Olly Richards' Language Learning Foundations Course reviewed in Full

In every language learning story, there comes a moment where you start wondering whether you’re doing things in the right way. You may start off with a burst of inspiration and the certainty that you’ll be fluent in just a few months. Then weird things start to happen. You wonder how to work less, remember more, and whether you’re cut out for studying every day. You miss a day, you google “is this normal?”.

And before you know it, you’re caught in “what the hell should I do?” territory feeling like a loser.

If any of that kind of feeling sounds familiar, let me tell you one thing: You don’t need any more theories. You need to start doing sensible things and following simple steps. In today’s review, I want to share a course that is all about teaching those simple steps.

Course Structure

Language Learning Foundations by Olly Richards is offered through his popular site iwillteachyoualanguage.com. It is not a huge course that will take you weeks to complete. It consists of 10 video lectures. You could block yourself off half a rainy Saturday, get comfortable with a laptop and use the time to overhaul your whole language routine. I’d say that’s a lot better than overloading your whole system.

Language Learning Foundations answers some of the most common questions that I see language learners ask all the time, and in this course you will get some answers that really help you out. Olly provides tips and instructions that will help you learn more effectively and achieve your goals a little faster.

Every training video and slideshow can be downloaded. They require some concentration from you, but I was impressed because they were all designed for real life. There's no dry theory here, instead you get tips that you can apply immediately.

How to make progress and not get distracted

For example, Module 3 is called “How to make progress and not get distracted”. Olly goes into detail here about how to get started, advising first of all on the best criteria for a helpful textbook or resource. This alone could save you hours of failed attempts with materials that just don't work. He then brings a bunch of solid arguments for why learners should select this type of resource, and what makes them different from other higgledy-piggledy types of approaches.

In the same module, Olly then moves on to sharing his own views on what your learning mindset should be when working with materials such as textbooks. Finally, there's an exact strategy for the actions you should take with textbook dialogues and audio examples. His advice is very detailed and focused throughout, it's the real deal and so helpful if you want to know how to learn a language independently.

Each module’s video takes 10-15 minutes to watch, but I think you should allow a quarter hour to digest their content afterwards and really think about how you’ll apply what Olly just discussed.

What’s in the package?

Olly has put together two different course packages, starting from just $47 which is a kick-ass price for a course that will enable you to learn without Rosetta Stone, without classes, without hand-holding. You can even upgrade the course to get an ebook version and audio training so you can learn away from your computer. He also offers interviews with four experts:

• Alex Rawlings (only the most multilingual student in Britain!)
• Richard Simcott
• Chris Parker (famously fluent in Mandarin Chinese) and
• …me as the language learning and teaching poster girl.

Olly’s interview with me was excellent. He asked intelligent questions, made sure every answer I gave was practical and useful for all learners, and our conversation goes perfectly with what this course is all about. So in other words, if you have the extra pennies to invest in these expert videos, go for it.

The slides and audio quality are fabulous throughout, by the way, and Olly also does that thing I love in video teachers: he shows his face regularly and speaks to you as the learner so you know this is your dedicated instructor.

Who’s it for?

Language Learning Foundations is designed so it can benefit any learner, especially beginners or those who are keen to reach dizzy polyglot heights.

A course like this is best if you’ve never enjoyed formal language training and you want to learn a language in your own way.

If you hated language learning in school, then you will enjoy Language Learning Foundations.

Conclusion

Olly has gone into great detail in his language learning course. He is a teacher and language blogger and speaks 7 languages himself. The course is for those who are looking for the best method to teach them skills for learning a language independently.

At the end of Language Learning Foundations, you will

• Know specific techniques for setting your intentions, staying motivated and experiencing language learning success
• Be able to select the perfect materials FOR YOU and know how to cut through empty promises
• Feel confident and ready to tackle the world in a new language
• Have solid foundations for cutting out the things in language learning that have always frustrated you

It is an incredibly friendly experience, so go and try out Language Learning Foundations if you’re new to language learning.

You can purchase the basic or extended video course versions from Olly’s course page.

Thanks for reading this article on Fluent, the Language Learning Blog. The links in this article are affiliate links and support Fluent without costing you any more money. My review is not paid for and being an affiliate did not affect the content.

3 Useful Resources to help you improve your French (even if you last studied 10 years ago)

Mesdames et messieurs, I bet you have dreamed about the French many times. It’s the ultimate language of chatting in a streetside café or watching the sun go down over the Atlantic. But French is for more than just a fun trip, as it counts as a leading world language too.

French is the World's Most Taught Language

The French Embassy to the US delivers a fun fact about France in its list of 10 Reasons to Learn French:

French is the only language, alongside English, that is taught in every country in the world.

This means that almost all of you readers are likely to have studied French at some point in your lives. It's widely taught in Europe, in Africa and throughout Northern America. Personally, I have been learning French since I was 13, which makes it nearly 20 years now. It’s not always been easy, but throughout my journey I learnt a lot of awesome things and also realized that I can make myself understood in Belgium, Canada, Northern Africa and the Caribbean with the power of this one language. For example, the language became so much easier for me once I started explaining grammar as much as I was studying it. The French grammar can be aligned very well with that of German, my own native language. Explaining grammar became a true specialty of mine. If you check out my course Easy French Grammar for Beginners, you’ll get a glimpse of how I do it. I put the learner first and focus on outlining how things work step-by-step.

Why Study a Language on Udemy?

I often mention Udemy as a great resource for online learners on this blog, and as an instructor and student on there I do know what I am talking about. The courses on Udemy are open to a learning community of over 6 million people. In my experience, this has made for a great advantage to the learner. You get to study your language whenever you want and repeat lectures as many times as you need, but at the same time there’s a tutor available in all courses so you can ask questions and get them to add more materials.

Step 1: Review the Basics

As students join my Easy Grammar for Beginners course and progress through it, I see that many of them were using the course as a refresher. The videos allow you to rediscover older concepts that you may have learnt in school, and to reframe them if things didn't make a lot of sense first time round. This is a wonderful way of getting back into a language. You're not overwhelmed, but you get that sweet confidence of taking the second chance. I particularly enjoyed the many reviews and emails I got from the students who said that they had a little bit of confidence, but felt their French skills improved by 100% after they took these classes. Many have asked me what the next step could be, so in today's blog post I wanted to recommend three great next step resources for intermediate French learners.

Step 2: Add a Course about French tenses

Once you are confident making basic sentences about yourself, your environment and your immediate situation, I bet you'll want to grow that knowledge into something new. That's where the verb tenses come in. You’ll need tenses for sophisticated communication. In my own French grammar course, I focused on the A1 range of grammar. That only contains three tenses, but in fact there are about 11 of them to master in French. So once you have covered and understood those essential nouns, verbs and adverbs from the Easy Grammar for Beginners course, you should cast your eye over tenses.

If you like the Udemy platform then stay and try French Tenses Simplified by Scott McElroy, a fellow French teacher on the Udemy platform. Believe it or not, this one is actually his smaller course. It covers those 11 important moods and tenses you need after finishing level A1. Scott’s course would be the perfect follow-on if you are ready to move on from my French grammar explanations.

The French Tenses Simplified course is about three hours long altogether, but Scott has broken his lectures up into simple 3-6 minute videos. It features even more than just French tense explanations. He has thrown in simple vocabulary lists, a full PDF of the course contents and four downloadable Flashcard videos. So all in all, we’re talking about a nice package.

Screenshot from the course French Tenses Simplified.

I tested this course on an aspect of French grammar that I’ve always found particularly difficult: the subjonctif. He approaches the topic with an awesome sense of humour right from the start. The topic is first introduced in English, with examples that demonstrate when you would use a subjunctive in French. To me, the reasons made a lot of sense here. There are clear rules saying “if this…then that” which is always something we can appreciate in language learning. The lecture could have benefited from slowing down, though. I paused it and took notes several times. Regarding the way the subjonctif is formed, Scott’s lecture was a fab refresher. I got 83% in the final quiz. Maybe you can beat me?

Instructor Quality

Right from the start, you will know that you’re in good hands with Scott’s explanations. He gives a comprehensive course overview to introduce you to French verbs and has SUCH good pronunciation.The thing that really stood out to me was the ease and friendliness in Scott’s explanations. When you take a video course, it’s always important that the instructor sounds like a nice person. You have to listen to these people for ages! Scott comes across as a friendly guy who knows his stuff right from the first second. I really liked his narration and French accent.

Beware if you’re a Beginner

If you’re a French beginner and have never come across any concept of French grammar before, then watch out. The course French Tenses Simplified goes through a few big concepts at qui[e a fast pace, so that I imagine a complete beginner would have to stop and slow it right down. For example, the course presumes that you as a learner are aware that French has three different verb groups for the regular verbs. It also skips over the fact that some verbs are irregular and introduces only three of the irregular ones.

So count yourself advised: If you are a complete beginner, start with my course Easy French Grammar for Beginners (it’s from zero) and arm yourself with a Bescherelle book before diving into the tenses.

Step 3: Analyze Content from natural French sources

In the past 2 steps, you saw options to use for getting your French grammar level up to a pretty sophisticated standard. And moving on from video courses, it is time to start working with real life content. Skip the Rosetta Stone and instructional podcasts, and start looking for simplified French sources. One of France's cultural strengths is their dedication to la bande dessinée (comics), and you'll find some awesome content in books like Astérix. I also like the TV5Monde series for French learners a lot.

The key at this stage is that you should make sure you recognise the stuff that you have learnt in the first two stages. Grammar is not abstract, it is a key to how language really works. If your goal is to speak confident and sophisticated French, then you must observe how the rules are applied in real life. That's what learning in step 3 is all about, so watch out for all those little things. Where is the speaker using an adverb? Can you spot all the -ent endings on 3 pages of comic? Challenge yourself here and enjoy playing language detective.

Do this at any Stage: Leave the Classroom, enter Life

After you have masstered the hard study and review of French grammar concepts, it's really time to break out from the classroom. If you have not done so already, start opening your eyes to natural French language content online and offline. With such a huge international community of speakers, it's incredibly easy to find a meetup of the French community. Here in Lancaster, I have practiced my French at the local language café and you can find your nearest European café at www.languagecafe.eu. The next opportunity to meet native speakers is just 3 miles away at the local university. Where is your nearest college hosting international students? If you aren't aware yet, consider contacting their student associations and meeting the French society or even the International Society. And should all those outreach options fail, there's always the language exchange option through sites like Speaky or Interpals.

For some learners, it's a confidence builder to get the grammar foundations ready before you go out.But in the grand scheme of things, I encourage you to go out and play in the real world right from day 1. You don't have to challenge yourself to do the impossible or conduct a full French conversation straight away, but I encourage you to make sure you keep an eye on the real world while you're studying the basics.

Re-Cap of the Resources in this Article

• If you are a complete beginner in French, you'll benefit from my own online course Easy French Grammar for Beginners, which you can pick up for $19 using the code MOTIVATION.

• More advanced learners looking for the next step should check out French Tenses Simplified by Scott McElroy. It's a fast-paced refresher course run by a positive online teacher, and contains lots of extras. For more help with the tenses and verb forms, the Bescherelle books can be invaluable. Get the course at 70% off if you use the link tiny.cc/step2french.

• At several intervals in this process, you should work with real native content. Don't go out reading the French newspapers right away, but ease yourself in and find simplified French language resources.

• No matter where you are at in your French study, you should also make sure that you make time to see those actual real French speakers. You can find them on each continent and everywhere around you in international hotspots like universities and meetups.

The key is to get a good balance between video or book study and real life experimentation. And of course, I wish you bonne chance with that.

The Best Apps for Travelling the World

There is a German saying that sums up all that is annoying and all that is important about travelling:

Es gibt kein schlechtes Wetter. Es gibt nur schlechte Kleidung.

This means "there's no bad weather, there's just bad clothing". While single-handedly giving you and explanation for all those German tourists dressed in pro-level hiking gear, the saying also talks about attitude and preparation. Without good prep, travel won't be fun, so today I thought I'll share a few tools that I use every single time I travel abroad. And no, it hasn't stopped me from doing some remarkably stupid things such as forgetting my passport at home (ouch) and turning up at the airport a whole 24 hours too late. But imagine how much less organised I could be!

Be Smart about App Usage on the Road

It's important to watch your smartphone's data consumption when you travel. The EU roaming fee law that we all waited for has now been pushed back until 2018, so even from the UK to Germany it's important to ensure you've researched before you go.

I'm UK-based and have found the best deals for using my smartphone abroad with Three and o2. More information for UK-based users is available on the always excellent Money Saving Expert website.

No matter where you are, here are my top phone tips before you go travelling:

• Get your phone unlocked and research buying a local SIM if you stay longer than a week, you travel to another country regularly or you're planning to use a lot of data.
• If in doubt, switch off international roaming.
• Research where you can get free Wi-Fi access.

The List of Apps and Services

This is the list of travel apps that I am never without on my phone. Most offer app options for iOS and Android. I'll be linking to their websites so you can select your download option. None of the links in this article are affiliate links, but I've used my "Refer a Friend" where I've got it.

1. tripit

Oh my god, I'd be lost without this site. TripIt creates a master travel itinerary. You can forward most train, car hire, hotel and flight confirmations to their plans@tripit.com email address and it reads them automatically and puts them into the calendar. The service also integrates with online calendars, so your diary is up to date.

The best thing about TripIt is that I can share my itinerary and allow others to post things to it. It's completely stopped that irritating "What time is our flight again? Which terminal?" conversation I used to have with my partner on every single trip. Instead, we just say "it's in the TripIt".

2.airbnb

The above link gets you free travel credit, feel free to use it!

I started using Airbnb in 2011 and it's become one of my go-to travel tools since then. Airbnb has been a big success story. It allows people with a little extra room, from a spare couch to a tree house, to rent out that space to travellers and visitors. I know that Couchsurfing runs this for free, but after years of business travel I just became a little spoilt and I'd rather set up a transaction with my host and have guaranteed safety and comfort in return.

I've now used Airbnb on trips to Cardiff, Kendal, San Francisco, Portland and London and have never had a bad experience. One of my friends has also started hosting on there, so if you're ever going to Edinburgh, email me for more details.

3.Award Wallet

Click the link above. The first 10 people to use the code "free-siaumd" get an upgrade coupon through my account.

If you never use your frequent traveller miles, you're not alone but you're missing out. AwardWallet is a website that tracks your airline and hotel loyalty schemes - something no one can really keep track off properly, right? The site will give you one central point to check your balances of every loyalty scheme going, including expiry dates and links to the original scheme websites.

Last year, I travelled around the USA and back for just $500, by the way. That was entirely due to using my frequent flyer miles, so this is worth looking into!

4. HotelTonight

My Referral Code KHAMMES will give you a £15 discount.

When I travel on my own, I like to be as free and unrestricted as I can. Road trips, spontaneous day trips and added nights in beautiful places are commonplace for me, so that means I rarely book a full itinerary in advance. There always has to be an unorganised bunch of nights in there, allowing me to feel free to roam. And HotelTonight has got to be the BESTEST EVER THING FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME.

The app is pretty, reliable and so easy to use it's unreal. Originally a last-minute reservation service for "tonight" only, they've now expanded their offering and allow you to use the app for reservations up to 7 days in advance. The rates are always competitive and their range of hotels is gorgeous. Without HotelTonight, my road trip to California would not have been as much fun.

5.Parkopedia

A new addition to my travel arsenal, Parkopedia is a British website listing reviews and tips on the best and most affordable parking spaces in 52 countries. It's saved me hundreds on my most recent Christmas trip by simply showing us a cheaper car park 500 metres away from our hotel. Absolutely worth looking into!

6. Kayak and 7. SkyScanner

Both of these websites are designed to deliver straightforward flight searches, allowing you to get the best connections all around the world. There are of course millions of flight search websites out there. Google has recently added its own service to the market as well after they bought the awesome ITA Scanner a few years ago. But for a bargain hunter like me, the two above are always worth checking out.

Kayak is great as a starting point for major airline connections and offers you a search featuring nearby airports, flexible dates and lots of route options. They miss out a bunch of low-cost airlines, so Skyscanner is my second favourite place to check for flight options because they will include Ryanair, easyJet, WizzAir and so on. Invaluable for Euro travel.

8. Happy Cow

If you're a vegetarian on the road, use Happy Cow. If you are looking for quirky restaurants that offer awesome healthy food, use it too. Basically: Use Happy Cow! This restaurant guide has listings of veggie-friendly places in even the most unlikely locations like Moscow and Lisbon. I've often dragged friends and travel partners to Happy Cow locations and had the best meal of my whole trip. The app offers you directions and opening hours and also lists health food stores. For going beyond the usual travel fare, this is your new best friend.

More App Recommendations

The list above is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. I also make regular use of TripAdvisor and the LEO Dictionary app. And I am always on the hunt for a really good packing list app, I've just not found one yet.

What are your own favourite apps for travelling? How do you prepare for a trip abroad?

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! Randy Glover on Rosetta Stone, Starting at 57 and Why You Should Not Give Up

The new Fluent Language Podcast is out now. We are on episode 6, and I have got something unusual for you. I'm interviewing one of my own students - not a language tutor, a study guru or a 16 language outlier, but instead a busy and dedicated learner who started at 57 and gets better every month. We also reviewed the new version of Rosetta Stone, and there is A LOT in there for you.

Now on Stitcher

If you're using Stitcher, you can now find the Creative Language Learning Podcast on there too. Help us out by giving it some stars! Here's an easy link to Stitcher's website.

Language learning with Yabla

Today I want to write an article introducing you to some software that might really go some distance to keeping you learning languages online. It's called Yabla, and online at Yabla.com.

What I like about Yabla is that the system is not in a specific learning method or a big method that you have to learn first. Instead, their special software is designed to make that target language video world accessible.

Here's how it works

The materials come from TV, film and music videos in the original language. The system gives access to native language videos and allows language learners to watch things in the original language, understand them, expand their vocabulary and quiz themselves on listening comprehension. So in other words, if you've ever wasted an hour on YouTube this is your thing.

All videos display in the Yabla player, which looks like this:

I've annotated this picture for you so you can work out what the different sections are about. We have

1. Control buttons. The coolest ones are "Slow" which slows the whole video down without sounding like it's creepy monster talk (i.e. it's pitch corrected) so that you can understand the native speakers better, and "Loop" which will run a very short section on a loop until you are ready to move on.
2. Subtitles. These are available in the language of the video (here it's German) and the menu language (here that would be English), but as you can see there is a little "Hide"/"Show" menu on the right hand side so that you can watch the video with or without subtitles.
3. Subtitle Lookup. Every word in the subtitles is clickable, and will show up in the dictionary once you click on it.
4. Difficulty rating. Yabla tells users how difficult it thinks the videos are and rates them from 1 to 5. For example, my French is good enough to watch a 4/5 video without any subtitles, but I want them on for 5/5.
5. Game. The in-video game is a listening comprehension exercise, asking you to find the missing word in any phrase contained in the video. Yabla regularly publishes the high scores so I'm pretty sure you couldn't resist if there's a bit of a competitor in you.
6. Dictionary. Yabla player searches various dictionaries, or Wikipedia, for every word that you click on in the subtitles. This way you get the benefit of several uses and you can see the word used in a sentence straight away.

Here are two of my favourite demo videos:

1. Piggeldy und Frederick - Der Himmel: Piggeldy and Frederick are cartoon pigs and they live and learn, and have done this for as long as I can remember. I used to enjoy them when I was little, and still enjoy them today. Suitable even for early learners (or 2/5 on Yabla's own difficulty rating).
2. Canadian Chocolate Seller - Chocolats: The lady makes chocolate. The video contains chocolate. I think now I'm hungry.

In conclusion, I think you guys should give Yabla a go. A 1-month subscription costs $9.95 and it's refundable within 7 days, so that you can test drive the system thoroughly. The system is great for:

1. listening comprehension: slow it down where you need to.
2. writing skills - take notes and compare them with the subtitles afterwards
3. growing your vocabulary - write down new words and quiz yourself or use the in-built Game and Flashcards features.

Yabla is available for learners of English, French, Chinese, German, Spanish and Italian.

Final message to Yabla: Where is the Russian version? I can't wait!

Final message to you: Fluent Language's blog is an affiliate partner and receives a small commission if you decide to sign up for a Yabla account, so thanks in advance if you do!