#AskSteve

Sign up for the 30-day email course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language: Day 3 👇 Hi there, In yesterday’s email I went over the importance of choosing your lessons so you’re learning from interesting and engaging content. Today I’m going to talk about what we need most in language learning. I’ll give you a clue, you’re reading them right now…. words. The more words you know the more likely you are to understand, and the better you understand the better you will do when you eventually speak. But how should you go about learning those words? In school most of us memorized lists of words for tests. The problem with that method is the words usually weren’t presented to us in interesting ways. If the same list of words were to appear in say a story you found funny or engaging, you would have more chance of remembering them. *** A lot of language learning tools provide only a limited amount of vocabulary, but with LingQ you learn as much vocabulary as you can, the sky’s the limit! You will have noticed by now that all words are blue when you start studying on LingQ. This is because the system doesn’t know if you know the words or if you’re learning them. You need to teach the system so it can help you reach your goals. As you go through a lesson, click “I know this word” for the words you know and the blue highlight disappears. If you don’t know the word, you want to create a “LingQ” with it and turn it from blue to yellow. This lets the system know you are learning that word. You can make a LingQ by hitting enter, the right arrow key, or the letter “h” when the word is highlighted. These yellow LingQs are then added to your words for review list, which you can study using flashcards, multiple choice, cloze test and dictation. Make lots and lots of LingQs! Make LingQs with all of the blue words you don’t know. You can’t make too many. If they matter they will appear most frequently in your lessons. Less frequent words will still show up, and you’ll eventually learn them. Rare words will probably not show up in future lessons and that’s fine. You’ll see these words and phrases in context in future lessons, so no need to try to learn them all with activities–that would take forever! These yellow LingQs are then added to your words for review list, which you can study using the vocabulary activities I mention above. These activities can be accessed by clicking the yellow “Review LingQs” button in the top right corner in any lesson or on the Lessons page, where it's called “Vocabulary/LingQs”. Today’s Tasks ✅Meet your targets for the day and double the number of LingQs (26 instead of 13). ✅Try reviewing some LingQs with the review activities. Finished with the LingQ 101 course? Remember to check out the LingQ mini-stories course for more great content!

Sign up for the 30-day email course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language: Day 4 👇 Words are a good measure of where you are in your language learning journey. I want to explain now why phrases are important. Words come together to form phrases. These little chunks of the language are the key units that you need to become familiar with for better comprehension, and to eventually be able to speak better. Start looking for them. Look at what phrases other learners have saved. Save some yourself and start learning them, just the same way as you saved and reviewed words. You really can’t make enough LingQs. LingQ words and LingQ phrases. Review them if you want, or if you create so many LingQs that you can’t review them all, don’t worry. You will see them again and again in your reading, and hear them again and again in you listening. You will notice them, and then naturally learn them. As you can see in the video, I don’t just save phrases on LingQ, I add tags to them. This way I can get a list of all examples I’ve come across of a certain language feature. This is very helpful when I’m struggling to understand something. Today’s Tasks ✅Meet your targets for the day. At least half of your LingQ for the day should be phrases.

Sign up for the 30-day email course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language: Lesson 12👇 Writing isn’t something I particularly enjoy doing when learning a language. I write well in French, Mandarin and Japanese as I was studying those languages formally, but the languages I have learned since then I learned for fun, and so writing was never a big part of my learning. That said, whenever I have spent time writing in a target language, I have seen the benefits. For many, writing is a gateway to speaking. You are expressing yourself in the new language, but there isn’t the real-time pressure of speaking. You can take your time to craft a response. Writing can be submitted for correction on LingQ. All you need to do is click the Exchange dropdown on the Lessons page and select Exchange Home. There you’ll see a text box. Add your writing, click the writing correction box and post your writing, it’s as easy as that. Don’t worry if you can only write a few sentences. The process of expressing yourself, even simply, in writing in your target language helps you to notice patterns and solidifies structures in your brain. Use the opportunity to try out phrases you’ve learned and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. After submitting your writing, you will get a writing report on what you need to work and any grammar issues will be explained. This is a much more effective way to start thinking about grammar than trying to memorize rules from a textbook. Today’s Tasks ✅Meet your targets for the day. ✅Post a piece of writing for correction on the Exchange Home page.

Sign up for the 30-day email course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language: Lesson 14👇 We've come to the end of the course. I’ve shared what my over five decades of language learning have taught me, and hopefully you feel prepared to carry on the rest of your wonderful and fulfilling language journey alone. Well, not really alone, you have me and the rest of the LingQ community with you! There are lots of ways that the LingQ community of enthusiastic language learners help each other: sharing interesting content on the forums, tutoring, creating and checking translations, and more. It’s up to you how active you are. Many members prefer to just stay connected by reading forum conversations. This community is going to keep you motivated and inspired to keep on going with your language learning. When you first start learning a language you make huge strides. You may even notice improvements from one week to the next. During the rest of the journey, where you will work to learn more than the 2000 or so most common words, that sense of achievement is more elusive. Language learning is like an upside down hockey stick, and once you get past the initial intense study period, the blade, things slow down and the long road to fluency is stretched out before you, the long shaft of the hockey stick. Hey, I’m Canadian, hockey has to make an appearance! Don’t let the long journey ahead put you off, you will get there. Just keep doing the things you enjoy and make sure you consistently find time to spend with your language and you’ll achieve your goal! Today’s Tasks ✅Meet your daily targets. ✅Mourn the end of an awesome course 😉

Sign up for the 30-day email course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language: Lesson 10👇 Today I’m going to show you more about how the LingQ reader works so you can really take advantage of this powerful tool. There’s so much you can do in the LingQ reader. Here’s a breakdown of some features that will help accelerate your learning: Ask a Tutor If you have a question about any aspect of the language you’re learning, or one relating to a lesson you’re in, you can ask a tutor. Simply click the “Ask a Tutor” dropdown in the bottom right of the lesson panel, add your question and you will be notified when a tutor gets back to you. Settings Personalizing the settings will make for a more enjoyable and productive experience in the LingQ reader. You can change all kinds of things, from the text-to-speech voice to how much text you see in each page (beginners might find the “Sentence” mode useful). It’s a good idea to pay close attention to the options in the settings panel. Do you want to review your LingQs before you go on to the next page? Should all blue words become LingQs when you move pages? It all depends on your learning preference. Keyboard Shortcuts Another way to personalize your LingQ reader experience is to take advantage of the keyboard shortcuts. Click the question mark in the bottom right of the screen to access them. Have a look around when you’re in the reader today. There are more features to discover, and the more time-saving options you take advantage of the more effective your language learning will be. Today’s Tasks ✅Meet you targets for the day. ✅Personalize your LingQ reader settings. ✅Post a question in “Ask a Tutor”.

Sign up for the 30-day email course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language: Lesson 13👇 As an input-based learner, I like to leave speaking until I have had enough experience with the language. I need to have listened enough and learned enough vocabulary to give myself the chance of having a conversation as opposed to just being able to blurt out some phrases. After all, a conversation should be a two-way exchange. You should be able to understand your partner and have something to say in response. This is just my preference. Of course, it’s completely up to you when you start to speak your target language. Some like to start speaking straight away, and I say if that’s what you would like, that’s what you should do. Language learning should be about doing things you enjoy. The difficulties learners run into when they start to speak a new language can be discouraging. I find that having some “crutch” phrases to say when I get stuck helps. Phrases like “let me think” or “how do you say it?” in English. Even with those phrases, speaking is difficult, and in order to speak well you need to speak a lot. That’s why we added the ability to have speaking lesson with tutors on LingQ. Click the Exchange dropdown on the Lessons page, select Speak and you will see a list of available tutors. To organize a lesson with one of the tutors simply click View Schedule and click as many 15-minute time slots as you would like. After you’ve spoken with a tutor you will get a conversation report. This report can be imported as a lesson on LingQ and you can study the words and phrases you had issues with. Don’t be discouraged if there are many. Remember, making mistakes is a normal and important part of this learning process. Today’s Tasks ✅Meet your targets for the day. ✅Set up a lesson with a tutor on the Speak page!

Sign up for the 30-day email course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language: Lesson 9👇 When it comes to learning languages, we need to de-emphasize complicated grammatical explanations, as well as grammar drills and questions. Instead the emphasis should be on feeding the brain lots of examples of the patterns of a language, in context, through massive input. Of course some explanations can also help the brain to recognize patterns, but in my view these should not be overdone. As we learn a language, the brain picks up on patterns, but only gradually, and not necessarily in response to specific curriculum goals nor deliberate instruction. Perhaps some people are better at recognizing patterns in general, and therefore better at recognizing patterns of pronunciation or structure in a language, but we can all help ourselves. We must expose ourselves to lots and lots of the language. It’s that simple. Read or hear something over and over again in different contexts, take notice and eventually it will jump out at you and make sense. Today’s Tasks ✅ Meet your targets for the day. ✅ Reread and listen to a lesson you have studied before. Do any patterns jump out at you now that you have been exposed to so much more of the language? Try saving and tagging some patterns you recognize.

Sign up for the 30-day email course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language: Lesson 5👇 So now you know that you have to find meaningful content, read and listen to it, save words and phrases, and everything will fall into place. But where do you find the time. You might remember that “putting in the time” is one of my three golden keys. The truth is, you just won’t learn a language if you aren’t willing to dedicate the time. One of the most frequent questions I’m asked about time and language learning is “how long should it take to learn a language?” The answer depends on the languages you know and the language you’re learning, but it mostly boils down to your attitude, attentiveness to the language and, you guessed it, the amount of time you are willing to spend. There are only so many hours in the day, but installing the LingQ app (iOS and Android) ensures any time that is usually wasted – waiting in line at the grocery store, riding the bus, sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, etc. – can be spent with your target language. If you study during this “dead time”, you’ll always find moments to be with your language. This regular activity is what will lead you to fluency, much like regular visits to the gym will keep you fit. The web and app platforms are synced, so any time you spend with your language on your phone or iPad is logged on the web. You can save audio that looks interesting to your playlist on the web, then listen to it when you’re out and about. Today’s Tasks ✅Download the LingQ app. ✅Save some audio to your playlist. ✅Meet your targets for the day, meeting all or some on the app.

Sign up for the 30-day email course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language: Lesson 6👇 Sometimes learning a language can seem like an impossible challenge. You spend hours studying only to forget a lot of what you covered. That is normal. It happens to everyone. Language learning can, at times, seem like a thankless task. As someone who has learned 16 languages, I want you to know that this I too experience this, with every language I learn. Forgetting is not only normal, it is a vital part of the learning process. Don’t be put off by these challenging times. The moments of clarity when the fog suddenly clears more than make up for the tough times. Stick with it! What you don’t have to accept, though, is content you’re losing interest in. If you’re halfway through a lesson and finding it dull, stop and find something else. Why make the process boring when it doesn’t have to be? You might want to come back to that content a few days or weeks later. You might enjoy it more then. Who knows? If you’re at all competitive, you might want to see how your statistics compare to those of other LingQ members. You can do this by going to a particular member’s profile. Believe in yourself and in the method. Just accept from me that you will continuously improve if you stay the course. Some days you feel that you have reached a new level, a new degree of power in the language. Maybe the next day is a downer, because you didn’t understand something or couldn’t remember something. Never mind. You are a tortoise and you are determined to succeed. What is more, you know you will get there. Today’s Tasks ✅Meet your targets for the day. If you are on a downer day, read or listen to some old content that you used to find difficult.

Sign up for this 30-day course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language Course: Lesson 2 👇 Hello Language Learner, Yesterday I talked about the three golden keys (motivation, time spent and noticing). Today I’m going to help you become a more effective learner. If years of language learning have taught me anything, it’s that we need input, input, and more input–and that input needs to be interesting–if we are to successfully learn a language. The input also needs to be challenging enough to keep us interested, but not so difficult that we are turned off. That is the sweet spot, interesting and just a little difficult. In that environment our language skills blossom. So your main task is going to be to read and listen, using the tools that LingQ provides to make that easy and enjoyable. You will listen and read online, or on LingQ’s mobile app. I’ll show you how to look up words and phrases, and how to review them. You will just continue consuming more and more content in your target language and eventually find that these are almost addictive activities. When we hear and read enough of the target language, from content we find interesting and can understand, we pick up vocabulary and structures in a natural way. Instead of forcing rules and explanations into our brains, and then trying to remember them, we learn by exposure to messages that are meaningful to us. There is a vast amount of language content in LingQ’s language libraries. Just set your level and search for content that matches your interests: history, current affairs, music, film, sports, whatever you’re into there’s something for everyone at LingQ. Once you have found something interesting, give it a try! Read, listen and pay attention to the words and phrases using LingQ’s functionality. If you’re losing interest or just keen to move on to something new, go ahead and move on. Language learning should be as fun and engaging as possible. You are going to develop new habits, habits that will keep you learning. I’ve highlighted seven habits of successful language learners. Developing these will help you reach your goal of fluency. You should try to meet your daily and long term goals as set out below. Once you get the learning habit, you will easily exceed these targets. Today’s Tasks Meet your targets for the day: ✅99 words of reading ✅30 minutes of listening ✅13 LingQs ✅6 Known Words ✅3 LingQs learned

Sign up for this 30-day course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language Course: Lesson 1 👇 Hi There! This is the first day of your journey to fluency in a new language. I don’t care how long you have been learning this language. I don’t care whether you are just getting started or you have been working at the language for years. Get ready to make a breakthrough! I’m Steve, polyglot blogger, YouTuber and co-founder of LingQ. I speak 16 languages and I’m currently learning my seventeenth. With only two exceptions, I wasn’t taught these languages, I learned them. That’s an important distinction. Anyone can learn languages, anywhere, anytime. It’s up to you. Everyone learns their first language, and everyone can learn another. Begin by accepting this principle. Begin by accepting that you can learn. Over the next 30 days I will show you how to learn a language. This includes the methods I use and tips to learn as efficiently as possible. My approach to language learning has not changed over 50 years. If anything it has been confirmed. It is the tools and resources that have evolved over the last 50 years. They make language learning easier today than ever. *** Five decades of language learning have taught me that every learner needs three things, I call them The Three Golden Keys. 🔑 Motivation 🔑 Time on task 🔑 The ability to notice I assume you are motivated or you wouldn’t have signed up for this course. That brings us to finding the time. An hour a day is all you need, and I’ll show you how to find that time, and make best use of it. As for noticing things in a new language, it is a skill that you develop, if you are motivated and put in the time. LingQ you will help you develop your ability to notice and that will empower you to learn. LingQ is a web and mobile platform I developed based on my approach to language learning, and it is getting better all the time. I just recently started studying Greek on LingQ, my seventeenth language, and I have never learned so fast! Today’s Tasks ✅ Set up an account on LingQ https://www.lingq.com/ Simply signup and get to work on your profile. Write a little bio, add a picture if you like and start connecting with other language learners. You can start by connecting with me! Once you’re done setting up your profile, start exploring the Lessons page. A good course to start with is LingQ 101. It explains a bit about the system in simple language.

Sign up for the 30-day email course here: https://www.thelinguist.com/ How to Learn A Language: Lesson 8👇 Today I’m going to help you review all of the words and phrases you’ve been LingQing. You will have noticed by now that when you move to the next page in a lesson on LingQ activities appear. This is a great way to review as it catches you just after you have come across the word or phrase, giving the brain more of a chance to remember. All of the LingQs you create in lessons are added to the SRS (Spaced Repetition System) due for review list. Status 1 words are due for review in 1 day, status 2 in 3 days, status 3 in 7 days, and status 4 in 15 days. The status if a word or phrase is either updated automatically when you review it, or manually using the status bar. Words from the SRS list are sent out in the daily LingQs email. You’ll get an email at the same time every day with a list of LingQs to review. You don’t need to do this every day, you don’t even need to review all of the LingQs in the list, but reviewing every now and then will help. Remember, most of the vocabulary will be learned in context while you read and listen, review activities are secondary to this. Any time you want to see your list of LingQs, click the yellow “Vocabulary/LingQs” button in the top right of the Lessons page. You can change the status of any word or phrase here, too. Remember not to let the size of this list scare you. You aren’t going to learn these words by doing vocabulary exercises or trying to memorize the list, you will learn them through repeated exposure in interesting content. Today’s Tasks ✅Meet your targets for the day. ✅Change the status of some LingQs as you study a lesson.