A Language Learning Tale

Listen on YouTube: YouTube Link Listen on Spotify: Spotify Link Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, 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 I’m talking about… The Power of Writing for Language Learning So, how does writing in your target language benefit your language learning? If you start trying to write in a language you’ll soon find out that there is a lot you still don’t know. Is that a benefit? Hmm. Okay, you might think you know how to say something, but until you write it down, you may not realise that, actually, you don’t. You will have to look things up. This can be anything from individual words, to specific phrases, to difficult grammar points. And you will end up doing this over and over again for the same things. What is this doing? It’s giving you repetition of certain facts about the language. You may not have them fixed ...

Listen on YouTube: YouTube Link Listen on Spotify: Spotify Link Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, 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 I’m talking about… Some Ways to Learn a Language by Yourself How you go about learning a language by yourself will probably depend on what you want to use it for. If it’s just to go on holiday, it won’t need to be as difficult, or intense, as if you want to learn everything possible about the language. So, first, think about this. What do you want, or need, to learn to achieve your objective? Then, you can get started. This will also partly depend upon whether you’re starting from scratch, or refreshing a language that you may have learned at school. I believe the easiest way to start learning a language is to use an app that teaches you. Which one you use, depends on several things. Can you afford t...

Listen on YouTube: YouTube Link Listen on Spotify: Spotify Link Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, 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 I’m talking about… The Language of Food Yes, this is another book. The full title is The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. It’s by Dan Jurafsky and narrated by Steven Menasche. So, this is something a bit different. Eatomology, as the author suggests. Let’s get started. There are many chapters in this book dedicated to the movement of dishes and name changes as they go on their world excursions. I’m not going to concentrate on these, because they’re very specific. But they cover things like sikbaaj to fish and chips, fish sauce to ketchup and why turkey might be other countries, too. Many recipes are included in the book, if that’s your thing, but unfortunately many of them are on an accom...

Listen on YouTube: YouTube Link Listen on Spotify: Spotify Link Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, 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 I’m talking about… What are the benefits of learning another language? Or, more accurately, some of the benefits, because there are bound to be more. Let’s start with something that’s less obvious: memory. Improving it. Keeping it in good shape and all that good stuff. All learning, taxing your brain helps with the memory function, and learning a language is no different, except when learning a language you’re not just studying a topic, you’re learning to connect another language with your language, which is another whole level of complexity to flex your brain muscles. What? If you can have muscle memory, why can’t you have brain muscles? Alright, brain connections. Brain activity is good. It stops y...