7 of the Best Language Learning Rules Ever

Today I want to go a little bit deeper into the content of all our Language Book Club interviews from 30 January. As you saw last week, the event was truly epic and delivered some wisdom from no fewer than 11 multilingual people (polyglots! yes they are!).

Between me and Chris Broholm from Actual Fluency, we had the chance to interview a great bunch of people about writing, language learning and challenges on the day, so here are the most important things that Language Book Club taught us:

1) Forget Fluency

Fluency is not a word that most polyglots or language teachers love. Yes, we all call our blogs after it, but fluency is truly a concept that you need to define in more detail. It certainly doesn't help when you are working on your goals. Instead of aiming to define fluency, try setting short-term goals such as reading a certain book in the next month. I admit that I’m pretty pleased with myself for my own definition, which goes a bit like “if you can avoid communication breakdown and keep a conversation flowing, you’re pretty fluent."

2) Learn Vocabulary in Context

Flashcards and vocab are hot property, but there are lots of different ways of doing them. From detailed Anki interaction to paper-based systems like my simple Write-Look-Cover-Repeat system, the biggest key is in creating a rich context for whatever you are learning. In fact, you can develop this all the way to creating language memory palaces. Anthony Metivier believes that the memory palace is great for simple grammar principles and vocabulary, and emphasises that it is the most fundamental way of developing your memory (read here for my own mini palace attempt).

3) Don't get hung up on Accents

No matter where you go and speak a native language kinda badly, you'll still be welcome and accepted. this message was reinforced by Jared Romey and the girls from Russian Step by Step. Jared talked about how easy it can be to become disoriented even within the same language as he recounted his experiences of embarrassing Puerto Rican shopgirls. You might be feeling self-conscious or embarrassed when you step off the plane and have to open your mouth and “talk foreign” for the first time. But Jared says: “The most important thing is that you learn Spanish. Afterwards, you can adjust it, but don’t let dialects stop you."

4) Appreciate how big the World is

Language learning is not just about remembering words and grammar structures. It's about a whole different world view. Becky Morales shared the story of American high schoolers who met their first Mexican in their teenage years and enquired whether she had ever seen an orange. When you learn a language, she said, you become a world citizen and that's what really enriches your life.

5) Look Beyond the Idea of Hacking

There is no language hack and no single method of making language learning easier for all. From Benny Lewis and the emphasis on speaking and communication, to Gabriel Wyner's intense pronunciation focus, no polyglot can promise you the answer to getting things entirely right. Many share what works for them, and all of us hope that it will work for you too. In that sense keep trying, because you're not getting things wrong any time soon. Looking for a shortcut to better language skills is fine, but every one of our experts on the day has been a language learner for many years. The tips that you get are honed through years of experience, discipline and habit-building. What is the key to good language learning? Enjoy the journey!

6) See and Believe the Impossible

It's all right to be a fan boy! In Teatime with Chris, my Co-host Chris Broholm talked about his own journey of self-development and finding a purpose. It’s a pretty inspiring story and really does stand out as proof of how language learning as a personal challenge can help with even the biggest challenges. Chris started his own podcast as a means of learning from the people he admired. He says “It’s been such a big motivation for me when I see people doing things that didn’t even seem possible to me, and once you see what you think is impossible then it becomes possible."

7) Chill out at least some of the Time

When you feel overwhelmed, it's fine to slow down. Instead of trying every method of language learning all at once, just chill out and reconnect with your own preferences. Language learning is about what you do best. It has to be in sync with your own learning style. Not only did I discuss this as part of my own hour of Language Book Club Live, but I actually built this principle into the entire concept of The Vocab Cookbook. It's a cookbook: a collection of recipes to inspire and inform. Like with every other collection and every other blog, I want you to try out the ones that sound nice. You'll still get your time's worth.

Join Language Book Club

You can join Language Book Club on Facebook to stay up to date with news and discussions around language learning and books, and of course the updates on our next event when we make it happen later in 2015!

Get 50% Off the Fluent Box Set

If you haven't yet got a copy of The Vocab Cookbook on the day, don't forget that you can get the set of my 2 language learning guides, Fluency Made Achievable and The Vocab Cookbook together now.

These books are quick reads with a big impact, helping you boost your language learning skills instantly.

For you as a book club fan, I have created the special coupon code BOOKCLUB to give you my box set worth $20 for just $10. Get the huge discount right here - 100% Money Back Guaranteed of course. I just know you will love these.

New Podcast: Chris Broholm on Challenges, Information Overload and Book Club (and the Owl!)

In Episode 12 of the Creative Language Learning Podcast, I interviewed a fellow podcaster! Chris Broholm is a language learner with a big mission: 10 Languages in 10 Years!

Listen to our interview to find out more about

• Who everybody's favourite owl is!

• How Chris built up his own support community of inspiring language learners through the Actual Fluency Podcast

• Whether there is a best way to approach language learning methods

• What to think about when you set yourself an ambitious goal like Chris Broholm's 10 Languages in 10 Years

• The importance of bewaring information overload

• The language learning method that you absolutely must try out

• And why trying it out is all that we can tell you to do!

“As long as you’re doing something, you’re doing it right.”

— Chris on Language Learning Methods

And most importantly...

We talk about Language Book Club and how much we're looking forward to it!

Article of the Week

Duolingo is Getting More Serious by Kay Alexander on Fair Languages

Tips of the Week

Chris chose Tip 1 as his favourite, because goal setting is still WAY undervalued in learning a new language.

• Tip 1: set your chosen Fluency level (travel fluent, job fluent?)

• Tip 2: Be a historical linguist

  • Word origins and vocab divergence can help with remembering words

  • Look up "etymology"

• Tip 3: Sprint with the Language Challenge

Tips and Links from this Podcast

Support the Creative Language Learning Podcast through Patreon - from just $1!

Actual Fluency Indiegogo Campaign

The italki New Year Challenge: Study 20 Lessons and Win

Actual Fluency Episode 32 with me talking about how to be an independent online teacher

Handbook of Russian Affixes

Russian in 10 Minutes a Day by Kristine Kershul

Thanks for reading this article on Fluent, the Language Learning Blog. If you are feeling stuck right now, why not subscribe to Fluent and check out our language book shop.

How I Travel Europe: The Train from England to Germany

Have you ever stood in the security queue at your airport, realising with a bolt of anger that you're about to have to hand in your big bottle of expensive shampoo? Or been troubled by fear of flying, wishing for solid ground in the middle of turbulence? In today's article, I want to talk about train travel, an alternative way of getting around. My own journeys take place in Europe, and I have taken trains in more than 12 European countries. If you're interested in trying it out, here's how to make it as easy and affordable as you can.

The Place of Travel Talk in Language Learning

As a blog that is mostly dedicated to language learning, I usually stay away from outright travel tales. It's important to encourage language learners out there that you can totally do this without ever leaving your town. But at the same time, language and travel have the same goal. They're about opening doors and showing us what's out there in the world. Most of us language learners are motivated by the thought of going to new places and meeting new people. And as an experienced traveller, I've got a few stories I can share. Today I'm kicking off the travel tales with my tips on train travel across my continent.

Train Travel...

In the age of high-speed everything, you'll likely tell me that there's no reason to spend 20 hours on trains when you can just fly to the same place in half the time. Train travel is slower and more expensive than flying. I've heard all that. But every now and then when you take a sip of the tea you made at home (no liquids restrictions) and enjoy a view of a carnival parade or lovers' argument on a platform, you realise what makes the train so special.

Train travel can be romantic, relaxing and enjoyable. So today, I want to share some tips with you on how to get a good deal and make your journey in record time. My own trip from Lancaster to my German village was done in only 13 hours this year - counting door-to-door this rivals air travel quite closely. To get a great trip like that organised, here are the essentials:

How to Book a Train Across Europe

You can read about any country's detailed booking process on the amazing Seat 61 website. For this article, I will focus only on the countries regularly involved in my own journeys: UK, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France. All of these four countries except the UK have national rail companies, making it easier to get yourself booked onto their journeys. They are Belgian Rail, CF Luxembourg, Deutsche Bahn and SNCF. Within the UK, you will have to book a ticket with a local provider, but those are easily found through ticket vendor sites like National Rail.

Easiest Booking Process

Here is the booking process that I have established over the past years. It's pretty reliable and allows you to book from anywhere.

Step 1

Look up your best connection through Deutsche Bahn. Their trip planner won't sell foreign tickets, but the connections it brings up are really reliable and it's seemingly got access to all of Europe's connections.

Step 2

Get train prices. You book a large chunk of your journey as a connected ticket through Eurostar or the SNCF Rail Europe site. The site will want to sell you tickets in your own currency, which means you may miss out on better rates. Here's a link to its UK-focused site.

Step 3

To make sure you are getting the best rates, look up individual ticket prices with each provider separately. This means opening a few tabs in your browser and keeping an eye on the running total of your costs, but it can save hundreds. I use the following websites when I'm doing this:

• Eurostar
• Red Spotted Hanky in the UK
• Deutsche Bahn

If there is no significant advance booking discount to be had, I often buy my tickets on the counter just before I hop on the next train.

Step 4

Before you make your final purchase, look into getting discounts such as Interrail cards, the German Bahn Card or the British Young Person's Railcard. Each of these cards costs money at the start, but usually pays for itself within 1-2 journeys.

For Visitors to Belgium

If you're making a journey from the UK to or from Belgium, consider buying a ticket that includes same-day travel to "any Belgian station". These can be booked through the Eurostar website and might save you both money and hassle. The train conductors are surprisingly well informed when it comes to knowing where exactly the Belgian border ends and will happily sell you a supplementary ticket.

For example, travelling from Brussels to Luxembourg, this ticket will pay you up all the way to Arlon. When you travel from Brussels to Cologne, your border station is Aachen Süd.

Tips for Your Travel Day

Train travel can be a pain at times, so ensure that you are taking a few steps to make your journey as fun as possible.. If you are spending a full day on trains, make sure that you have allowed enough time to make your connections. Allow for at least 20 minutes of connection times, and take advantage of your train manager - if your train is running late and you're worried about missing a connection, they can often help out by notifying the train you are connecting to or giving you a "hop onto the next one" stamp.

Overall, it pays to be flexible. Trains will be late, missed, cancelled. No one really travels three or more countries by train for the sake of efficiency, so instead make sure you have allowed plenty of time and a bit of budget in case you have to stay over somewhere last minute.

Eating

It may also be worthwhile to plan to eat in the buffet car (I recommend the German ICE for this) or book first class travel, because when you are lucky, you only pay £20-£40 more. Half of this cost will pay for itself in all the free water, wifi and food that first class entitles you to (Virgin Trains are the best providers here). Without planning your food breaks, you may find that your 40 minute connection time has been shredded to bits by a late arrival, and run around scrambling to find a muesli bar.

And finally, a Note for Language Learners

A photo posted by Kerstin (@dartogreen) on Dec 21, 2014 at 11:26am PST

Train travel is an absolutely perfect opportunity for practicing your language skills and meeting new people, and this particular itinerary is a language lover's dream. Announcements on international trains are routinely made in at least two languages, for example on the Eurostar it's English, German, Flemish and French.

The languages spoken can vary within one country, so be respectful and remember that a rail employee is not your practice buddy. For example a Belgian person won't always appreciate being addressed in French by all tourists as much as you expect them to. For the sake of a smooth journey, service employees are at least bilingual. Some train stations will also have different names in the country's official languages, so watch out before you miss your stop. (That pesky Brusssels Midi station is called Brussel Zuid in Flemish, for example.)

I've actually got plenty more tips on train travel, some of which might be useful expansions into the next blog posts here on my travel writing corner. Hope you liked it!

Thanks for reading this article on Fluent, the Language Learning Blog. If you are feeling stuck right now, why not subscribe to Fluent and check out our language book shop.

New Podcast: Putting the World to Rights with Olly Richards

“I never woke up and decided that I want to be a polyglot.”

You wanna learn a language? Then I've got the guy for you! In today's podcast episode, I'm speaking with Olly Richards, the man behind I Will Teach You a Language. Olly is an expat Brit with a lot of travel experience under his belt, and his considered and smart answers really put me to shame.

You Will Learn More About:

• Our Dreams of how Education can Make the Language Learning World so much Better
• Why "Speaking" Can Become a Huge Obsession and Actually Damage your Motivation
• What to Look Out for When Taking a Teaching Qualification
• The Problem with the WHOLE Education System
• How to Make Motivation Work
• What Beginners should Read - and why reading Children's Books is not a good idea
• Why Olly Advises that you DON'T Track Your Progress

Articles of the Week

Most Language Students unable to do more than understand Basic Phrases on the UK Guardian

The Best Way to Learn a Language is the Opposite of the Usual Way on Forbes

Tips of the Week

Out of the following fabulous three tips, Olly chose number 2 as his favourite tip - not without a lot of careful consideration though!

1) Use online self-tests as check-ins, not tutorials

2) "Makers Classroom", like at Raw Learning - follow foreign recipes, sewing patterns, directions?

3) Join Parleremo, a virtual town that teaches languages

Tips and Links from this Podcast

What is Content and Language Integrated Learning? (CLIL)

The 60 Second Fluency Test by Olly Richards

My Article that Sparked some Polyglot Debate

Der Weg zum Lesen, simple German short stories

Le Petit Nicolas et Les Copains, fun story in simple French

French Comic Books for Language Learners

Thanks for reading this article on Fluent, the Language Learning Blog. Please head over to Patreon and become a supporter!

How to Eliminate Your Self-Doubt and Get Speaking

Today I have another awesome guest post for you. Do you remember the podcast with Jade Joddle, where we talked about introversion and extroversion in language learning? I feel like Jade would love today's guest poster. This is all about how to get out of your own head and be that extrovert you HAVE to be when you want to speak another language. For me as a pretty extroverted person, that fear is weaker than for most people I see. I literally just go up to people and speak terrible Russian/Spanish/Italian. Honestly, I'm embarrassing!

Guest writer Kevin Morehouse is a language coach on a journey to make the world a more multilingual place. Raised as a monolingual English speaker in the United States, Kevin is all too familiar with the struggles of the language learner looking to go beyond English and make the leap from monoglot to polyglot. On his blog Language Hero, Kevin gives actionable tips on mindset, method, and goal-setting that can help intrepid learners escape the language learning labyrinth. You can read more of his work at Language Hero or connect with him on Twitter @Kevin_Morehouse

So let's beat that voice in your head!

Speaking.

It’s the bane of many a language learner. The idea of going up to someone and trying to communicate in a non-native language can be excessively intimidating for some. Every new opportunity to do so unleashes an unrelenting barrage of questions straight from your unconscious:

• What if I blank out and don't know a word?
• What if I say something wrong, or unintentionally offensive?
• What if they laugh at me?
• What if they can't understand me?

This is self-doubt in its purest form. By unwittingly asking yourself what would happen in the worst-case scenario, you're psyching yourself out from the possibility of success. By answering these questions, you're painting a picture of the worst-possible scenario.

And sadly, if you paint a bleak enough picture, you'll likely never go up to that person and start speaking, no matter how much experience you have.

And if you want to live out your dream of speaking a language confidently, that just won't do.

The problem isn't you, or your "talent" or how much experience you have. The problem here is that you're letting your self-doubt run your mental imagery, and thereby run the show.

We need to take back our mental imagery. Instead of imagining the worst-possible scenario before it happens, we need to change our angle of approach.

We need to go back…wards.

A New Angle on Visualization

Comedian Kyle Cease is no stranger to the paralyzing effect of negative thoughts and visualizations, known to many as performance anxiety.

In order to combat the excess worry that he would feel before going on stage, the comedian found a unique way to reapproach his mental imagery and, in his own words "get out of his own head."

The technique is called Kylegling (kuh-lay-gull-ing), and is best described by Kyle himself in this short video:

The Technique, Step by Step

1. Notice when you are anxious about the outcome of an event
2. Instead of thinking about how it will go, imagine yourself in the not-too-far future and begin to imagine how it went.
3. Mentally construct the best possible outcome you can think of, and load your thoughts with positive emotions. Do this until you start to physically “feel” happier, more positive, and more confident in the present moment.
4. Once you've built up the outcome in your mind, ask yourself "How did I do it?" and retrace your steps mentally all the way back to the present time.
5. Use the new information and positive energy gained from this visualization to “get in the zone” and live out the situation as close to your vision as possible.

An Example in Action

You overhear a Spanish speaker walk into your job.

You've been studying Spanish, so you know you need to go over to them and say something.

Instead of psyching yourself with questions of Can I do this? or Will she judge me? you stop, imagine yourself in the future (post-conversation) and think about how well it went.

You imagine yourself going up to her, introducing yourself simply and succinctly, with a smile and a nod.

She smiles back, widely, pleased to have an opportunity to share her language with someone as enthusiastic as yourself.

If you're an experienced learner, you chat back and forth for a bit, maybe exchanging a few laughs, all the while forging a connection. If you're just beginning, you use what Spanish you know, and then, if necessary and/or possible, you explain politely in English why you're so eager to learn Spanish, and how you're going about doing it.

She compliments you on your language skills and your enthusiasm, give you a few friendly tips, and you say your farewells, happy to have met one another.

You come back to reality: You still haven't spoken any Spanish yet, but now you've got an encouraging and positive view of how everything will go.

Then, with the confidence gained from the exercise, you sally forth and start the conversation for real this time, using your mental script to “get in the zone” and guide you through successfully.

Final Thoughts

Even if the situation doesn't go exactly as you mentally planned it, the outcome is likely to be much more successful than it would have been had you kept your focus on the possibility of failure, embarrassment, or rejection.

I’ve used this technique many times to clear my thoughts and offset the pressure that often comes with a new opportunity to test my language skills. It’s worked well for me, and I’m positive you’ll benefit from it as well.

If you’re having trouble getting up the courage to speak, use this method to take control of your inner thoughts and back your way into success.

So, readers:

What do you think?

Have you ever used this or other visualization techniques to get in the zone when learning your using a language?

Please let me know in the comment section below!