A Language Learning Tale

Podcast on YouTube: YouTube Link Podcast 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… Listening Expanding your target language vocabulary by listening is something I’m a huge fan of and, I believe, is something you can do even before you’ve learnt all the grammar and vocabulary. Or, indeed, anything. You might think that doesn’t make sense, at all. You might think I’m contradicting myself according to what I’ve said in previous podcasts. I’m not. Hear me out. (Yes, that was supposed to be a pun.) When I started to learn Italian, almost three and a half years ago now, I was listening to Italian radio within a month. Back then, I didn’t really know what I was doing in the modern language-learning world. Things had changed a lot since I was a language student, but ev...

Listen on YouTube: YouTube Link Listen on Spotify: Spotify 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 I’m talking about…   TIPS FOR LISTENING TO AUDIOBOOKS IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE I recently started dabbling in listening to audiobooks in Italian, on Spotify, so I thought I’d just list a few tips here if you’re thinking of trying this yourself, because this type of listening can be quite a lot more difficult than your regular listening to content. I’ll explain why in a minute. So, the first tip, which isn’t something I have done, but I accept that it could be a way to make things easier, is to have a copy of the physicial, or eBook, so that you can read along as you listen. I don’t think there’s any need to explain why this would be helpful, it’s like having subtitles on when you watch filmed content, but I do t...

 Listen on Spotify: Spotify Link Listen on 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 … Multi-tasking is Better Or Listening vs Listening and Doing Last time, I did a mammoth podcast on reading, but I didn’t expand on my thoughts on audiobooks, or listening to audio, in general. That would have been a tad too much of me speaking. So, today, I want to discuss how to listen to books, or any other content. What is the best way? Let’s start with listening and reading at the same time. The simplest version of this is watching a film, TV programme or a YouTube video with subtitles, or closed captions, in the language. This, obviously, helps you to understand what you’re watching and, once you get used to it, doesn’t detract too much from the visuals. Somehow, you manage to re...

EPISODE 1 The Podcast on Spotify at:  A Language Learning Tale Find this episode on YouTube at:  Is Grammar Just for Nerds? 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 Grammar Just for Nerds, or, alternatively, Do You Need to Know Everything About Grammar to Learn a Language? Well, that’s a controversial question to start with, if ever I heard one and there will be many who have different and probably strong feelings on this subject. I come at this from an unusual perspective and for that we first need to go back to when I started Secondary School and was but a mere nascent language learner. During my time at Secondary School, back in the year dot -- before the advent of all the modern Year numbering, when we just said we were in the...