A Language Learning Tale

The Podcast on YouTube: YouTube Link The Podcast 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…   READING OUT LOUD IN ITALIAN You might be wondering how I prepare to read out a story in Italian, especially a long one. Well, now I’m going to tell you and how you can use these practices to help your learning.   The first thing to say is that, no, I don’t do it without mistakes. I’ve narrated some of my own books in English. It’s impossible to do without mistakes. You get your tongue in a twist, you need to compose yourself for a few seconds. It’s even worse in a foreign language, especially the tongue-twisters! So, there is editing involved, but not too much, because …   The most important thing to do is to read the piece all the way through multiple times befo...

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...

Podcast on Spotify: Link to Spotify Podcast on YouTube: Link to YouTube 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 … Intensive vs Extensive Or Different Reading Styles   There are two basic ways of reading in a foreign language and they both have different purposes and, I guess, comfort levels. These are Intensive Reading and Extensive Reading. You can, of course, use the same reading material to do both. Intensive Reading This type of reading is slow and methodical. The purpose of it is to get the maximum learning benefit from the text. Typically, intensive reading has a number of elements: There is usually a specific aim to the reading. With language learning that will generally be to gain the maximum understanding from the text and the reading may well be something that is graded to your curren...

 Listen on Spotify here: Spotify Link  Listen on YouTube here: 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 … I’m Not Going to Lie, It’s Difficult Or How Do I Start Reading Books in a Foreign Language? So, let’s start right at the beginning and, remember, this is just my opinion, based on what I've done in the past. Other people will have different ideas. Listen to them all and decide what you think is going to be the best method for you. It might be a mixture of many things suggested by different people and that’s fine. We’re all different. However, the universal truth is that you’re not going to be able to read any book right off the bat when you start learning a language. It just isn’t possible. You need to know a lot of vocabulary even to read a simple book. That, in my o...

Podcast on Spotify: Please Don't Make Me Analyse Everything Podcast on YouTube: Please Don't Make Me Analyse Everything Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on a journey through my language learning process and learn my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about… Please Don’t Make Me Analyse Everything, or, Is Reading Literary Works Good for Learning Languages? In a previous podcast, I mentioned that, in my language studies, when I was a teenager, we started reading the kinds of books that would be referred to as literary during class for my A Levels. I want to talk about that a little today. I don’t know if pupils are still taught about literature in foreign languages in school, before the level of a University Degree, but I’m guessing they probably are.  So, those of you who follow me on YouTube may know that I’m actually a writer in English (and I’m trying it out in Italian...

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...