Studying languages on vacation?

It’s travel season, many people go on vacation.
Maybe you are on vacation too but what to do with your languages?

You don’t go on vacation to be studying there all day but maybe you are afraid to neglect your languages because you won’t have time to revise them?

Then this article is for you!

When you go on a vacation most of the time it’s to relax or to discover a place.
You won’t have much time to study there and maybe you won’t think about it at all.

But even without really ‘’studying’’ you can revise your languages every day.

Option 1

You can work with flashcards, digital flashcards are easy to use and you have them all the time with you.

Two excellent flashcard apps are Anki and Quizlet, both available on mobile and on your computer.

A few days before you leave for vacation make your flashcards (insert them into the app) and you are ready to go. Everyday 5 minutes of revision time is not a big deal and (toch) will benefit you.

Best times to do your revision are first thing in the morning or before sleep. I recommend you to revise in the morning because after a long day it may be possible that you either forget to do it or that you don’t feel like it anymore.

What should you put on the flashcards??

You don’t know what to put on your flashcards? Just take sentences and vocabulary from the recourses you normally use to study.

Option 2

You also can use an app like Duolingo or Memrise. The lessons are very short and don’t take much time. Same here like with the flashcards, do it in the morning or in the evening, it will just take you 5 to 10 minutes and it will benefit you.

Option 3

If you are in the country of the language you learn then it’s another story of course! Just talk with the locals and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. This is the best exercise you can do to practice.

Surround yourself with the language.

Option 4

Another thing you can do is READ.
Reading is very important when you are learning a language.
Take a book with you in your target language or find newspapers in that language (when you are in the country of the language itself)

When you don’t have books or newspapers or you can’t find any, the internet is full of content. (online newspapers, e-books,…)

Read a little every day, 5 mins a day, for instance one article a day.
An amazing tool to read on the internet is “readlang“ , with this you can easily look up the meaning of a word.
Maybe you can take a little notebook with you to write the new vocabulary in it.

So these were some options you have to study or revise your language(s) even when you are on vacation.
5 to 10 minutes a day is good, it’s better than doing nothing and in this way you will be able to keep track on your language(s).

 

How do I get motivation to learn languages?

How do I get motivation to learn languages?

I often hear people ask this question.

Often people lose their “motivation” after they try to learn a language but then fail and they give up very quickly. Most people give up because they don’t have the right “motivation”. They are not driven enough.

Mostly in the beginning of something new, you are driven and determined. The secret is how to stay driven.

So how do you get that motivation to learn a language?
Before you start learning a language you should ask yourself one question. “why do I want to learn this language?” it can be for your work, maybe you want to travel and speak with the people there, maybe you just love to learn languages like I do or maybe you do it for a girl or boy you really like. There can be a lot of reasons to learn a language, it’s not so important what that reason is but it’s just important to have one. So, on days when you don’t feel like studying that language, you should think about why you started in the first place.

Another good tip is to think of the advantages you will have when you speak this language. There will open new doors for you, you will get new opportunities, you will be able to speak to more people and get to know the culture of their country better. When you are in a country and you speak their language, you will learn a lot more about their culture than when you don’t speak their language.

If you only speak one language now, I can tell you; learning a new language changes your world, it changes your way of thinking and believe it or not; you even will learn more about your own mother tongue too.

Set little goals for yourself

When you set little goals for yourself, you will be more driven to learn. Because you know what you want to achieve. For instance, your first goal is to have a little 15-minute conversation in that language after 1 month of studying.

Make it fun

I often hear people say that learning a language is boring but they are wrong. Learning a language is not boring at all! You should make it fun yourself. Of course, studying grammar every single day is boring but it’s not like that you will learn to speak a language. You should have variation in your learning process. Next to studying the actual language, you also can watch movies in that language with or without subtitles (depends on your level) , listen music, listen to podcasts, read books (about topics you like), newspapers… It will help you to improve faster and you will also learn new vocabulary. You can also use apps to study the language. Apps like Duolingo or Memrise are a great way to study the language wherever you are.
For instance on your daily lunch break you can do a lesson or two on Duolingo.

Find someone to talk to

Having conversations with a native speaker can be very motivating and will help you a lot to learn that language because they can correct your mistakes. I know that sometimes it can be hard to practice the language if you don’t have anyone in your neighbourhood that speaks the language but there are a lot of sites and apps where you can find native speakers. Like : Hellotalk, tandem, Italki, or even Facebook or Instagram. Nowadays it’s very simple to connect with people from all over the world!

Thank you for reading, I hope this helped you.

If you know someone who would like this article, don’t forget to share it!

 

 

 

 

 

My language learning method

Hello again!

In this article, I will talk about how I learn languages. First of all, I want to say you that this method may be working for you or not at all. Everyone is different so you have to find out for yourself what method works best for you.

In the beginning when I learn a language, I learn the most important words and sentences that are used in daily life so that I can use them as fast as possible. If you want to know what these words and sentences are let me know and I will publish a list for you guys.

With this base, I can already start to speak a little in that language. For me it is important to start speak the language as fast as possible. I know that some polyglots will say that you first should have a certain level before you start to speak, others say that you should speak it from day one and that’s also my opinion.

Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot of people in my neighbourhood who speak my target languages. But sometimes when I am outside, -in the market for instance- and I see people that are speaking a language that I learn, I go to them and start speaking. Most of the time the people are amazed and want to know more so they ask a lot of questions. This is a great practice for me because when I make a mistake they will correct me. Don’t be scared to make mistakes guys! I learned French almost my entire life but only when I was 17 or 18 I started to speak it good because before the age of 17 I was scared to use this language. I was scared of what people would think of my accent and I was scared because I would make a lot of mistakes but making mistakes while speaking is one of the most important things of your learning process, that’s the only way you’ll learn the language correctly.  It’s just impossible to not make one single mistake.

When I don’t have anyone to speak with, I just speak with myself. Maybe this sounds strange or ridiculous to you but it’s effective. When I speak to myself I just talk about my day, what I will do or what I did that day. When I’m doing something, I say to myself what I do in the languages I learn. When I don’t know a word I just look it up and by doing this daily I learn a lot of words that are useful in daily life.

When I travel to a foreign country I try to speak to the locals only in their language. This is the best way to learn a language. In that way I also learn a lot about their culture and mostly they appreciate it that I speak/learn their mother tongue.

Listen

I use the languages that I learn on a daily basis.  I listen a lot to my target languages. I listen to songs, I watch movies, series, the news, vlogs etc. … Everything that I can find in that language and that is useful for me and interesting. When listening, I am very attentive and when I don’t understand a word I write it down and look the meaning up. I also download podcasts on my phone to listen when I am outside or when I am in the gym.

Sometimes I watch videos a few times until I understand the whole thing. It’s important to know what they are talking about.
I also do this with Russian but I am not yet able to understand a whole video. In that case I try to figure out what they are talking about just by listening very attentive to the words I do understand. Often, you don’t need to understand every word to know what they are talking about. If you understand the most important words that’s already a good start. In this way, I also learn new vocabulary.

I do listen a lot to music and sometimes I translate the text of a song that I like. That’s a nice way to learn new vocabulary as well.

Reading

I try to read every day, it can happen that I skip a day sometimes but that does not happen very often. Things that I read in my target languages are: books, the journal, or just posts on social media. I just try to use all the languages that I speak and learn as much as possible.

Every now and then I search a text in the journal that is not too difficult for me. I write down the whole text or I print it out and I mark all the words that I don’t know. First I think for myself what the meaning could be and then I look the words up in a monolingual dictionary. I don’t use my mother tongue in that case. I search the meaning in the language itself. In that way, I learn to use that language.

 

 

I also read books on my kindle app.
This is great because when I don’t know a word I just have to select that word and the meaning appears right away. You also can mark the words. And another advantage is that I can read my kindle books wherever I am because it’s on my phone. So when I am in the train or when I am waiting for someone I read.

grammar

Yes, I do have some grammatical books and I do use them but for me this is not the most important. Yes, I agree, grammar is very important to know the structure of a language and to know how to use the language but by only learning grammatical books you will never be able to speak a language fluently. So, I learn grammar every now and then or when I don’t understand how to use a verb or how to form a sentence I’ll look it up in my books or I watch YouTube videos. You can find a lot of interesting and useful lessons on YouTube in almost every language.

Apps

In my free time, I make use of language apps like Duolingo, Memrise, AnkiDroid, Flash Academy, Chineseskill, Tandem… This is just a fun way to practice and review my languages. They are all available on android and apple if you are interested. These apps are a great way to practice wherever you want, because you can use them wherever you go.

 

 

 

And whenever I have the opportunity to speak one of my target languages I do it!

 You can never practice enough!

So, this is my method, I hope this was useful for you.

Don't forget to visit my youtube Channel where I share videos in the languages I learn to show my progression or just to give some tips . Multilinguismo 

Is Duolingo good to learn a language?

As you can see in the title, I will speak about Duolingo in this article.
You probably already know this app, and for those who did not know this app yet, it’s an app where you can learn the basics of a language in a fun and easy way.
It’s available in a lot of languages and they still continue to make new courses.
You even can contribute to a new course when you speak the two languages of the course fluently.
You can use it on your Phone and your computer and it’s free.

I am using this app now for 4 years or so. I really like it, it’s helpful and interesting. I started using it when I was learning my third foreign language which is Italian. It was a good way for me to start learning the basics of Italian and after a few courses I started to learn intensely with other resources.

So, the question is: “Is Duolingo good to learn a language?”.
My answer is yes and no. Why yes? Because it teaches you a lot, it teaches you new vocabulary and expressions. By using Duolingo you can learn a lot but you won’t be able to speak a language fluently by only using that.

It’s a good way to compensate it with other resources.

So, what I want to explain to you is, that I really recommend you to use Duolingo because it’s a very good app and it will help you a lot. But you should know that it doesn’t really teach you how to speak and use a language. So beside using Duolingo, you also should use other sources to learn the language.

When learning a language, it is important to listen a lot so you can absorb the language and to speak ofcourse and with Duolingo you can’t really do that.

I really like this app and I use it daily before I sleep.
If you don’t use this app yet, I recommend you to try it. Duolingo
It makes language learning a little bit more fun 😀

Thank you for reading.

If this article was useful for you, don’t hesitate to share it with your friends!

Don't forget to visit my youtube Channel where I share videos in the languages I learn to show my progression or just to give some tips . Multilinguismo