Monthly Archives: April 2012

We tend to learn better if we struggle a bit on our own, according to this article. “Trying to figure something out on your own before getting help actually produces better results than having guidance from the beginning” says the byline to the ar… Continue reading →

Thanks to Susanna Zaraysky who sent me this. Time reviews a book, in an article called “How to speak like a native”, about achieving native fluency, which basically seems to concur that this is a futile goal, and which debunks the accent reduction… Continue reading →

Check out this video of an American speaking excellent Spanish, and I mean excellent. His name is Richard Vaughan, of the Vaughan language schools in Spain. (He should plug LingQ for me since I am plugging Vaughan, but then I was just so impressed… Continue reading →

In October I will in Prague for five days. I hope to have a high degree of mostly passive vocabulary and familiarity with Czech and convert this to active fluency in five days. This is in line with ideas expressed by the great online polyglot Vikt… Continue reading →

We need to make mistakes to learn. Although I am mostly an input based learner, I do want to speak, and eventually to speak well. If I am corrected while speaking I tend to forget the correction quite quickly. When I get a report from our tutor a … Continue reading →

Well I flew down to Toronto, just under five hours in the air. Slept poorly in a stuffy hotel room. Went through a fire drill in the middle of the night, just to keep me on my toes. But then, as is almost always the case, things looked a lot bette… Continue reading →

I just arrived in Toronto, courtesy of Global Television. I had to give up my Easter Weekend, and I had to miss two games in an old-timers’ hockey tournament. I am going to take part in a televions program about people who speak many languages. it… Continue reading →

Promoting Heritage Languages is a popular issue with certain educators. Something they can feel good about. I suspect part of the reason is ideological. To me, it seems part of the multicultural impulse, the idea amongst some intellectuals that th… Continue reading →

I finally got the sound right and the first of our discussions is now up. Continue reading →

Tomorrow I am having the first of my discussions with Richard Simcott, the excellent British polyglot, on youtube. I hope to discuss, in a few languages and over the next little while, some of the following points. This list is not complete and is… Continue reading →