#clearthelist May 2019: Learning 2 Languages at Once (Plus: Lots of Resources for Chinese and Welsh!)

Hello and welcome to Clear The List, the monthly language learning round-up about language learning goals and progress. This blog round-up is hosted by my friends Lindsay Williams and Shannon Kennedy, and April marks a full year of my language goal-setting using this process.

Andiamo!

What Happened in April 2019?

The month of April started off very intense and ended a lot more relaxed. That’s how I like it!

In the first week, I was finally lifting the curtain on my new German course, German Uncovered. It’s an incredible feeling when that first student enrols and all the work translates into their language progress. I held a welcome call with co-creator Olly Richards for our first gang.

This month, I was also busy preparing for the next German retreat. These retreats are an amazing opportunity for intermediate and advanced students to visit another country, discover more about culture, and practice their language through immersion. The June edition is now fully booked for German, and you can get on that waiting list for the next event if you like.

Sign up here for news about the next German retreat.

The Fluent Show

What a month! I was so proud to release my interview with one of my favourite language authors, Dr Roger Kreuz who wrote Becoming Fluent. Roger is a psychology professor and associate dean at the University of Memphis, and our conversation about language learning was wonderful and inspiring.

If you follow the Fluent Show, you’ll know that I have a soft spot for the psychology of the language learner, so this interview was definitely a highlight of the year.

Listen to the podcast episode with Dr Roger Kreuz here

Language Goals and Progress

I’m currently working on two target languages as a learner: intermediate Welsh and very early beginner’s Chinese.

Welsh Progress

In the Welsh language, my level is now pretty functional as long as I maintain a lot of contact and produce a lot of my target language on a regular basis. And I do mean every day when possible.

In the month of April, I found it most difficult to get speaking opportunities. I didn’t arrange any meet-ups with my local conversation partner, my tutor was busy, and when I spoke to my friend Nicky it was in English because he was a guest on the Fluent Show.

Instagram yn y gymraeg

In the first half of the month, I was also struggling to find time and mental energy to learn Welsh. But once Easter came around and my workload eased up with Fluent, I feel like everything got better! I started by switching on Radio Cymru for a few mornings, then added a bit of S4C.

But the best part was creating my new Instagram account, @kersydysgu. Inspired by some wonderful Fluent Show listeners who have done this, I decided to try out the idea of a fully separate, and ONLY IN WELSH insta account. And my daily contact is through the roof because I’m already spending way too much time on the app. What a fantastic way to get more contact and write in Welsh on a regular basis.

Chinese Progress

My other language is Mandarin Chinese. I had set myself structured goals for this language for the first time last month.

Listening

My goal was to watch a bit of Easy Mandarin on Youtube, but I did nothing. Listening fell flat in April. I don’t enjoy many language instruction podcasts and I’m too low level for any natural input that I know.

Speaking

My very tentative goal of an italki lesson was realised last week. Hooray! My first tutor listened to me counting to 10 and saying “living room” and “desk” at random, then declared my pronunciation very good and my learning “a mess”.

And fair point! I had not even noticed how little I had spoken apart from sounding out the words in my apps, and how little I could say in the way of dialogue. I was incredibly motivated after that and greeted her the next time with a full introduction, including where I live, my age, and my family. Take that, language mess!

I’m very pleased that I got my head around tones and basic pronunciation before the lesson, and I’m now hoping to take some regular classes. Good reminder: It isn’t really ever too early to work with a good tutor. They know what they’re doing!

Reading

Most of my learning is still reading-based, so I kinda met my goal by default.

Writing

I think I did quite well! My notebook is in regular use at the moment, and following up the lessons has made a big difference here.

At the moment my approach is to write in pinyin and also Chinese characters, but I’m not trying to memorize any of the characters. I’m thinking stuff like 我 and 你 will start sinking in automatically.

I’m using Google Translate and the Pleco app a lot for writing at the moment.

Daily Contact Goal

Every month, I log my “daily contact” with the Welsh language. In April, it was difficult to keep anything going during the launch of German Uncovered. But once Easter rolled around and I took some time to rest, Welsh returned to my life. In the last week, my Welsh instagram account made it easier than ever and I’m on a streak.

Total: 17 day out of 30.

I also track how many times I’ve spent 10+ minutes on Chinese, mostly for fun. In April, I checked this box 7 times. Often, this signals way over 10 minutes but it’s not about the minutes. It’s about the habit.

Goals for May 2019

This month is an unusual one. I’m travelling for the first 2 weeks, to Machynlleth in Wales and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. In the last 2 weeks, I’ve got a full-time responsibility away from Fluent, so I’ll have to see how work fits around it.

Welsh Language Goals

Again, I don’t feel I need to actively split my goals into listening, speaking, reading and writing at this intermediate stage. I just want to feel like I’m as good or better, and that will be about contact and speaking.

Spending the first few days of May in Machynlleth is a good start, and in the second half of the month I hope to get started on Say Something in Welsh Level 3 and get back into meeting my speaking partner.

Chinese Language Goals

In this language I’m a total beginner (很高兴认识你) and will benefit from the goal structure. So let’s go!

Listening

Ready to try again with YouTube for Chinese beginners. I’m looking for dialogue-based or story-based input here, rather than someone explaining greetings to me in detail.

If you want to recommend a channel or listening resource, leave me a comment below.

Reading

This is the easy one for any beginner, all my apps and my textbook are reading practice. No specific goals.

Speaking

I’ve already booked one Skype lesson and hope to complete 3 by the end of the month.

(By the way, this month on the blog I have a brand new italki review - check it out if you have not tried out italki before.)

Writing

Three goals:

• to follow up each language lesson with a page or revision notes,
• to write 4 notebook pages about myself or my family (these pages are full really quickly when I write in English + pinyin + characters),
• and to figure out how to type pinyin.

That’s it! Plenty to be getting on with.

Resources

Many people have been asking me to list the resources I use for learning my languages this month. Here they are:

Chinese Resources

• italki for finding a tutor
• Chinese in 10 Minutes a day
• Pleco
• Lingodeer app
• Dropsapp

Welsh Resources

• S4C on player
• Radio Cymru on BBC radio playerapp
• parallel.cymru
• Say Something in Welsh app
• Instagram
• Ap Geiriaduron, the magnificent dictionary app
• a printed dictionary and Modern Welsh Grammar (link goes to a stupidly expensive version but I got mine from someone else who found it in a charity shop, so don’t forget your local 2nd hand resources!!)
• A local language partner and lovely people who speak Welsh with me. You can find these by asking around!

What are Your Language Goals for May 2019?

Have you ever studied Welsh? Are you a Chinese beginner? Juggling 2 languages like me?

Leave a comment below to tell me all about how you’re getting on, and what you are planning to study next.

Be sure to check out the Clear the List linkup full of inspiring language goals and reports, hosted by Lindsay Williams and Shannon Kennedy.

How to Fluently Switch From One Language To Another Language

Imagine you're on a train in Belgium. A woman on the train is speaking French on the phone when the ticket conductor comes in. She asks him a question in fluent Flemish. No one bats an eyelid.

Or a guy at a party is chatting to his friends in Spanish, and suddenly an American friend comes in and he enthusiastically greets her in fluent English.

We've all seen it on TV or even in real life, but have you ever wondered how these super-quick switches between languages work?

Alessia, 17 from Verona has! She sent me this question to answer on the Fluent Show this week.

How to switch quickly from a language to another? Is it just a question of practice?

In answer to Alessia's question, I dove into a bunch of studies and came up with my best tips for anyone who wants to step up their switching.

Looking Into Switching Between Languages

Speedy switches like those I described above are a hallmark of bilingual people. Linguistically, doing this is is called “code switching”. It is very common and has been studied for decades.

Bilinguals do it naturally, for example in environments where there is more than one dominant language or native language. It happens all over the world and millions of people are able to speak bilingually.

Here are three ways you may experience code switching:

1. Switching a word might look like this: “Dw i’n teimlo yn rili rili wedi blino.“ (I am feeling really, really tired.)

2. Switching a phrase could be something like this: “Oui, ils offrent des part-time jobs dans leur société." (Yes, they offer part-time jobs at their company.)

3. Switching between languages after a few sentences, or even saying half a sentence in one and another half in the other.

When you switch into another word, phrase, or sentence, the switch is absolute and your brain is able to do this very quickly.

This has attracted the attention of phsychologists and neurologists too, studying and trying to measure what happens in our brain during such a switch.

Studies show: There are “neurocognitive costs”, for example slower response times. Your brain has to activate the second language (L2) and suppress your dominant main language (L1), and that means it has to concentrate and work hard.

The research also shows that these costs are lower when switching into L2 than when switching into L1. The brain patterns change as your expertise in L2 changes. It also changes depending on whether you’re able to predict that the switch is coming, and whether you’re switching individual words or full phrases.

To get started reading about all the fascinating research, check out the links at the bottom of this article.

How Can You Get Better at Language Switching?

As a learner, your goal might be to use your target language just as easily as you use your first language. But being able to switch like a bilingual person is NOT a good goal for your early language learning stages.

Use it as a vision goal, your inspiration and motivation source. But be honest with yourself and clear about the fact that it’s not going to happen in just a few months.

There’s a huge element of practice involved in switching languages quickly. Sorry, no one likes to hear that there isn’t a secret shortcut!

4 Ways To Practice For Switching

Tip 1: Practice phrases not words so that you build good muscle memory and you can ’think faster’ in your target language.

Tip 2: Listen to input in lots of languages and find bilingual materials too so you can process the language more quickly, for example parallel texts or bilingual podcasts.

Tip 3: Stick to one subject area and one type of conversation at first so you can direct your studies towards the goal of code switching

Here are my 3 Steps for Learning Topical Vocabulary

Tip 4: Practice in comfortable environments.

For example you could create an exercise with a trusted tutor that involves switching.

Or set up a language exchange. This involves switching by offering your skills to someone else and it's usually free. Often, exchanges switch languages after about half an hour, but to spice it up you could switch every 5 minutes.

The ‘price’ of Code Switching As a Bilingual

I’m bilingual in German and English, but make no mistake, my language quality suffers unless I practice.

Here are some of the annoying things that happen.

• My vocabulary in German becomes heavily influenced by my thinking in English and English sometimes shows through. I will use words that I know as dictionary translations of what I want to say in English, but they don’t feel casual enough for how I want to speak in German.
• My German isn’t up to date and I might mix in a word I used as a teenager or an expression that feels a bit 90s.
• English words that I say without thinking, like “actually”, find their way into my German sentences and just bubble up.
• My dialect is heavily reduced and I produce the German language as Hochdeutsch, which is not how I would speak in my home environment.

In other words, I speak an odd “international German”. I was recently called out for having an “englischen Akzent” by a former schoolmate who had not seen me for over a decade. That’s fairly embarrassing.

Episode Links

• Study Shows How Bilinguals Switch Between Languages – Association for Psychological Science

• Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching | Edited by Ludmila Isurin, Donald Winford and Kees de Bot

• Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching - Google Books

• Going in and out of languages: Article by François Grosjean and Joanne L. Miller, 1994

• The Language Habit Toolkit — The All-in-One System For Meeting Your Goals in Language Learning

Conclusion: Language Shows Who You Are

It’s impossible not to be a product of your environment when it comes to how you speak.

To stay more active in German, I’m subscribing to a German magazine and watching more YouTube so that I hear German on a regular basis. But without living there, I lose a part of my authenticity in German.

Have you ever practiced switching from one language of another? Do you think there's a price to being bilingual?

Leave a comment below to share your thoughts!

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!

No More Stutters! Improve Your Speaking Skills In Any Language

Do you remember your first sentences in another language? You'd come away beaming like a kid at Christmas after creating pearls like "I do not like pizza, I like eating salad".

As you learn more in your new language and increase your levels, you want to go deeper, talk about future, past, conditionals, things you've read and things you've thought.

It's like in this Bible verse (oh yeah! Quoting this big book is a Fluent first!):

When we were children, we thought and reasoned as children do. But when we grew up, we quit our childish ways. (1 Corinthians 13:11)

In language learning, it can feel just like that: You want to talk like a grown-up, your self-assured and intelligent self. And what's more frustrating than the reality, where we stutter and stumble over words, and leave....lo o o o o ng...um....gaps in sentences?

Listen to my speaking tips on the Fluent Show podcast:

Let's start by looking at what's causing you trouble.

Reasons Why Your Speaking Skills Aren't Improving

You Have Too Much Vocabulary

Through your reading practice, you are acquiring a lot of new vocab, storing it, but not using it quickly enough after it goes in. This can lead to the word getting very comfortable in your passive vocabulary store, but locking the door behind walking into there so it can't come out when you look for active vocabulary.

If you want to learn a flexible, agile approach to learning vocabulary, click here to discover my course Your Solid Vocab Memory.

You Need to Work On Your Learning Mindsest

As you are speaking, you may also be letting your mind freak you out with unhelpful thoughts. Maybe you slow down or pause, just to hear yourself slow down and pause, then to think "Oh no! I'm doing that thing again! I'm so much worse at this than I thought!"...which then affects your focus.

You're Trying To Talk About Everything

You're trying to speak about a wider range of topics than you expected before you start, so you're hitting unknown areas of vocabulary a lot quicker.

You Don't Have Good Structures

Your practice is lacking sentences and complex constructions, so you can understand a sentence with conjunction and three objects, but making one still grinds every single gear in your brain as if someone just dropped a bucket of sand in there. This is often where learners say they're "translating in their head".

What To Do So You Can Improve Your Speaking Skills

Strategy 1: Say Way More Sentences

Practice and activate a set number of words IN SENTENCES. Write sentences about them, for example defining their meaning or finding five different ways of using the items you have learnt about. In those sentences, focus on one new way of saying something and transform your sentence.

You can do this yourself, even make a prompt sheet:

• Sentence
• "I heard that.." + Sentence
• Last week I met my sister in the shop and she said that + "sentence"
• "Next weekend" + Sentence
• Question + Neg/Pos Sentence
• "Would you...?" + Neg/Pos Sentence

Strategy 2: Target Your Negative Thoughts

Your thoughts determine how you see the world and also how you perform, and so your mindset is what gets you through the uncomfortable gaps.

For example, consider whether a pause could be a great sign that you're about to remember a word, or a signal to try and approach the topic from another side.

Some learners find it helpful to practice filler phrases like Hang on, let me consider this..., It's on the tip of my tongue, or I want to summarize

You can make incredible mindset changes when you work with a language coach. Check out my Coaching page to learn more..

Strategy 3: Go Deep With One Topic

It's easy to get lost in a conversation if you're entering it without clarity about the topic. Luckily, most tutors and exchange partners are pretty obliging and will allow you to steer them towards what you want to talk about. So the key is: Prepare! Look up all relevant words relating to your topic, write them down in advance, practice what you might want to say.

You don't have to script a whole conversation, but even bullet points will make a huge difference.

Useful Links for Improving Speaking Skills

Language Coaching & The Fluent Language Mastermind

Join my Newsletter for more language learning tips, mindset shifts, and updates

How to Get The Perfect Accent

Learning a language is a long journey, and even after many years of dedication it can still feel like you're far from arriving.

One of the milestones we hope to hit along the way is to start creating a 'perfect accent' in another language, so we can fit in well. But how is that done? Hear all about it on this episode of the Fluent Show.

After I shared my own story of learning English to a very high level on an episode of the Fluent Show’s episode 96, listener William sent me a very interesting question.

It’s about a classic problem when you’re learning a language: how do you sound good? How can you fit in with your accent?

Here's what he wrote in his question:

I'm learning English (and French) in Canada, I'm very happy with my progress so far. I'm a self-touch learner and I spend most of my time for listening and reading. For about 2 years learning from scratch, now I'm able to read books I love and listen to any audio source without much struggles. But still, I feel the "isolation" since I have not have a great intonation and accent yet. As you said that it could have affects on learner's self-confidence. So I hope you could share some thoughts on the topic in a future episode, how you do it and what is the right mindset to acquire the native accent.

William is so smart because he recognised the core feeling that’s the problem here. It’s not about being understood anymore or about having access to conversations, now it’s about blending in and feeling at ease, personally. I have a lot of empathy for that desire, because even after 15 years in the UK I still can’t seem to blend in like a local. And every now and then it bothers me, because it directs the conversation to me, or something about me, or something I don’t want to focus on at that moment. So even after all this time...people still pick up that I’m from somewhere else, and there are certain sounds that I will “Germanize”, especially when I’m very tired.

Tips For Improving Your Accent

Working on your accent in another language is best reserved for those levels where you are communicating comfortably. It's not the same as studying the pronunciation rules of a language, which comes at the start and will help you understand words and rhythm. The accent you want to acquire is all about blending in with the people you hear and speak to on a regular basis, so that you can feel like you belong with that group.

There are specific exercises and accent work activities that you can do, and most of them are focused on listening intently and echoing what you here.

Here are four principles that will help you as you work on improving your accent:

1. Listen & echo. Fine-tuning your accent starts with hearing many details of the accent you want to acquire, so listen intently and identify specific sounds that you want to get.

2. Tinker. Focus on individual expressions instead of trying to fix it all at once. It can sound inauthentic when you try to create a full "accent profile" for yourself, so instead think of it like tiny iterations of your existing language.

3. Harmonize. Continue to listen to others even while you are producing language, and try to monitor your speech as you talk.

4. Look and feel. Consider mouth shapes, learn the IPA if you wish, but most importantly observe and feel where in the mouth different expressions are formed. When you echo what you hear, think about how it feels in your mouth.

Finally, you can also find a language coach who specialises in accent work and who will help you improve through recorded speech, individual feedback and specialised challenges.

Online Courses For Getting a Great Accent

My recommendation for German learners is my Accent & Pronunciation Masterclass Course. This course is designed for foreign natives who want to sound authentic and understand German words with ease. The course is great because it

• Works with mouth shapes
• Focuses on sounds and how they’re formed
• Provides consistent rules that help you make sense of German
• Considers you as an English speaker - knows what you tend to get wrong

Check out the German Pronunciation & Accent Masterclass

For English learners, these two courses from Elena Mutonono will be a great resource and cover the essential topics you need to know about, like connected speech.

And in French, I have a wonderful recommendation from my muse française, Géraldine Lepere, who has a great Vocabulary and Pronunciation Program.

3 Mindset Tips for Accent Work

Finally, I've got a few important notes regarding the mindset to adopt when you are working on improving your foreign accent.

There is no such thing as perfect when it comes to learning a foreign language or working on a foreign accent. Some people do work on improving how good they sound and how well they fit in. But bear in mind that striving for perfection would be like aiming for a moving target - impossible to hit and impossible to maintain!

Consider these three mindset tips to ensure that you're working on your accent without expecting unreasonable things from yourself:

1. Don’t compare up, i.e. don't compare yourself to better speakers than yourself. Everyone's voice and accent are absolutely unique.

2. Don’t obsess over fixing everything at once - instead remember that the trick is to tinker and iterate your improvements.

3. Pay attention to how other people say things. If you do hear something that sounds great in your target language, echo it and use it for yourself. There's no 'stealing' in accents.

Do You Feel Great About Accent?

Have you tried to lose your foreign accent in a target language? How did it go? Share your story in the comments, and don't forget you can send podcast feedback to kerstin@fluentlanguage.co.uk or follow the show on Twitter.

If you have a second, leave us a podcast review on iTunes or in the Podcasts app!