“I don’t have the time to learn a language.”

” I don’t have the time” is the most used sentence I hear when I speak to people who are interested to learn a new language but they don’t do it because apparently they don’t have time…

I understand, most people who have a fulltime job (with or without kids), or fulltime moms, etc… don’t want to spend their only me-time of the day on studying…

But what if I say you don’t necessarily have to sit in front of a desk with a boring textbook to learn a language?

Believe it or not, I learned the most by doing daily activities.

Now I hear you say “What? by doing daily activities? what do you even mean?”

I will explain, but first I have a few questions for you.

● Do you often listen to music?

● Do you watch movies/series?

● Do you read books?

● Do you waste most of your time on socal media? (Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter…)

● Are you doing some type of exercise? (Running, walking, biking, gym)

Well then you can surely make time to use and practice languages.

Young man reading an article on his phone and listening to podcasts while traveling by train.

Listen to music in the language you are interested in, watch movies with subtitles (first subtitles in your mother tongue, when you are more advanced you use subtitles in the language itself and after a while maybe you won’t need any subtitles anymore…)

Read books, articles on topics you like…
You can start with very easy texts, like children’s books for example.
Or use bookbox.com , a platform where you can watch cartoons with subtitles and you also have the scripted text.

Write down every new word you learn, review it whenever you can.

Do you spend a lot of time on YouTube? use it to practice a language.
There are a lot of people who make videos to learn others their language (and it’s for free!!)

There are also lot of channels where you can watch children’s cartoons with subtitles
and another channel I recommend you to visit is “easy languages”

when you are more advanced watch vlogs in the language you’re interested in or watch the same type of videos you normally watch but in that language instead.

Watch things you’re interested in, so you don’t lose concentration…
and here again, try to write down as much as possible important words or expressions you hear…
You will hear a lot of the same words and expressions, after a while you’ll start to remember them and you’ll automatically start to understand more and more.

But you have to practice the things you learnt.

Flashcards

Did you ever heard of Anki or Quizlet?

Those are programs where you can study a subject or a language by using flashcards, and it has been proven by many students that this method of “studying’ is way more effective tan traditional study.

Spaced repetition is a very effective way to remember things. If you review your flashcards daily, you will see results for sure!

And the good thing is, you don’t need to spend a lot of time on it.
Do you take your phone with you everywhere you go? Even in the bathroom?

I bet you do!

So, every time you have 5 minutes (waiting for the train, waiting at the doctors office, waiting on a friend, sitting on the toilet,…) instead of scrolling on social media, use it to review your flashcards!!!

Every word, expression, sentence you learnt? put it in Anki make a flashcard of it and there you go, review it every day.

5 to 10 minutes a day seems nothing but if you do it every day, it WILL make a difference.

Comprehensible input (LingQ)

One of the most effective programs I know to practice a language is LingQ for sure.

It is a “reading” program with audio and a built in dictionary/translator
There are countless texts to choose from, so you can find texts that you are interested in to make the learning process more fun.

The main focus here is listening and reading (2 of the most important skills to learn a language)

A fun feature is that it keeps track of every word you know so you can actually see the number of words you already know f.e. 2350 words.

If you want to know more about LingQ you can visit the website or you can find man reviews on the internet or on Youtube by searching “Steve Kaufmann” the founder of this program.

If you find the time to use LingQ daily, even if its only for 10 minutes, you will make a lot of progress without a doubt.

Speaking to natives

to end this article I want to tell you one more thing. The only thing that will make you really fluent in a language is speaking to native people..

You can’t become fluent if you never speak the language.
So find people in your neighbourhood, on facebook, instagram, you name it… and talk, talk, talk!

It is 1000% more effective than studying out of a notebook and reciting boring sentences, and it is more fun!!

So read, speak, write, practice and repeat!
If you really want it, you will find the time.

Advantages of speaking more than one language

Why should you learn a new language?

Maybe you’ve been asking yourself this question, in that case stop asking why, here are some of many advantages

Speaking more than one language opens many new doors. It has so much advantages, I will list some of them here:

1.
You will understand more of your mother tongue. When learning a language you will    have to learn some grammar at least to be able to understand the language and to speak it properly. By learning grammar of another language than your own you will understand and learn more about the grammar of your mother tongue. This makes it also easier to spot mistakes in your own mother tongue. You also will learn the logic of a language, the more languages you will learn the more you will understand the logic of languages.

2.
You can speak to more people (because not everyone speaks English if that’s what you think) No not the whole world speaks English. So if you travel to a Spanish speaking country for example, not everyone will be able to understand you when you speak English to them, it will be much easier for both of you when you speak Spanish. ánd!! they will love it when they see you try to speak their mother tongue.

3.
You can use your languages when you are looking for a job. Speaking more than one language is crucial for some jobs, for some it’s not necessary but if they see you speak several languages they will probably choose you over the person who speaks just one language.

4.
Last but not least…..

When people are talking about you in their mother tongue you will be able to understand everything and they don’t even have to know it! This is not very important but it can be handy.. haha

 

If you have some other advantages please write them down in the comments!

 

There are so much more advantages of speaking more than one language… Don’t hesitate to learn that language you’ve always wanted to speak and start today!

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).

 

Why do I enjoy learning languages?

Hey everyone

Todays article will be about me, why do I enjoy learning languages?

A lot of people asked me this question, some people don’t understand what is so enjoyable in learning languages.

First of all, it’s a kinda hobby of mine, I even could say a passion of mine.            I really do like it. Everyone has at least one hobby or passion or something they are really interested in. Yes that’s right, everyone is different and not everyone has the same interests as you.

That brings us to the second reason: it is stress relieving. Same here, like drawing – another hobby of mine – does for me, everyone has some kind of activity that helps them to relieve stress.

When I study my languages I am focused on it and don’t worry about other things. Some kind of meditation I guess? 😁

The third reason is because it gives me a lot of benefits. I can use all the languages I study. I can use them for work, in my personal life, to travel, to meet new people from all over the world…

It also gives me another look on the world and on other cultures. I think that you only learn a culture when you learn their language.

Studying languages (or any other subjects) surely has some other benefits , maybe I should write another article about that.

If you would like an article about that please let me know!

Hopefully you’ll understand a bit more now why I love learning languages. 😀

 

 

How to organize your languages

When you are learning multiple languages at the same time, it could be difficult to plan them or to have a clear overview of what you study and how much time you put into each language.
Well that’s what I experienced with my languages, I never knew what language I should study when and how much time I actually put into each language.
Because of this I lost a lot of motivation but now I found a way to organize it better and it gave me back my motivation.

So in this article I will tell you how to plan your study time better and how to have a better overview of the languages you study.

Languagetracker

The first thing that helped me is something I started using a few days ago, a language tracking system. I drew a small calendar in my journal and underneath I put all the languages that I’m studying at the moment with a color next to it. So every day I color the square in the colors of the language(s) I studied that day.

In this way I will have a clear overview of how much time I put into each language in every month. Some languages need more time, some less. Like for instance, my Italian needs less time because my level in this language is higher than my Chinese level, this and Russian are the 2 languages that need most time so if I see after a month that most squares are colored in the colors of Chinese and Russian I am doing it well. If not, I will pay more attention on it the following month and so on.

I try to study every language regularly, even if I study some Italian for 10 or 15 minutes a day, this is still considered as studying. Also because Italian is my best language in this list.

Maybe you are asking why you see Portuguese and Spanish two times in the list. This is because one of my new goals is to study Portuguese and Spanish at the same time from now on.

Why is that? Because I am facing some problems with these two languages, they are very similar so when I speak one of these languages I mix them up.

I think studying two similar languages at the same time can help to solve this problem. Well, some people will say to never study two similar languages at the same time but I think it can help. And I already have a decent level in the two languages so that helps me too.

This was it for the language tracking system. If you don’t know where to begin with this system, I made a template that you can use to track your languages. Let me know if you use it and if it helps you a bit. Languagetracker

Weekly schedule

Another thing you can do to organize your study time of your languages is to have specific days or times of the day to study a specific language. For instance:

Monday: Spanish
Tuesday: German
Wednesday: English
Thursday: Spanish
Friday: German
Saturday: English
Sunday: resume of what you learnt this week (Spanish, German and English)

Or

Monday: morning: Spanish , Lunch break: English, before bed: Spanish

Tuesday: forenoon: German, Afternoon: Spanish

Wednesday: Morning: English, ……

With a schedule like this you have a perfect overview of your study time. You can plan it perfectly
Having a schedule to follow doesn’t mean you can’t change it from time to time, you can perfectly plan your study time week by week.

Always prioritize the languages you are struggling with the most.
e.g. if you are struggling with Spanish, make sure to have it more in your schedule than English for example.

These where my two little tips to make your language study planning go easier.

Let me know If this helps you and if you are using the language tracker pdf make sure to send me a picture or comment, I’m curious about your comments.

If you have another tip on how to plan better, let me know 😀

5 most common language learning obstacles

In today’s article I want to talk about the 5 most common obstacles people face when learning a language. Maybe this will answer some questions for those of you who still are struggling to learn that new language you always wanted to speak

1 Finding the right materials

This is one of the most important things when you want to learn a new language. You have to find materials to start learning. Or  more specifically the right materials. There are thousands of different books, apps, video’s, that you can use but the trick is to choose the one’s that will help you the most. That can differ for everyone, everyone has a different method that suits best for them. Of course you can ask other people who also learnt the same language for advice but you always should be looking for the method that suits best for you.

In my opinion everyone is different and that’s the same in studying.

2 Not seeing results

At the beginning stage of learning a language, you will learn a lot of new things, everything is new so you are excited. But as soon as you have the B2 level, it will take a lot more time to reach a C1 level. It even will become a little boring, because you don’t feel like improving anymore.

Why is that?

When you are at stage B2, you can have fluent conversations with native speakers, you can express your ideas and opinions, you can give simple presentations… At this stage you are an independent speaker.

To go from stage B2 to C1 you will have to step out of your comfort zone, you will have to use new vocabulary and incorporate more difficult topics in your conversations.
At stage C1 and C2 you are a proficient speaker, you don’t have to think anymore before you say something, you can use more difficult terms, you can participate in a professional conversation etc.

The reason why you keep getting stuck at stage B2 is because you keep using the same vocabulary and expressions you already know. You actually have to ‘’upgrade’’ your vocabulary, that’s the only way you will achieve that C1 level.

A language is something that you can keep learning.
Even in your mother tongue you can keep learning new expressions and words.

3 Not having enough exposure to the language

Whether you are learning the language by yourself, at school, on a language camp, …
A frequently made mistake is, not having enough exposure to the language outside of the lessons or the time you study. Studying a language once or twice a week won’t do it for you! You should use the language as often as possible to get used to it. For Instance, you can listen to the radio, read the newspaper, watch tv, or set your phone in your target language instead of using your mother tongue. These little things will help you more than you think.
If you want to read more on this, you can read the article on how I learn languages.

4 Not finding (making) the time

Some people say that they don’t find the time to study the language because they have to work all day and do other stuff after work but I am sure that if you really want something, you’ll do everything to make time, even if it’s just 10 or 15 minutes. If you study 10 or 15 minutes a day, it will surely make a difference.

You can use a journal to make it easier to plan your daily ‘study’ time. And to make sure you won’t forget it!

5 Being afraid to speak

The most common difficulty people face is being afraid to speak. They are afraid that people will laugh or that they will make mistakes.
But making mistakes is part of the learning process. When you make mistakes and people correct them, you will learn from it.
Speaking is one of the most important stages in language learning.

I hope this article was useful for you.
Did you face other obstacles or did you recognize yourself in some of these barriers?
Let me know, I would love to hear your experiences.

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 

I started to learn Portuguese!

I started to learn Portuguese

Last week I finally decided to start learning Portuguese after a long time of thinking about it. I just wanted to make sure that my Italian was good enough before I started to learn another Romance language. So, I don’t mix them up.

Why Portuguese?
Well, first of all because I love to learn languages and I want to learn as much languages as possible! 😀 And the second reason is just because it is a beautiful language. I love the sound of it, it’s like music in my ears.
When I saw something in Portuguese for the first time, I was impressed with how much I understood. I understood like 70% of it.

That’s because I already speak Italian, French and some Spanish. Portuguese is very similar to those three languages and that makes it easy to understand so much.
So, I know that this language will be a lot easier to learn for me than Russian for example. I am learning Russian over a year now and I finally start to understand more and more. That’s because I did not know any language before that is similar to Russian.

Well, this was a short blog post just to tell you that I started to learn another language.
I can’t wait to speak Portuguese and maybe I will visit Portugal soon!

Never stop learning and keep practicing!

Thank you for reading and see you next time!

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