you learn a language, first of all, learning language in itself doesn't really mean anything because learning it toe what level you need to figure out what your goal is once again, and your goal could be many different things. That could mean that you want to be able to have a conversation with someone you want to read through something you want to be able to business in that language, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So learning language in it, in it of itself doesn't mean much of anything. Most people, when they say they want to learn a language, it doesn't mean that they want to be 100% super fluent, just like a native speaker, because they usually want to choose some other level. By the way, when people say they learn a language in three months or six months or something, I find it rather stupid because first of all, obviously it doesn't mean it doesn't specify toe what level, let's say, but also there's the aspect of remembering it. Remembering the language is something that you have to do for everything. Would you learn? Because languages of some of the easiest things to forget Now you could say I'm going to take a 31 of course, and learn Arabic perfectly and great. Take that course and learn it to me. You won't let her perfectly, but you might learn it quite well. Um, and then you will promptly forget a whole lot of it. And so, in one year's time, two years time, when there's an opportunity to use it, you won't remember half of what you learned. And this happens. Unfortunately, the whole languages, and I'll get into this later about my regiment and what I do in order to maintain languages over time. Because, as you've seen, I have speak seven different languages at various levels. But for now, just remember that learning a language per se doesn't really mean anything, and there's a lot more entailed with learning language and maintain over time. Another thing is that there are no real synonyms. So I think it was Steven Pinker, someone who said that in the English language or in any language. There are no real synonyms for one word and another, the dictionary might say they're synonym, but in usage there, used in different situations, they have ah different tone or inflection there, used with different types of people, etcetera, etcetera. So if you keep in mind that in any language there are no real synonyms, then think about from one language to the other. There are no rial synonyms from one language to the other. This means that there are no real direct translations. Anyone who is a translator can attest to this, but this as a language learner, it means that you really need to pay attention to see how words are used and tried to find examples of words we used in sentences. These always help. If you have any question, or if you're unsure about how to use a word, just keep this in mind. And ah, remember that you can look up sample sentences, which should give you a better idea of how certain words or expressions there types of grammar can be used in a sentence. Also, remember that native speakers sometimes are not very good at answering your questions. You might have a question as especially with the wise. When you say Well, why would I put the verb at the end of the sentence? Or why would I do this? Why would I use this instead of that expression or this instead of that word or something? Many native speakers they just grew up speaking that language so they'll just say, Well, because that's how it's done or it's something along those lines. And so sometimes it can be hard, especially when you're learning a language and you want to know the rule behind what you're saying so that you can say the correct thing in the future for maybe a similar sentence, or if you find yourself in a similar situation and you're not sure if it applies or not. In this case, usually it's good to a ask teachers. If you can find someone who teaches the language, they can usually answer this question quite correctly, or be many times someone else who's been learning the language. And maybe it's a bit more advanced than you are because they had to go through the same thing you did. And chances are they had the same questions at some point and came across the answer or found a solution for it. So once again, keep this in mind. It can be quite frustrating when you're asking questions, especially the wise or things about, say, Entomology or stuff like that to native speakers, because very often they just want they just won't know the answer. They'll know how to say something correctly, but they'll have no idea why. 40. 32b Rote Memorization: so rote memorization. Usually when people hear rote memorization, they grown a little bit inside and in fact, very often. Most of the time you find try to find methods where people have to use less rote memorization and a lot of language courses, by the way, sell very well by saying they don't have any rote memorization and they have other methods . I am actually personally quite a big fan of rote memorization, and I think, and I understand why people don't like it, because it sounds very boring and tedious and not fun at all, especially for kids. However, as adults it doesn't have to be that way. And there are a couple factors that I think play in rote memorization favor. By the way, rote memorization in cases and clear it means that you memorize something and you just memorize whether it be vocab, where there be a grammatical rule or anything along those lines, and you memorize it over time because it's something that needs to be remembered. So one of the factors in favor of Rome memorization is that, as I mentioned before, vocab or words are make up pretty much all of the new language that you learn. So nine if 90% of a languages vocab, then vocab is memorized. But through rote memorization, it's a great way to memorize it. Of course, you can learn it in conversation. You can learn, adjust on the fly. You can learn it just, ah, by hearing it here and there. But you won't learn nearly as much. You won't learn the rules behind everything, and, ah, chances are hardly any of it will stick with you. And so rote memorization is actually a great way to learn vocab and grammar and to get the rules set. Obviously, that being able to use this with native speakers is a big challenge. And in fact, it's quite a big challenge for many adults because we learned in the classroom. And then we have to converse with speakers as I mentioned before, because then we have. Then we make mistakes, and it could be very difficult, etcetera, etcetera. But rote memorization is very important, and this is a big reason why people who learn by rote memorization tend to remember languages longer, and people who don't actually tend to forget them more often. And another factor is that although we do hate it as kids. As I mentioned when we're adults, we know why we're learning this language. We know what the purposes. So this kind of makes it a bit less tedious because every time we learn new vocab or new grammar, we know that it's something that can be used in real situations, and we find ways to apply it in real situations and we can set up our own schedule. So we know that if we learn a new grammatical rule, we can decide. OK, this means that I can use it in this. In that situation, you can go out and use it, and suddenly you find yourself improving that much more. And so since we know why we're learning it and against it, this goes right back to having a goal and having a purpose for learning the language. And because we have this goal in this purpose, when we learn whatever it might be vocab or grammar, anything else that has to do with language learning, then we are. We're getting that much closer to our goal. And so as adults we could realise this, and this makes this rote memorization mawr important for us and not nearly as tedious 41. 33 Lesser known languages: This is fruit, those of you who are learning lesser known languages. Now most of you, probably Stickley speaking, are going to be learning languages that are quite common. Spanish, Chinese, German, Arabic, English, whatever it might be. But of course, many people want to learn lesson a languages for many different reasons. And these can be a whole different ball park because it can be a challenge to learn lesson known languages. Very often, you can't find people to speak in these languages. It's very hard to find courses in these languages very hard to find. Textbooks is very hard to find any type of resource in these languages. And let's face it, if you aren't in the top, say, 56 languages than it can be very hard to find. Some resource is to learn these languages. So what is some solutions? Generally, the lesser known the language, the more you'll have to rely on the Internet. Thankfully, nowadays we have the Internet, and so we have all the information that's available. There are means thankfully, yes and no. But in terms of learning lesson, no languages, it actually gives us a lot of information and a lot of resource is that we wouldn't have otherwise. And so keep this in mind if you're learning a lesson on language that you will have to rely a lot more on the Internet, The good news is that with the Internet, you can find resource is in pretty much any language. So the recommendation here is just to do research and research, what you confined and how whatever you confined can apply to all the various language components, such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. Another thing you can do is try to contact professors who speak this language if you confined, whether being your school or any other school. If you can get in touch with a professor who speaks the language you're trying to learn, frankly, it can't hurt. There are no downsides. They'll most likely be very happy, in fact, to be in touch with someone who has some interest in learning this language just because it's such a lesson, a language that usually very few people are interested in it, so feel free to contact someone. Obviously, if they're very far away, they on the other side of the country or the other side of the world that it may be. They can teach you, but they will, you know, feel free to ask a lease for resource is or recommendations and to just engage them in dialogue and see if they can help out along those lines. Another thing you can try doing is contacting speakers of this language once again. Maybe you're trying to learn the language of a country that ah isn't very common. I don't know the Faroe Islands, for instance, but the Faroe Islands does have Internet, so you can try to contact people who live in the Faroe Islands and see if maybe you can get in touch with the future pen pal or somebody who could do language exchange over the Internet. Try contacting people who just speak this language in their everyday life and see if maybe you could make some new friends and try to find some help in that way. And finally, try contacting others who have either been learning this language who are learning now or have learned it in the past. Obviously, these people have to go through the same thing you're going through, and so chances are they'll have a lot of resource is at their fingertips, and they'll have a lot of helpful tips for you. This will also ensure that you don't have to reinvent the wheel because they've probably been through all the headaches that you will go through and trying to learn this lesson on language. And they can tell you right off the bat was available and what isn't. So these could be a very helpful resource if you go and find whether it be through the schools or forms or anywhere else, you can just try Googling learning so in so language and see what pops up and see if you can find other people who have been learning it. 42. 34 Tips and Tricks Fake Immersion: So this section I just want to cover some other tips and tricks for language learning that hopefully you can find useful. So the 1st 1 that I wanted to mention is immersion. I've already mentioned that the more you can immerse yourself in a language, and the more intense the submersion could be, the better it is usually. And obviously this means that if you can go to another country and keep using the language with everyone there, then that would be the best option. Absolutely. But very often too often, usually this isn't the case. We just can't do this because we have a life wherever we live and we have to Ah, live there. And we also have to work. And we have relationships, etcetera, etcetera, and we can't just pick up and go toe our country of choice. So what else can we do? And recently I didn't try this myself. I've tried various aspects of it, but I was, ah, talking to someone recently who did try to do this as much as possible. He was in the States and he was learning Spanish, and he wanted to immerse himself as much as possible into Spanish itself into the Spanish language. And so he found a local community college that offered my classes Monday through Thursday. So he signed up for all the night classes Monday through Thursday so he could use it every evening. They weren't offered on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, he said, which is the only reason why I didn't go. But he did find its OK. He found every Sunday they would have movies in Spanish, and in fact, I think they had two or three in a row and he would watch all the movies that were available in Spanish. Obviously, while there he is with a lot of other Spanish speakers and so he can talk to them. He also found Thea local consulate would organize weekly like get togethers or sessions. I don't remember exactly which consulate look at Spanish speaking consulate and just attending all these events that they have, and basically he was trying to find every single opportunity to speak Spanish that he could in his town any time he could find, say, a barber or grocery store or anything like that with Spanish speakers, he changed to that one and because he wanted to once again use it at any opportunity, whether he's cutting his hair with his buying groceries or running errands, etcetera. And so he was able to structure his life with as much immersion as possible, even without living in any Spanish speaking country. And obviously this. If you live in the states in learning Spanish, this is a lot easier than many other languages because Spanish is quite prevalent in the states, so it will depend on what language your learning and where you find yourself at this time. But it could be an interesting exercise to try to immerse yourself as much as possible into a certain language, no matter what language your learning. Just make a list of every single opportunity you have in your city in your town to, ah, to listen to the language, to speak the language, to read and write the language and try to maximize this quote unquote immersion even without going to the country where they speak your language. Oh yeah, and I should mention he also did all the usual tricks work. He said he changed his phone in his computer to all Spanish language, and he would watch any TV show if he could find the Spanish language version. He was basically watching Spanish TV once again, any opportunity he got to immerse himself, he would do it a smudge as possible. And then later on, he was finally able to go. He was able to go to Mexico and he traveled a bit around Central America and he was able to improve upon his Spanish even more after that. And then you worked in a local court as an interpreter in Spanish, so he was able to use it quite a bit. But he credits this initial immersion that he went through in his own city as, ah, as really the catalyst. And we're really helped him learn quickly. Later on, when he did get a chance to go to Central America because he already had the basis. He already had been having conversations with people, and he already had quite a good level of this language. 43. 35 Tips and Tricks Talk to Yourself!: so the next tip here is one that might seem a bit odd, but I found it very useful for myself. Unfortunately, when you're trying to learn a language, you find that it's quite hard to find other people to talk to anything. If you do, you have to set up an appointment and maybe once or twice a day maximum, you can find people to talk with. And this very often you find this isn't enough, because if you want to once again immersed yourself and you want to become a bit more intense with language learning, it's hard to do so when you have to rely on others all the time. And so what I end up doing is not relying on others and just talking to myself. Now this can have many different meanings. It can mean something like, say, planning your day, sending your agenda out, say in the morning when you're deciding upon what to do. And I've used it for other things like, say, counting money, complaining about stuff to myself or else just ah, organizing what I'm doing extra commentary or stuff along those lines, and I know you don't want to risk sounding like a lunatic if you're just walking around talking to yourself. But chances are you are by yourself quite often during the day, and so you can afford to do so by the way, this works, even if you just do it in your head. You don't have to necessarily do it out loud, but talking to yourself gives you the opportunity to use the language a lot more often and because you can literally, pretty much do it all the time, as long as you're not in the process of talking to someone else. And, uh, so I'm one of the things that a lot of people mention when you mentioned talking to yourself is the fact that no one will correct your mistakes, but I don't see this. It's so much a problem because chances are if you do make a mistake. First of all, you'll know that you made a mistake, and so if it does bother, you can always look it up or jot it down so you can ask someone later on. And remember, when you talk to other people, they very often are not correcting your mistakes, especially if you're having a conversation you're in the flow of the conversation and you make a small mistake here and there. Many times they won't correct you at all because they're listening to your conversation. And so they understood what you want to say. You didn't say perfectly, but that's OK, so talking to yourself has way more benefits than disadvantages, and so I generally recommend it as a very simple way to be able to use the language whenever you want. 44. 36 Tips and Tricks Have Fun with it!: so another tip that I have here is to have fun with it. And so what does this mean? Obviously, if you're learning a language, you want it to be as fun. It's possible. But this means just toe simply that have fun with it. Whatever you find fun. If you are learning language and you like singing than invent songs or rap songs or whatever off you know in the language learning, try reading comics in the language you're learning. Try, I don't know, insulting other language learning. You know your classmates or whoever might be or making jokes. Try to invent jokes in that language and see how that goes. Or maybe if you are learning with someone else, then this other person you can kind of see them as a partner in crime because you can go out and about and speak this other language and know that other people don't understand you . And so you can kind of just have your own little secret conversations that people around you don't understand. And anyway, whatever you find, that might be fun or might be a bit Maura musing. Why not do it? Because it isn't completely structured and it isn't part of a formal lesson. And again, as adults, we tend to think of structure and former lessons in terms of learning. But sometimes we should think of it more like kids and just have fun with it. And whatever situation we find ourselves in and whatever we enjoy, why not try just adding this other language into it and seeing what happens? 45. 37 Tips and Tricks Need More Motivation?: Now, while we're studying another language, it'll always happen. I mean, it happens very often that we feel de motivated and we feel like maybe we're not getting ahead or we're not learning new stuff or whatever we're learning isn't staking. Resume working. And sometimes we need more motivation, and I find that in those situations, the best thing to do is to go back to your original goal. Now, this was the one we covered right at the beginning, and ah, see what your goal waas when you want to learn this language and then build upon this goal and try to help it out a bit. So let's say, if you want to travel to so and so country, and that's why you're learning the language well, then go a bit more into detail and explore a couple trips you can take and see where you could travel and where exactly it could be. Learning this uses in its language and with whom, or just if you wanted to use it in different situations, try to explore a bit more of the situations you could be in while you are speaking this language and what types of friends he could be hanging out with what types of activities he could be doing. And just trying to find other things he could be doing with this language tried to explore it a bit more because you remember your goal in your objective. It's pretty much what is inspiring you. What is motivating you. So if you need more motivation, it makes sense to kind of explore this a bit more and see how far you can take it, if you will, and how much you will be able to do with the language once you learn it. 46. 38 Tips and Tricks Hobbies: So another thing is hobbies. Chances are all of you are many of you have a hobby and ah, chances are you're using it in your native tongue. You're carrying out your hobby in your native tongue. So why not use your language for this hobby? Why not use the language of trying to learn for this hobby? And this can be any hobby you have. You know, if you're into cooking, find a cookbook in this language that you're trying to learn and follow the instructions and see what comes out and what works and what doesn't. And chances are it'll be very interesting. Or else if you have a group of people who do a certain sport or certain activity, try to find speakers of your target language of the language you're learning to join. You know our find a speakers who already have their own group and try to join their own group that are doing this hobby of yours or whatever It might be this activity, this thing you do in your spare time, find a way to incorporate language learning into your hobby, and you'll find not only that they are a lot more opportunities to use it, but you're gonna have a lot more fun using it because you are doing something you're already interested in, and you get to be used the language with this hobby, which makes it that much more interesting. 47. 39 Tips and Tricks Label objects: another quick and easy tip is to label objects in your home. This is pretty much what it sounds like. You can take furniture, paintings, appliances, whatever you might have around your home, different rooms, different types of fixtures and furnishings and whatever might be, and just put posted notes on them or stickers or something and just label them. And this is obviously great for vocab because you get to learn all the objects that are in your room, maybe even your in your window. You want to put certain labels. If you see certain buildings or things in the scenery or outside your window, why not put labels and just with the vocab for those words, This just allows you to see it throughout the day. And, uh, the more often you see something, the more often you get to practice it, and the more likely you are to learn it. And I've seen this quite often. Language learners. When you go to their home, they'll have posted notes were randomly around their house with on top of different objects , just so they can learn how to pronounce that object and how to say it in the language there trying to learn, and it's quite easy to do. Anyone can do it, and so why not do it? 48. 40 Tips and Tricks Etymology: so another tip that I like and I I personally like it. I'm not sure if other people will, but I thought I should mention it anyway. Is Entomology now? Entomology just means the origin of the word. And so if a certain word it said a certain way, it just means where its roots ours. For instance, in English, we have a lot of words that have Germanic roots. We also have a lot of words. Have Latin roots or Greek roots, etcetera, etcetera. So Entomology is just a study of this. Now. This might seem to go a bit too much in detail for many people who are just interested in speaking language, and that might be the case. I find it very useful for vocab that I cannot remember because if I look at the Entomology , then it allows me to see how that word came into being, if you will. So this has been very useful for learning Chinese for obvious reasons, because there you learn characters, and so you want to learn how the characters came to be and why they are drawn in a certain way. But it could be useful in any other language that you learn because every language has its own Entomology because it has its own history and it has its own roots. And many times it might share the roots of your language or a language you already know or language that similar. And it might be surprising. Or either way, it could be quite interesting. Obviously, you can't look up the etymology of every single word you learn. But every now and then it could be interesting to look up, and it can be helpful for problem words or words that don't stick. 49. Tips and Tricks - No Such Thing as Direct Translation: Okay, so here I wanted to talk a bit more about a translation of words. It's been said before that there's no such thing as a real and true synonym because different words, even though they can be a synonym of each other, they're used in different situations with different connotations, et cetera, et cetera. And this is all the more so true when you have translations. So I wanted to show this with an example here. It'll be between Italian and English. I'm gonna use Google Translate just because it's easiest, by the way, as a quick side note, I should mention as a translator, using Google Translate can have quite a few problems. It's gotten quite a bit better recently in terms of translating things. But there are a lot of issues that in fact they have a whole course on free lunch translation where I talk about all the issues. I won't get into it too much now. But just to know that by the way, if you are translating anything that's private or confidential or anything along those lines, it can be very dangerous to use Google Translate because the way it weren't Google doesn't translate anything. All it does is learned from texts that you input into this section here, which means that it has ownership or at least it has access to any text you put in here. So if you do put confidential contracts are financials information like that. If you just copy it into IR, it's accessible by Google. So just something to keep in mind. Anyway, let's get into this. There are a couple of things that while they might seem like a direct translation and seem easy enough, they can constitute an issue. So one that's simple between Italian and English is this one here? Let's do but soon, uh, no smart person. So and this, this translation is correct by the way, there's no, there's no problem with it. And I can attest to that, that bits don't have photo bomb means smart person. But let's, let's do something interesting here. Let's take smart person and let's put it under Google images and see what pops up. We have Einstein, Einstein, Einstein had in some other examples. But anyway, it's a very clear you can tell what's meant by smart person. You have, you know, the glass is, you have the light bulb, you have Einstein, you have all these things. Ok, smart person. Now let's take persona for TBA. And let's do a Google image search for this and see what happens. Now right away we don't see Einstein, but look what we do sinc, we see Fox. But so many foxes here. We see a fox and other fox and other FOX. So what's going on? Why? And here we see, I mean, I'm not sure how these could be smart people. And this May 1 be, but the other ones, like it's a bit odd. And so what's going on here? Well, the fact is while, but soon I fooled about means smart person and at time the connotation here is actually someone who is smart, but, well, think about it. What connotation does a fox have? Not necessarily being smart, but being very sly, kind of sneaky. And that's exactly the connotation of persona fooled about hats. So while the translation is smart person is usually used as a derogation, it's used almost to insult someone or, you know, to kind of talk behind their back, as in that person is smart, but they're actually quite SLI, someone who can't be trusted, someone who's sneaky, like a fox, someone who's SLI. And, and, so that's why, and that's just a quick example. Let's do another one that might be interesting. You take, that's how the coffee cup of coffee, that's all that means. Now look at. What you have when you have that City Cafe, which means cup of coffee here in case you don't believe me, I can ask, although their cup of coffee there we go, right. With a check mark, so everything's fine. Now, he here, there's something interesting though. Here you see one espresso to express those. These I guess aren't expressed those. But here's definitely another espresso and other espresso, espresso, espresso. So close to 50% of these are espresso. This isn't espresso machine. And so you say cup of coffee, you have a lot of espresso is here. Now let's do this in English, cup of coffee. I count. These might be espresso is, but they look a bit full to be expressed those, but otherwise I count 0 expressed those. Maybe this because he can't really tell, although it looks like it was full up to the brim. But here, right above the fold, I don't see any espresso. And here too, it's a big difference. That's the cafe means cup of coffee. But if you ordered that's at the cafe in Italy, more often than not, you'll get an espresso. And so once again, this is just something to keep in mind when you do find translations, whether they be from something like Google translate to something like even the dictionary. You still need to keep in mind the different connotations. And the best way to do this is to see how they're being used by the locals. And so anytime you do here an example, and here's something being used in a sentence. Remember how it was used and what type of sentence. And so just be careful about this when you're using it. And by the way, this also ties into another warning. Be very careful when you're making jokes and using vulgar or curse words. In fact, as I mentioned before, do not. It's best just to avoid curse words, avoid vulgar things all the time because these are very, even if, you know, it's okay to use it, say among friends and in a certain situation in your native tongue and another language that can be very different. So always be very careful about those. And as you can see, connotation situations, they can all be very different. And look, all of these examples are between Italian and English, which let's face it are not too dissimilar. You know, they have quite a few words and issues in common. So imagine how different it can be between other languages. So just something to keep in mind. And in fact, anytime you learn a new word, it can be very interesting to do a Google image search between that word in your native tongue and in your target language, and try to see what the differences are. And that can sometimes give an idea as to how people view things differently depending on what the word or the phrase is. And can kinda give you an idea as to how people see things differently. And in fact, even the examples I give here might be interesting to see because I realize I'm using Google image in Italian. So if I use the Google in English, maybe it has something different. And in fact, I'm located now physically in Taiwan, so I don't know if that has any effect on the results. So feel free to do the same thing and see what pops up when you try it. By the way, just to kind of highlight the issues with Google Translate, here's something else interesting you can do between Italian and English. Here if you have dd. So she veto vetoes civil right, which is correct. And also here you have desktop era, which has right. Obviously these are two different rights. So that makes sense. One is the right as a civil right and the other one is desktop. But here's something interesting. When I, when I clicked here and did ito it has right as a civil right, but also has straight. Now why is that? Well, because if you remember, the astra means right. But straight is did ETOH. But didn't we just have the DAW as right? So straight is DD, Toba is right. So what's going on here? Well, I mean, if this doesn't get you confused, I don't know what will but, you know, that's some of the issues with translation. And unfortunately also, yes, some of the issues with Google Translate because you don't know very often which right is referring to or which did eat though it's referring to. And so sometimes things can get confusing. Anyway, end parenthesis. 50. Use Your AI Speaker: Another quick tip and trick is that if you need to know a word quickly, and it's a simple word and you don't feel like looking it up right there. You can always ask your AI speaker. Ai speaker obviously means something like Siri or Alexa or Google Talk, et cetera, et cetera. And you can always ask something like, how do you say this word or that word and whatever language. And as long as as a simple word in one of the main languages, your AI speaker can help you. Of course, if it's a more difficult word or expression, you can also use your AI speaker to create a reminder to look up the word if you can't do it right now. Like if you're in the middle of cooking or doing something else, you can always say, Alexa, Give me a reminder at 3pm to lookup so and so Word or give me a reminder in half an hour to look up. So and so expression. So this is a simple way not to get bogged down in case you can't think of a word or expression right away. And you don't have a dictionary handy. You can always use your AI speaker. 51. 40a Maintaining Languages: Maintaining a language can be a big part for language learning, especially over the long term. And this is because learning language never ends. When you learn a language, you can learn it very well or at whatever level. But chances are at some point you are going to, ah, stop taking classes or stop working with a private tutor or stop going through the lessons yourself because life goes on and other things happen and you get taken away from it. So what happens if you learn the language to, Ah, great level and then you let it go for around two years, and two years later you have to use it again. Well, chances are you'll have lost quite a bit of it. Unfortunately, this happens. This happens with every language, by the way, including your native tongue. Now, obviously, losing your native tongue is something that is very rare because even if we go to a place where a native tongue isn't being spoken, chances are we still use that when we surf the Web and read stuff, talk to friends back home over Skype, read books, think to ourselves, etcetera, etcetera. And so how do you maintain that over time. Well, there are a couple things. First of all, already mentioned trigger sentences in my intro now trigger sentences or something that I use quite a bit. If someone comes up to me at a bar at a restaurant or on the street and starts wanting to speak whatever language one of the languages I learned, chances are I can't just switch to that language mentality right away because all languages air different. They have different pronunciation. They kind of have a different mentality. A lot of them have completely different grammar structures. Korean, Japanese and German have verbs at the end. While you know, French has its own pronunciation, Italian and Spanish of other similar pronunciations. But you know, and all of them have their own thing going on. So what I use and this is a method that was taught to me by a friend of mine who work in the State Department, he had to deal with people who needed visas, and so he would have a lot of people come up to his window and the languages he spoke. I think we're Russian, Japanese, Chinese and Spanish, or something like that, and So he you know, these are very different languages to switch to and to keep talking. And so what he would do is he would basically ask them a question that he sort of knew what the answer was, more or less like where you from, or something like that. And they reply. And then he'd ask another quiet kind of obvious question. And these three or four obvious questions with the obvious answers were enough to get him back into the mentality of that language. And so he just memorized those questions and was kind of ready for the answers, and by that point, he had sort of switched his mentality over to that language. And so I do something similar. What I do is I have these trigger sentences that I sort of memorized. And I mentioned a couple in the intro Ah, for example, in Spanish. I usually because, and I'll get into why I choose the sentences in a minute. But for Spanish, I'll say something like Ah and gentleman, Massimino told hospital hablo espanol muito Yanez ago and etcetera, etcetera. Now the reason I do this is because when Spanish comes up out of the blue very often. It's because people know I speak Italian or else maybe they'll hear someone speak Spanish to me. Or either way, it'll be they'll say, Oh, you speak Spanish or they'll ask me Oh, do you speak Spanish? And so I kind of have to explain if I speak Spanish and how I speak Spanish and more or less where my level is for Spanish. And so that's why I find that to be a good sentence, because I could say something like, Look, I understand more or less everything. But my Spanish is when I speak it. I speak a very Italian sort of Spanish because I when I don't know the words in Spanish, I use Italian words, which works very often. But anyway, it's just a sentence that I find quite useful because that's the situation in which it comes up. I also mentioned my Korean sentence that that I use the trigger sentence there and it's usually sheep, onion toe hunger, okay, said a soil. And then, um and then I continue. And the reason for this is once again if it comes up the last me o d speak Korean or you know do you? Uh, White? How do you speak Korean or something like that? Actually, usually I'll start it off with how you might tell no tale. And then I continue. So hung. My channel tail means I don't really speak Korean. And I find it better to be a bit too humble that not and quite frank with my crew, my level of korean. I'm not being humble there at all. But then I continue and I say, 0 15 years ago, I lived in Korea or 15 years ago. I lived in Korea for around two years, but now I've pretty much forgotten everything. And then I continue. So I have these trigger sentences, usually 1 to 3 sentences that I sort of have memorized. And so when the situation arises, I can use those right away. And hopefully those with the response I get from the person I'm talking to will be enough to help me get into the flow of the language so I can start speaking it again. And so this is what I recommend you do as well. Uh, when you when you've been learning your language. If you want to maintain a long term memorize a couple couple what I call trigger sentences , sentences that sort of triggered in your brain. That and that help you out. And usually I suggest that you pick a sentence that somewhat useful. Depending on the situation, it will usually have something to do with why you speak that language. If you speak that language, how you learn the language, something along those lines, that's usually what people ask when bringing up a new language. 52. 40b Maintaining Your Language 2: However, I highly suggest that when you plan on using language, so if you know that you're going to travel to a certain country where they speak the language or you know you're going to have to use it for a conversation or for business or whatever, it might be not to rely just on the trigger, Sentence says. In fact, what I usually do is if I know I'm going to travel, say, to Germany or Korea or someplace like that. I have a regimen that I put in place now this will depend on the level of my language. But what I try to do is I try to set a schedule ahead of time. For example, if I'm going to Germany, I will decide, say, a month ahead of time that I will start easing myself into German. So what does this mean? This means that I'll start off light and this usually entails finding some music in German , maybe listening to a little bit of German radio online and stuff like that for a few days during that time. Also search for some podcasts and I'll start using those and slowly but surely I'll start easing into maybe reading a couple articles online and maybe finding some online courses or something like that so I can ease myself back into German. So hopefully by the time I get there, my German level is pretty much where I left off. Last time I studied it. I also have some old German textbooks that I can start looking over, and I try to create a schedule so that by the time I go there, everything is pretty much all set. I went to Germany recently and that was what I did. And in fact, before heading there, I decided to call the restaurants I knew we wanted to go to and what not ahead of time cycle practice, using German a bit before we actually got to Germany. And so I called to reserve our restaurants and stuff like that just so I could start using it and I suggest you do something similar. When I go to Korea, I do the same thing. I start listening to some of the music and then the podcasts, and I have my old Korean textbooks as well as my flashcards, and I tried to look over and review what I have already studied, so I can hopefully end up at exactly the level where I left off last time so I can hit the ground running, so to speak, once I arrive in Korea. In fact, maybe I could even advanced a little bit. I also do this by looking over past courses and videos and lectures and classes that I've taken that are online, and I try to, especially toward the end, speed them up a little bit because this is a review, and so I should be able to speed through it once I get the language back into me and once I get used to it again. 53. 41 Mnemonics: so pneumonic snow Study of language learning is complete without no Monix. You hear this a lot When it comes to language learning, you'll also hear terms like Memory Palace and stuff like that, which makes it sound a bit more fancy. Um, of course, Memory Palace is a type of no Monix, and it's a very interesting type. But, um, just briefly no Monix, what are they? Chances are you've come across them yourself, and any time if you're an English speaker or if you're in the States say you've probably heard, Ah, in 14 92 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That's the type of pneumonic and and pneumonic is any type of system in order to recall whatever it might be, you know, a set of figures instead of numbers instead of vocab or anything like that. When it comes to language learning, it's usually used for either vocab or grammatical rules or stuff along those lines. Another example I've come across is many times because the color gray can be spelled with an A or an E, and so how do you know which one to use well in England, use an E E for England while in America using a A for America. That's a simple way to remember. Great and great if you by the way, any of you musical people there if you study music than probably something like every good boy deserves fruit sounds familiar to you. All of these are pneumonic devices, and they help you memorize something. They make it more simple for you to memorize something I'm not gonna go into detail about. No, Monix, but I wanted to cover more or less what it is, and, uh, and how it could be used for language learning. First of all, it should be personal. Now, a lot of these work, because they're very easy. And you know these little things that you say in 14 92 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It sticks with you, and it's very easy to remember. But some things might not work for you while they work for someone else. Whatever works for you, that's what works. And so stick with that. Just keep that in mind also, obviously, this requires some effort. At the beginning, you're gonna have to come up with the type of system to remember whatever it is you're trying to remember and to recall it to be able to recall it whenever you need it, and this will take some effort. And so just keep that in mind. However, very often the African pay off later. Now, as you can see for something like, If you need to memorize a date for a test like 14 92 or if you need to memorize something that use quite often like how to spell gray, then that's fine. But if it's just for a certain type of word, and if you need to come up with a different type of pneumonic device for every single word you learn, it could be quite tedious. So just keep this in mind when you're learning new vocab or when you're learning words that this could be very good for problem. Vocab made for words that you can't remember at all, and you're having issues with. But sometimes it's not that good for just standard vocab that you come across all the time . It can also be good for rules that you need to remember, and if they're certain grammatical rules or a certain rules in the language that you to keep in mind, then sure come up with pneumonic devices for those, but otherwise it can be quite tedious and maybe not worth all the effort. For example, I've heard before for Italian most masculine words and with O and most feminine words. And with a and ah, one device there is to picture the old as a head like you see the standard head when you go to anything that could be divided, male female say, like the toilets or some like that, and the always just around head, while the a, the lower case A could be the hair going in the back of the female's head and could symbolise the longer hair. And this could be an easy way to remember. Oh, for masculine A for feminine. That's just one example. There quite a few other ones we can go through a couple of them like, for instance, in Japanese to eat. It's debated away. To remember that that I've heard is a taboo sounds like table, and the table is a place where you eat. And so if you remember that, then you can remember Tab. Another one that I've heard is ALF Gabin in German ALF Cabin means to give up. If you calculate that ALF sort of sounds like ouch and then gave it means to give that you can picture yourself saying, Oh, I want to give this present to my friend, but ouch. I hurt myself and so on. Now I can't give it. Oh, well, I give up. I won't give it. So, ALF, given you can remember it means to give up because you think Ouch giving Oh ouch! I can't give it. Oh, I give up once again. These are very personal. And that's why if it works for you, that's very good. If it doesn't work for you, then try something else. Also remember that you risk remembering the pneumonic rule, but not the vocab itself may be Remember that ALF stands for ouch. But then you don't remember that the whole word is supposed to mean to give up, In which case this means that it's not working well for you, and you should find some of the system that doesn't work well with you. And so these are all things to keep in mind when you're using the Monix and so I would apply them. If you see that they can work for you, but don't try to force them just because they happen to be. Quite frankly, they happen to be in fashion right now. And I feel like I'm hearing a lot of people trying to use pneumonic stow, learn languages. But I don't often hear very many instances of it working. And usually when it does work is for grammatical rules that can be applied very often or for problem vocab that it's hard to remember for the person. Here's another example I came across just that I thought was interesting in Japanese to die is she knew. And so an interesting way to remember that is because, she notes, sounds like she knew. So you can remember. She knew she was about to die or my preferred version is. Actually, she knew what you did last summer or she knew what she did last summer or something along those lines, basically, because it reminds me of that movie and that movie was all about killing and dying and stuff like that 54. 42 My Learning Method: once again This is a plan that I came up with, that I follow and that I find very useful. So I wanted to share it with you just so hopefully you can find some use it as well. Now all of these points, by the way, have already gone through them in the presentation and in the class in the course itself. But here, I kind of synthesize what I've been talking about and try to make it into a cohesive learning plan that hopefully you can follow and used to your advantage. So starting off as we started off with the course, you start off with a goal, As in What do you want to achieve from learning this language? And And I gave a give here various examples and such as one of them, which is quite common, is converse all evening over a dinner and then I say be, Can you break down this into the smaller goals? Gonna break this down into smaller goals. A commercial evening over dinner Could be converse for 30 minutes and so converse for 30 minutes. OK, I don't want to bore you by filling it all out here in the example already put Converse for 30 minutes. Here. This could be converts for several minutes. Uh, and if you break it down even further, converse for several minutes. Could be have at least two exchanges in a row. And then if you break it down even further than that, have at least two exchange bureau can be have at least one exchange or one question response to exchanges. Usually I would mean you ask something. They respond, you ask again a follow up, and they respond something like that to exchanges. And here is this one exchange for the F will be one exchange. So you ask a question and you understand the response or they ask a question which you are able to respond to and that we just one exchange. So there you've broken down pretty much as much as you can break it down. And ah, and so this way your goal to converse all evening over dinner is broken down into more manageable parts, and from there we go on to page two. And where you have once again you have these components, their components for language, learning that once again, I've mentioned before in the course. Ah, quite at length. In fact, first is listening than speaking than reading and writing. And so you want to see what applies to your goals to the goals that we have here? 21 A more specifically, converse all evening over dinner. So what applies? Listening? Yes, I will have to listen. If I'm conversing over dinner, I have to listen to what they say. So I click. Yes. Speaking. Ah, well, yes. If I'm conversing, that means speaking. So yes, that will apply reading, reading Not so much, because if I'm conversing with people, I won't be reading presumably. So I click. No and then writing. Also know what I found with most of my goals is usually two of these apply, and two don't. There might be exceptions, but by and large, you're either concentrating on listening and speaking or in reading and writing. And so, generally, two of these applying to don't. Anyway, once you fill this out, uh, below you can see activities. These activities are our activities for each components. They have the listening components, that speaking components, the reading components and the writing components. Once again, it's divide into these four components. And so what I say here is to write 1 to 4 next to each activity as you pick them. So this will mean that if I go to podcasts, right one here, people around town to practice would say to here, Ah, then maybe I do three here and four here Now. You noticed something as soon as I wrote three here, it popped up here, and I did this because finding online games in that language means that you're reading the online games. But it could also mean that you're writing in the online games if they're chat or something like that. So I just want to make sure that you don't count the same activity for two different components. That's the only reason why I put that there. If you're reading online games, you can't add it as writing for online games as well, because that's the same game that you're doing right. I want you to find another activity. So anyway, that's the only reason why I did that. Hopefully, this works for you. This whole if it doesn't, or if you have issues with this worksheet, let me know because obviously making work. She's is not something that I do professionally, and so hopefully just works out. But anyway, once he filled out all these this information, you have all the information you need for your for your schedule. And also, this helps you. It's a good exercise to see what you wish to accomplish and how you wish to accomplish it. How you wish to attain your goals. So that's when we go on to part two now, part two. I have these as two separate files just so you can follow along with this file while you fill this one out. So here in part, to you see the schedule we can start building up a schedule will use a kaizen method once again that I mentioned to the course and use that as an approach. So you write the correspondent activity next to each number. What does this mean? This means that he received Monday Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday, with numbers next to them. 1234 You go back here one podcast, So under one, you write podcasts and under two people around town to practice with so on. So under here you find people around town to practice with again. I don't want to take up too much time, but you see what I mean? You do the same for three and four and that's your schedule for the first week. OK, eso here you was. Do briefly find online games. And what was four right? Short texts. OK, so here. Right short, Tex. Now, this is their schedule For the first week. I want Monday, you decide you're going to do podcasts to have stay people around town to practice with Wednesday. You're gonna find online games Thursday, right? Short texts. And this is obviously a very preliminary thing, and you're just kind of using it to connect the dots. See, really? To see if it works for you. That's why I say Friday, use the state to review make changes, make bonafide attempts. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, thirds. Don't just think. Oh, I'm not gonna find people around town to practice with. Forget it. No, no, no. I want you to try. And because if you put that already has one of the speaking components here one of the activities to do, then it means that it's a complete you want that you want to try and you know you think will help you out. So I want you to try this for the first week Friday. Use the state to review and make changes. Maybe there were issues with it, and I and I give examples here for the review. You want to make sure things are working thus far, Correct Any preliminary issues right away. Examples of possible issues. The podcast had only five episodes, so that wouldn't be enough for learning in the long term. And the solution will be to find another podcasts. Just find something else. Another potential problem could be you couldn't find anyone around town to talk to. Then choose something else from this component. So you go back to speak speaking components. Choose something else. Once again, it's not exhaustive at all. You can fill out other. I think I mentioned this before, but none of these lists are exhausted, and that's why I have other here, where you can write down whatever other activity you want here and put the number next to that. If you wish. Um, so feel free to do that as well, then here. Another problem is he filled out just one flash card and it doesn't seem like enough increased the number of flashcards. Eso This could mean that you wrote down just one, and you want to increase the number of flashcards because they were following the kaizen method. Then increase the number of flashcards to whatever you feel comfortable. And I'm just showing you how you need. You can review what might have seemed robotic or just seem like you're checking off certain steps, Do you? Review is when you get toe, look at it and make sure it's working out. So use the weekend to turn this into a sustainable schedule. So you use Friday to review and use the weekend to make it into a schedule. This is a very easy schedule, Okay, because Friday you're reviewing, then the weekend you're making a schedule. I do this on purpose once again to follow the kaizen method. It's a lot easier toe. Add on to the schedule over time to increase the amount over time than to decrease because usually decreasing doesn't happen. It's that's when you give up on your schedule because it's too difficult, so you want to increase over time. That means starting off small So ah so What do you do here? This is the first week. So for the second week, whatever's been working out, if it has been working out, you just transpose whatever is there to week two. For the second week, you start with the same activities from last week. So that means podcasts under here you go once again, Podcasts. As long as it's been working out people around town to practice with once again people around town, I won't write the whole thing, etcetera, etcetera. What about five and six? Well, that's when you go back to the designated components once again. I'm kind of going through this a bit quickly, but hopefully you can go back and follow through on your own while you're filling this out yourself. Because it should all make sense as long as you follow along. Because here once again you filled out. Check all that. Apply to your goal. This it always goes back to your goal. Converse in all evening. The components that apply here are listening and speaking. The ones he clicked. Yes, on these are the ones I want you to concentrate on now. So if you quick yes, on listening and speaking. Then I want you to choose something else from here now se listening and karaoke A for speaking, watching TV and care. Okay, so here you fill this out all like before he let me do it quickly. Just so you see how it looks. Ah, right short, Tex. So all this was working out, and we're doing that fine. But here we have for five. We have watch TV and we have some TV show we can watch. And for six, we have career. Okay, maybe you can go sing karaoke with some friends or something like that. We have a machine, and you can use that to practice as well for your speaking. Anyway, this isn't usually one of my favorite activities, but I included, because you get to use pronunciation and center and stuff like that. And this is your schedule for week two. And here you have from Monday to Saturday. You have an activity for each day, and you concentrate a bit more on in this case on listening and speaking, because that's what you want to concentrate on more anyway, you Sunday to review once again to make sure that things are working out this far. Correct any preliminary issues right away and try to correct correct them as soon as possible. Otherwise, this schedule is your schedule Until your first monthly review. You can add minuscule additions to each day as desired once, and this goes back to the kaizen method where you add small. If you find that talking to one person around town, it's pretty easy. And you could talk to another person because maybe you go to the same coffee shop that has another person who speaks that language, then fine. Feel free to add it. Feel free to add to podcast episodes per day instead of one or just whatever small, minuscule change you want to make. Make it even if it's just a fraction of, ah, the next podcast or something like that, that's fine. Minuscule changes are great and, uh and yeah, that's pretty much your schedule now, and you can follow the schedule until your first month. You review now the monthly review. I just have some pointers here, and I've covered this before during the course, but just to just to recap, you use this opportunity to review progress and how they compare to your broken down goals from Unit one. Ideally, you've already achieved your most broken down goal, which is one F and so again, your monthly review. Rather than seeing how your schedule works, deals more with your goals. And so these are your goals here. Do you want to see how they compare to your broken down goals? Ideally, you have already achieved your most broken down goal, which is one f. So have at least one exchange or question response. Be ableto ask a question and understand the response. Ideally, you know, by this first week or two weeks, quite frankly, you've already been able to do this. Which means you can concentrate on this goal. And maybe you've even, ah even accomplish your second most broken down goal one e and have at least two exchanges in a row. Maybe you ask the question. Got a response? Asked another question. Got another response. Boom. That means he already covered this and you could start concentrating on one D. And so this is really what you try to do. You try to achieve them. Goal by goal. Working backwards one F toe one e toe one D toe one seat one b until you can achieve one A , which was their gold, and I have also a note here once he won sear one beagle. So once you start getting pretty high up there, you can decide toe on Lee. Work on the designated components from Unit two. I recommend still working on all four components here, so working on once again, this deals with listening, speaking, reading, writing. But once you start getting close to your goal, if you want to come, if your goal is to converse all evening over dinner, you can decide at that point to not cover reading and writing anymore. Maybe you don't have to deal with the online games or the writing. Short texts like on Facebook updates their messages to friends, and you can just concentrate on these. And so you spend more time concentrating on speaking and listening because that's what you want to achieve anyway, Once again, I've said this many times. At the beginning, I recommend you concentrate on all components because it always helps out. But once you get closer toward your goal, then yeah, you can decide to concentrate mawr on just the components that apply to your goal. So in this case, listening and speaking and that's pretty much it. Obviously you're going to tweak this As time goes by, you're going to customize it more, depending on what you're able to achieve and what you're not able to achieve. And ah, what works best for you. But hopefully this can kind of work out for you. And once again, you can find these to pdf's in the downloadable section. You should be able to fill them out yourself. Feel free to print them out or to keep them handy so that you can use them for your schedule and feel free. Teoh. Tweak them as time goes by and feel free to let me know. Also if you have any recommendations for, because I'd love to hear about recommendations or tweaks or changes that you've made that have worked for you and so feel free to let me know at any point in time and obviously feel free to let me know if you have any questions. I kind of went through this quickly, but also because I've covered a lot of these points in this material during the course, and so hopefully you're somewhat familiar with it. And hopefully you can follow along with what I said and also whether we're didn't instructions here. And it makes sense. And yeah, that's pretty much it. And now you might have noticed. I think I'll have a copy written. Ah, and you might have noticed. I think I'll have a copy written. Yeah, hopefully you can find this useful and yeah, hopefully you can find this useful and it helps you out. And you might have noticed I will probably have ah, copy, written or copyright noticed somewhere on the screen here. And that's only because, I mean, you know, this is why we can't have nice things is only because I've been following this method for a while and I've told several people about it, and I found out that this other teacher was not only using this method and passing it off as his own, but he was trying to make money off, for he's trying to sell it and sell it as his own message that he couldn't make money off of, and I only found out about anyway, I won't get into it, but, uh, so that's why I have a copy, right right in here. And you know it doesn't mean it. Obviously, if you want to use it, use it. If you want to tweak, tweak it. If you want to share it, share it. If you are honest, this has no bearing on what you're doing. But obviously, don't try to pass it off as your own and try to make money off of it because that's not nice and not honest. But once again, I hope you find this useful. And please let me know if you have any recommendations or if you have any questions I love to hear about them. Does it really helps me? I've realized that I really like learning languages, and it doesn't come as naturally to me as it does to certain people. And so I do need to follow the schedule, and it really helped me out.