9 Creative Ways To Power Up Your Language Resources

Today’s episode is based on an Instagram question from Iye, who is learning Norwegian. This is a popular enough language, but not one of the big ones exactly - with 5 million speakers, this language only has official status in Norway.

Anyway, Iye found that learning a lesser known language comes with the challenge of finding great materials for that language. So she wondered

Do you have any tips for how I can go about creating my own language learning materials?

Listen to this episode of the Fluent Show to find out all about making your own materials to power up your language learning routine.

What are the Benefits of Creating Your Own Language Learning Materials?

There is one big and obvious reason to get creative with materials: because there aren’t any.

For example, Ajeng from our FB group is learning Maori and says it’s hard to get good sources especially as someone living away from the country. Fewer websites, fewer videos.

Fran (learning Sicilian) say “It’s such a struggle to keep motivated because you can’t just pick up a book or watch a show or film”

There may even be materials, but they don’t always fall in with your preferred learning style.

Even if you are a learner of a big language like Spanish or French, you will still get so many benefits out of creating your own materials.

How Will Creating Your Language Learning Materials Help You get Fluent?

For this answer, let's look at the science of education. 🎓

It is best practice in the field of pedagogy to work upwards from hearing new information towards creating with it. Trained teachers may remember reading about Bloom's Taxonomy for example, which puts creation at the top of any learning process.

When you go ahead and make your own notes, flashcards and resources, you are adapting language learning to your own personal learning style and needs. Creation is a huge part of the learning process.

The Different Levels of Creation in Language Learning

In the podcast, you can hear about three different ways of starting to create your own language learning materials. So let's take a look at ideas for doing it.

Journaling / Notebooks : Document Life & Study

Try a Language Journal

Make notes on vocabulary, track your studies, write a diary, create your personal notes in this language. Definitely make your own flashcards.

You don’t need to because the internet and your materials have you covered, but do your own notes always make the most sense? HELL YES.

Examples:

• Always write down vocabulary no matter where you hear it - make your own flashcards instead of using pre-made decks
• Copy sentences and lines from any other sources that you find interesting, notes from lessons, document your own learning journey. Annotate with what you need (for example pronunciation notes as long as necessary). It’s YOURS
• Create transcripts (for example using Sonix) or translate sentences into your target language or into English (Andy’s idea)

Documenting Life & Study

This goes one step further from the last step, and means you organise more and start to truly create!

At this level, start curating materials in your target language to produce your own collections. For example, write a vocab list on a specific topic or collect an online folder of recipes to cook from.

This is also where you start creating - making videos or writing sentences, figuring out how to produce more in your target language.

Here's what other language learners are doing:

• John from the forum asks himself “How can I describe this in French/Spanish/German?" and uses these as real-life prompts
• Fran (Sicilian learner) records every Skype lesson and all her notes - she doesn't have a lot of materials available through YouTube, so getting more out of her lessons this way creates materials through conversations
• Fran also copies out texts etc from Italian text books and translates from Italian into Sicilian, or use them as a basis for making up a text for herself
• Ajeng tries to analyse and compare sentences in her target language Maori to figure out the grammar, then writes in Maori and asks for corrections from native speakers
• Lindsay (and I, a little) write using creative writing prompts as you heard on our top tools episode

Dare To Teach Your Language

Once you’re at an intermediate level, you have something to pass on to others. Teaching a language is an incredible way of learning it, and there are thousands of ways to get started.

Why not try to offer a short lesson at your local library - your attendees may even know someone who’s further along than them.

Many apps and textbooks are created from this need, for example HelloTalk and Clozemaster. And for Irregular Endings, the passion for languages became a unique stationery company. If you have the skills and confidence, this could be a way for you to go.

Why You Should Make Your Own Language Learning Plan

Creating your own materials will help you learn faster and better, so it's definitely worth a try. When you plan your next language goals or think about the weeks ahead, ask yourself where you could get a little more interactive.

The best way to get to language learning success is to build your own successful language learning routine. For this, I use the Language Habit System:

1. Plan
2. Track
3. Review

For your personal language learning plan, make sure you have set effective goals and that you know you are tracking all the contact you have with your target language.

Here's more informaiton about learning languages every day.

Before You Set Your 2019 Goals, Here's What You Can Do To Get Ready

Happy New Year, hurrah, welcome to 2019!

I bet you've been itching for January to kick off so you can go full steam ahead in lots of new language projects! But before that, let's not forget the year that's just gone by.

That's right, there are some goodies and lessons in the old year that can make a huge difference in how successful you'll be in 2019.

We'll find them with an annual review! For this purpose, I hung out with my friend and 10-language polyglot Shannon Kennedy to talk through her experiences of language in 2018, and how to set the best possible goals so your year goes better than ever.

Hit play to listen to our podcast:

In our conversation, Shannon shared her stories of how 2018 went as a language study year.

A New Language Learning Routine

Shannon's language learning routine changed away from setting specific task goals like "learn 30 new words". It is now more free and focuses on time spent with the language, which allows space for inspiration and still means a lot of productivity.

Shannon also had to deal with big routine changes like the loss of her 2-hour commute which used to provide lots of focused language time. She quickly learnt how to make up for that loss and now pairs her activities with more intention, for example using household chores as a great opportunity to put on an audio course or a podcast.

The Value of Discipline Over Motivation

Shannon also talks about how motivation can be a bad friend for language learners. It's just not as reliable as you would want it to be. She discovered just how valuable discipline is instead, and the difference it can make when you make discipline a value in your study routine.

How To Set Great Language Learning Goals

Finally, we discussed the way Shannon sets herself goals and works with the structure of Vision Goals and Path Goals. She shares a few of her own Vision Goals and I promise you, they're among the best I have EVER heard from a language learner. These goals are your "why", your source of all the mental energy you may need to focus on your language and keep moving forward.

TIP: If you can anchor your goal in real life and make it about a real situation you'd like to experience, it will be a more powerful and helpful Vision Goal.

Here Are The Year Review Questions

You can use them to conduct your own review of 2018 and set goals for the next year.

• How would you sum up the year in your languages?
• What changed in your life and in your languages in 2018?
• What lessons do you think you learnt from the year 2018?
• What surprised you?
• What will you change going forward?
• Looking forward, what are your language learning goals for 2019?

Shannon's top 3 books of 2018

• Grit by Angela Duckworth
• The Organised Mind by Daniel J. Levitin
• Courses from the Assimil series

Shannon's top 3 apps of 2018

• Drops, naturally!
• Streaks
• Lingq

Shannon's top 3 courses

• The Add1 Challenge
• Yoyo Chinese
• 90 Day Korean

What Were Your Top Books, Apps, and Courses?

And do you set yourself regular vision goals?

Share them in the comments below!

#clearthelist November 2018: How To Stay Consistent (Or: The Goals I Missed)

Welcome to my latest language learning update through #clearthelist, which is a language learning round-up sharing monthly language learning goals, support, and accountability.

What Happened In October?

I feel like October began and then I went travelling and got home and then it was over. In our personal life, big things were afoot as we started the process of buying a flat here in Canterbury. Cue lots of new levels of bureaucracy, which I never knew the game of life could offer.

The month also saw a new speech I made at Toastmasters, this one probably my favourite so far as I spoke about feminism and the Women’s Equality Party, a cause well worth your attention.

Travel in October

Halfway through the month, I set off on a language trip with podcast co-host Lindsay to Croatia and Slovenia. I admit I didn’t study much Croatian before setting off to this beautiful country, mostly because I was relying on the linguistic guidance of lovely Shannon Kennedy (from eurolinguiste), who sadly had to drop out at the last minute.

Croatia’s most exciting language discovery was to spend a few hours in the mental Froggyland museum with Lindsay and trying to work out as many Croatian words as possible from the captions and their English translations. It worked surprisingly well, and later at the Polyglot Conference I learnt that this is an official teaching method called the Discovery Method. Not sure if it always has to involve frogs.

Polyglot Conference

Presenting at the Polyglot Conference

Our travels led us to Ljubljana in Slovenia in time for the Polyglot Conference! Overall, what a fantastic event. I presented a talk on the seven questions you need to answer to learn a language solo, which was my first live workshop on the topic, during the Friday Language Learning Event. The line-up was excellent, with fellow presenters including Olly Richards, Gareth Popkins, Judith Meyer, Katie Harris, Lindsay Williams and Tim Keeley.

I also saw some great talks at the main conference, including Angelo DeLeo re-visiting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in a talk on Linguistic Anthropology. So interesting!

Sadly I missed a large part of the conference as I got pretty sick, but I was well taken care of by many language friends. Thank you all!

The Fluent Show

My favourite episode of the month has got to be the conversation with Kathryn and Sam about how to start an amazing language journal. The podcast episode was combined with a gallery of inspiring shots from language journal keepers everywhere, and I loved the variety and creativity.

Language Goals and Progress

Let’s have a look how October went in terms of my language goals. I had hoped to focus mostly on Welsh, though I knew it’d be a busy one.

Listening

The goal was to switch the TV or radio on in Welsh 2-3 times per week, and somehow I just got too busy and overwhelmed and completely forgot about this. I will be back on this one as soon as I’m feeling well!

The trick with TV is always to find one TV show with a narrative that I want to follow, either a reality programme or a drama. In the goals section below, I’ll choose and commit to one.

Reading

Not a bad month! During my trip I worked my way through about 5 chapters of this book, and I’ll be able to finish it as soon as I find where I’ve put the damn thing when unpacking.

Speaking

I did okay here on the Say Something in Welsh goal, as I completed level 20. It’s not up to 22 as I’d aimed for, but 20 was a long one and taught me several new things. I also got to chat to several Welsh speakers at the Polyglot Conference, though sadly no fully Welsh speaking “paneds.” ☕️

Say Something in Welsh continues to be a great resource when my friends are busy.

Writing

My goal was to write at least one instagram caption in Welsh every week, and I did post 3 out of 4 (I’ll add another one today).

In addition, Lindsay’s idea of writing prompts helped me fill a few more half pages. I’ve even found writing prompts inside of the Duolingo app - finally something I like it for!

Monthly Contact Goal

Every month, I log my “daily contact” with the Welsh language. And October was not impressive, with just 13 days out of 31 logged. As always, this depends on me remembering to tick a box, so it’s not a 100% accurate number. On most of those contact days, I did spend a good 15+ minutes, so there’s that for a sunny side.

Other Languages

I’m slowly reducing my fear and getting a tiny sense of the words in Chinese, though I am far from spending 10 minutes every day. Overall, I spent about 60 minutes on Chinese this month. I watched an Easy Languages Chinese video which was excellent, taught me a word, and kept me interested.

In addition used the apps Lingodeer,Drops, and the book Chinese in 10 Minutes a Day.

Goals For November 2018

I’m pleased to say that November is not much of a travel month, so I can actually get a little bit of a routine going! Fantastic stuff. For the rest of this year, I’m excited to prepare for the Fluent German Retreat in Trier, and start work on my next secret project.

I am planning my goals using the Language Habit Toolkit, my collection of handy self-coaching materials for solo language learners.

Listening

As I mentioned above, the trick with TV is always to find one TV show to get into. Last week I checked into the S4C app and saw that the Welsh political drama Byw Cerlwydd is back for a 3rd season. Fantastic! For this month, my listening goal is focused on catching up with this show. That should give me over 5 hours of exposure.

Reading

If I write the name Sgwp here again, will you be cross? NO! I am getting better and better at reading in Welsh with the help of this book and there are just under 100 pages to go, so this month’s goal can be really specific: Get to page 150 of Sgwp!

Speaking

Apart from the Polyglot Conference, last month was a quiet one. So this month, I’m not sure how I’ll do with time but I am making it my goal to book 2 italki lessons and 2 language exchanges, one every week at least.

I am tempted to add a stretch goal as I’m super impressed with a coaching client who recently took the italki Challenge, and will return to italki this month to find a new tutor to chat with.

Writing

After the Top Tools episode and the language journal episode of the Fluent Show in October, how could I not be excited about language journaling! I’ve been diligently writing, but this month my goal is to put pen to paper and write in my Welsh journal 3x a month.

Other Languages

I’ll keep up the Chinese dabbling and aim for at least 6x10 minutes during the month. That’s a whole hour, after all, and often a goal of “10 minutes” turns into 20 before you know it.

How Was Your Month?

So that’s it for this month’s goals! Be sure to check out the linkup for #clearthelist, hosted by Lindsay Williams and Shannon Kennedy.

Are you setting goals, too? How do you feel about your target language and its usefulness?

Leave a comment below to tell me all about it!

9 Unexpected Places To Find Real-Life Language Partners

When you’re a solo learner, the internet plays a huge role in your language learning routine. You use online resources like YouTube, courses and apps. You find cool people who share the love of language on polyglot forums, Facebook Groups and Instagram.

But how cool would it be if you could add a few real life language lovers to your squad of #polyglots? You could meet up and encourage each other, share the latest tips, cook a meal or go for a multilingual walk. Honestly, how do any of us live without wanting such delights!

You may be reading this thinking there’s no way you can find another person in your area who is learning the same language as you.

But are you really the only linguist in the village?

Here are some ideas for finding people off-screen who share your passion for learning languages.

Who To Look Out For

Before you bound out into your street armed with a dictionary and the latest edition of El Mundo expecting to bump into your new Spanish exchange partner, you need to make a profile of all the kinds of people you’d love to hang out with.

Your online network can give you hints of the kind of people you like to find. If you bloom in language exchanges, look for similar arrangements offline. If you love to read or watch the story of other language obsessives, add them to your circle. And if you follow 200 linguists on twitter, that’s another great hint for who you’d blissfully share a coffee with.

Looking at all that, it’s clear that casting a broad net will pay off. Stay open to all of people who are on a similar path to yourself, and don’t underestimate the power of a network.

I was always going to mention the dating analogy (just like we did in this podcast about having the best ever language exchange), and it’s a helpful one to consider. So here goes: Don’t look for the future life partner, and you’ll be most likely to bump into them.

Start By Asking Around

The first step is to start by mentioning your language love wherever possible, to more people than you think will want to hear it. It’s like the first rule of advertising: make sure people know what’s up!

In small talk, try to weave in that you are learning your language. If they are interested, you can mention you’d love to have a chat partner or you’ve been wondering if other people might be interested. You never know, their network might turn something up.

A Few Places To Start

Now that you are ready to embrace the many different ways a language lover may pop up in your life, here are a few places to start looking.

Meet-up Groups

Finding a local meet-up group is relatively easy, funnily enough because many groups are listed online. Here are 3 sites to check out:

Meetup.com

The classic website for local meet-ups, where you can join a few groups and start going to meetings.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite is known as a ticketing website, but browse around your local area and you might well discover a lot more, like business networking and free lectures.

Facebook

This social media giant is a big player when it comes to finding local groups. Use the search bar or browse around its recommendations. I’d recommend starting your search with the local events, and checking out which groups organise them.

Local Events

Events include talks, festivals, open lectures, trade fairs, and conferences. Choose to go to something new and look out for cultural or internationally themed events.

Here are a few examples:

• Cultural celebrations like the Chinese New Year
• Travel talks about a specific part of the world
• Food festivals where you’ll find lots of international cuisines
• Language Days or Cafés like this one
• Political demonstrations and debates
• Taster lectures for starters of other languages (if you’re tempted, your kinda people will be too!)

If you live near a university, look out for the many different events organised by international and country-specific societies. And if you are religious, look out for friendly faces in your local church.

Anywhere people gather can be the place you meet your language buddy.

To Find Speakers Of Your Target Language:

Ask yourself where your target language speakers might want to go if they’re staying in your area for a while. International students may look for churches or business lectures, or a Latin American expat might attend local Salsa nights. The French speakers may come to Pilates classes, but probably won’t be found at a French learner’s event.

Have you made a language learning friend away from the online world?

How did you guys meet

Share your thoughts and stories in the comments below!

What To Do When You're Overwhelmed In Language Lessons

What do you feel when you're in a conversation practice and find that you struggle to say a single sentence without interruption?

Have you ever experienced the OVERWHELM of being corrected too much?

If your answer is yes, the I've got some great tips and answers to help you get over that feeling and create effective progress in language learning.

In this podcast episode, you'll hear an insight into how I work in "coaching mode". Language coaching is a process where you can learn from an experienced polyglot or tutor, and focus on how to learn best.

I was contacted by listener Andy who was felt overwhelmed in his Russian lessons. He contacted me with a question about grammar - how to memorize and master all those grammatical changes and words in Russian, so that his tutors can focus on having a real conversation.

But as we dug in more, a few things emerged. We were looking at two completely separate issues:

1. The technical issue of memorising grammar, which isn’t the problem Andy feels strongly about
2. The OVERWHELM of being corrected too much

The Unseen Problem In Language Lessons

Any well-meaning teacher is likely to correct you at times.

This is great on the one hand - you get feedback, information on your errors, and lots of info. But when correction becomes too frequent, it starts to get in the way.

Overcorrection can

• Knock your confidence
• Give you too much to focus on in the moment
• Distract you from understanding the other person
• Stop you from knowing your target language!

What can you do when you feel overcorrected?

Know what you are there for! Is it speaking practice, exam preparation, business language, something else?

As Andy and I dug into more detail about what his aims and techniques are, he :

My goal in learning grammar is to learn enough grammar to express my thoughts, which tend to be complex. (..) Of course, I want to understand what the other person says, too.

This shows that Andy is not aiming for perfection and will be happy enough to express himself. He’s not at a C1 mastery stage, and as such, it’s possible to let things go. What matters is that he’s understood, and as a tutor it’s possible to compensate for this.

4 Steps To Success With Language Tutors

If you feel that heavy corrections are holding you back in your own learning experience, these 4 steps to success will help you get back on track.

1. Be culturally aware. Some teachers have a full-on teacher mode (drill sergeant) and their goal is that you use the language as correctly as possible.
   • Careful not to stereotype.This does not just vary between cultures, but also individuals.
   • With Andy, I believe that this did play a role in his experience. He mentioned being corrected a lot less in fact-to-face meet ups (one indicator), and as a white American guy your tutors from the Far East may have been a lot less willing to correct you than a Russian tutor
2. Be self aware: Maybe you really are trying to do things that are too difficult for you at this point. There’s no shame in that, and it’s a sign that something in your study plan isn’t delivering.
   • When you make a mistake, native speakers will notice. That’s inevitable.
3. Be goal aware: Do you aim for perfection, correct usage, being understood? This matters for the next step.
4. Most importantly: Direct your tutors. Tell them what you’re there for. Make it clear that conversation is what you want, if that is the case. Be confident and clear at the start, as it will pay off. But also do your homework.

Listen to Episode 90 to learn more about how to prepare for language lessons on Skype.

What Tutor Strategy Helps?

As a tutor, it is difficult to resist correcting a student but resisting can be extremely helpful because this tells you what exactly they’re getting wrong.

When a student cannot even say one sentence to you without interruption, their goal is not being achieved. What is going on there? Here's how to find out:

• Stop correcting and start listening
• Start looking out for a pattern
• Model correct usage — try and reply with a demo of the correct usage instead of picking the student up on theirs, with stronger emphasis on what it should be
• Switch to a grammar explanation and drill, plugging the gap of what is missing in your student's toolbox
• If you know they’re in over their head, but they have grammar knowledge and confidence, prompt the use of specific concepts

How Do You Deal With Overwhelm?

What about you? Do you ever feel overwhelmed by corrections in your language lessons?

How do you deal with this problem? Leave me a comment below to share your own experiences.