Stop your language learning sessions after a ‘win’ If you’re on any gamified language learning app or program, always try to end on a good note. In other words, quit after you’ve completed a lesson, or completed a lesson well. Ending on a bad note is training yourself to…

No, don’t just get any random “native speaker” One of the worst things a language learner can do is meet people who say they are native speakers and strike up a language exchange/tutoring arrangement. Here are the reasons why that may not work well: the person thinks they’re fluent, but…

How to stop sounding like a robot and like a siren instead (the mermaid one) One of the biggest mistakes people make when learning a new language is to jump into sound production. Simply put, unless you have the right facial and guttural muscles for good pronunciation, there’s just going…

Stop thinking of them as individual languages One of the ambitious mistakes self-proclaimed polyglots make is to simply select languages at random and make flashcards for individual words. There’s nothing wrong with picking just any language to learn, but to be a true polyglot requires a more systematic approach. That’s…

Depends what you think “dead” means When you pick a language to study because of a popular TV show or a famous K-pop band, you might not know that your destination language has centuries (if not millennia) of history behind it. …

What’s your language learning style? Many discussion threads on social media ask the question: “What’s your favourite language-learning tool?” Some of the most popular names are Anki, Duolingo, Memrise, maybe some gamified apps and specific one-language websites. They are all great for what they do, but there is something missing. …

Become one with a foreign language Sometimes, it’s not enough just to use our imagination. Sometimes, we need an extended external series of prompts to reinforce concepts to the point where they become natural and a part of us. Language learning now isn’t like what it was 20 years ago…

What part of the mouth are you speaking from? A language is a system of communication developed by a nation — a people group that share a common history of ethnicity/descent, customs/culture, and usually occupy the same general geographical territory. …

It’s all about the details The only thing worse than human error in writing is autocorrect (and autocomplete). As predictive-text technology became better and better, people didn’t need the attention-to-detail skill they needed before. Three letters in and a ten-letter word is done for you. To make things worse, search…