A Language Learning Tale

 EPISODE 5 Find this episode on Spotify at: Episode 5: Is 500 a Lucky Number? Find this episode on YouTube at: Episode 5: Is 500 a Lucky Number? Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on a journey through my language learning process, in real time, and learn my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the ALLT Podcast, which stands for A Language Learning Tale. Today I’m talking about… Is 500 a Lucky Number? Or, Can You Really Speak A Language With Only 500 Words? We’ve all seen them - the claims that if you learn just these 500, or 1,000, most common words, you’ll  be able to get by in the language. You like baby talk, do you? Okay, toddler talk, I’ll give it that. Let’s see if this can possibly be true. A quick Wikipedia search will give you a list of estimated word numbers in a whole host of languages. Here are just three of the totals. By the way, the sources are all very different so they’re not comparable, and there are multiple s...

EPISODE 4 Find this episode on Spotify at:  Episode 4: What Do I Know About Languages? Find this episode on YouTube at: Episode 4: What Do I Know About Languages? Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on a journey through my language learning process, in real time, and learn my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the ALLT Podcast, which stands for A Language Learning Tale. Today I’m talking about… What Do I Know About Languages? Or, My Language-Learning Journey, So Far I’ve referred a little, in previous podcasts, to the languages I’ve learnt throughout my life, but I haven’t outlined the journey specifically. It’s possible you might be thinking, what does she really know about this subject? So, let’s start at the beginning. Before the age of 11, I had no specific exposure to foreign languages. Then, I moved on to Secondary School. There, everyone was expected to learn French from the start, at least for three years, when exam subjects...

EPISODE 3 Find this episode on Spotify at: Episode 3: I'll Have One Language to Go, Please Find this episode on YouTube at:  Episode 3: I'll Have One Language to Go, Please Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on a journey through my language learning process, in real time, and learn my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the ALLT Podcast, which stands for A Language Learning Tale. Today I’m talking about… I’ll Have One Language to Go, Please, or, What is Language Acquisition and Why is it Good for Learning Foreign Languages? Language acquisition is a term bandied around by many language learners when talking about learning a foreign language. But where does this term come from and what does it mean, specifically for learning foreign languages? Well, in general, acquisition means to obtain something, like buying it in a shop, but acquisition in the language context, simply means learning a skill. So, you acquire the skill of bein...

EPISODE 2 Find this episode on Spotify at: Episode 2: Is this Madness? Find this episode on YouTube at:  Episode 2: Is This Madness? Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on a journey through my language learning process, in real time, and learn my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the ALLT Podcast, which stands for A Language Learning Tale. Today I’m talking about… Is This Madness, or, Starting to Refresh My French Yes, refresh. This isn’t a ‘from scratch’ deal, but a waking up of latent information hidden in those rarely visited cubbyholes in my brain. Back in my youth, French was one of the languages I learnt. In fact, everyone at school had to learn French from the first year of Secondary School – that’s age 11 for those from other nations. However, I didn’t stop there. I continued on to A levels and then on further to a Diploma in Foreign Languages for Business, which was a degree equivalent. What I learnt from doing the Diplom...