A Language Learning Tale

Spotify Link: Spotify Link YouTube Link: YouTube Link   Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome. Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today, the subject is: NO SCALES REQUIRED Or HOW DO I GAUGE MY LEVEL? So, I don’t measure my language competence on any of the available scales. Is it because I’m scared I’ll fail, or is it because of something else? Well, my problem with the concept of measuring myself against a scale, truly measuring myself, would be that it would mean taking an actual exam of some sort. That’s the only way you can judge yourself against a scale with other people also learning the same language, because judging yourself against a scale without an exam is fraught with problems, not least the fact that you might inadvertently inflate your abilities. Even if you take sample exams in your bedroom that is not a true test. It’s not an exam sit...

Spotify Link: Spotify Link YouTube Link: YouTube Link   Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome. Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today, the subject is: TWO LANGUAGES AT ONCE? Or IS LEARNING MULTIPLE LANGUAGES AT THE SAME TIME CONFUSING? A good question. Well, it can be, but that depends on a number of factors relating to you and the languages. What you have to remember is that learning languages is always difficult and confusing, no matter whether it’s one, two or three plus languages you’re learning. There will be things you don’t understand, at first, because they don’t fit with how your native language works. There will be sounds that you find difficult to pronounce and combinations of letters that are perplexing to deal with on many levels. There might even be whole concepts that don’t exist in your native language. Let’s break it down, though, ...

Spotify Link: Spotify Link YouTube Link: YouTube Link   Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome. Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today, the subject is: LET’S SING ALONG Or USING SONGS TO HELP WITH LANGUAGE LEARNING Okay, exactly how can songs help you learn languages? You might be surprised, but there are many ways songs can help improve your level in a foreign language. First, let’s talk about pronunciation. When you’re new to a language, pronunciation is one of the most difficult things to tackle. You need something approaching correct pronunciation even to say the words in your head. If you don’t have that, it’s like reading a fantasy novel and knowing that you’re probably getting all the character and place names wrong. In that situation it doesn’t matter, with a language, it does. Let’s think about that in more detail. There may be sounds in yo...

Link to Spotify:  Spotify Link Link to YouTube: YouTube Link Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome. Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today, the subject is: WHAT? CREATIVE WRITING? Or HOW I’M EXPERIMENTING WITH CREATIVE WRITING IN ITALIAN If you follow me on the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel, you’ll know that I’ve been dabbling in writing poems and very short stories - flash fiction - in Italian. I thought that today I’d explain how I go about this, because doing something like this is not exactly easy - there’s the understatement of this podcast. However, the one thing I’m not here to tell you is how to get your writing ideas, that’s nothing to do with language learning. This is just to discuss my process of putting together the words on the page to come up with something that’s vaguely passable in the language. No, I’m not claiming that...