This episode is full of what I hope will be more useful insight and advice on how to learn English as an adult so that you don’t end up sounding like a robot, because you’re learning English or at least maintaining your English and it’s a long-term process, there are right and wrong ways of doing it and I want to support you along the way. The main aim of this podcast is to help you stay on track as you continue to develop your English, trying to find new ways and improving the old ways so that you get a grip on this language.
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This episode represents not just my ideas but also the thoughts, conclusions and recommendations of plenty of other linguists and polyglots who certainly should know what they’re talking about because they’ve either studied the process of language acquisition or they’ve learned multiple languages themselves. Contained in this episode is a distillation of lots of experiences, research and common knowledge about language learning, including my own thoughts and practical tips which I’ve picked up after 15 years of teaching English as a foreign language. I hope this will be a motivating, inspiring and interesting episode for you to listen to as part of your English learning journey. So, let’s go.
Quora www.quora.com
Do you know about a website called Quora? Quora.com
It’s a good website where people post all kinds of thoughtful questions and then other users chip in with answers.
The answers are then read and upvoted by members of the community, which helps the best information to be presented to everyone.
The result is that you get a selection of some of the best advice and information from people who actually know what they’re talking about.
It’s not a new concept. It’s been done before by Yahoo, Reddit and so on. But it seems that Quora is used by slightly more serious people and as a result the content on Quora is pretty reliable and intelligent.
You can sign up and choose what types of topic you’re interested in. I selected “Language learning” and came across this post. In fact I often get emails from Quora with interesting language learning questions and answers and they’re very interesting to read.
I also selected a bunch of other options, but I now can’t remember what they are – but I think they were pretty random ones, like I think I selected questions about gun control, science and technology. As a result, along with the language learning questions I also get sent some pretty bizarre Q&As about things like “Can you get shot in the head and survive?” and “What’s the worst bear attack in human history?” and “What happens to you when you die?” – all of which, I admit, I find fascinating too! Perhaps I’ll make podcast episodes about them too one day.
But this one is not about bears and stuff, no it’s about learning languages, and the question we’re looking at here is:
“What are the most essential skills of a good foreign language learner?”
http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-essential-skills-of-a-good-foreign-language-learner
There are about 12 answers from different people.
This is perfect for an episode for LEP because I don’t need to prepare anything – I can just read through the different answers and make comments along the way.
OK, so here goes!
Anthony Lauder’s Presentation at the 2013 Polyglot Conference
Here’s that great presentation by Anthony Lauder at the 2013 Polyglot Conference. It has a slightly slow start, with a couple of technical difficulties (and I found it slightly offputting that he was presenting in shorts and flip flops but I suppose that shouldnt’ matter) but it really gets going after a few minutes. It’s very amusing and has some truly great insights into how to learn languages.
Mnemonic Dictionary
“libel” – http://www.mnemonicdictionary.com/?word=libel
