A common question is “how long will it take me to learn X”? ..The answer is always “as long as it takes”.
Each and every learner is different depending on study time, efficiency of study, motivation, surrounding environment, prior learning of related languages, prior learning of any language, and a list of any other number of [...]

Planning your time and using it effectively, this is how we learn a language successfully. It’s not exactly that complicated but it is something that a lot of people neglect. To use the exercise analogy, it’s better to do a little a lot than a lot a little.
Meaning… 15 mins a day for a total [...]

Just some thoughts on learning a foreign language through another learned language.
If English is your L1, many people only attempt to learn another language through English. And that’s fair enough, but it might not be the most practical if you have other tools at your disposal. Professor Arguelles strongly suggests people that dream of being [...]

Here’s an activity that incorporates three skills in one: listening, writing and speaking… with some reading thrown in if you twist it a little bit.
The steps are pretty simple, it’s simple to incorporate and easy to control.

use a recording of a conversation with the question parts removed… so basically you are playing a one side [...]

First in the series of looking at study materials is going to be LingQ.
LingQ is the brainchild of Steve Kaufmann (who you can find on my Blogroll over there —-> …and down a bit). Steve speaks a number of languages very well and the site is very much a mirror of his own preferred learning [...]

Something that is currently being debated in several circles is just how an additional language is added to one’s arsenal. There is of course the more traditional idea that we learn a language through dedication, study and hard work. And there is the fanciful idea that we simply acquire a language. Like many things in [...]

In the first Self-Study Materials overview we covered the big names of Assimil, Linguaphone, FSI, etc. This time we’ll go over a few of the other big names; the big names that many of our readers will be more familiar with – Teach Yourself, Colloquial, Hugo and Living Language.

Teach Yourself: In many parts of the [...]

Nothing too technical here… this is just a short post about how to trick yourself into learning. I’m sure you’ve heard countless times before how you should learn in context… but it can be a little vague at times right? So… in laymans terms.. the mythical in context beast is one that pretty much means [...]

The Zone of Proximal Development is a concept that was introduced by Lev Vygotsky and is still one of the foundations for educational development together with Piagetian theory. I’m personally a big fan of the Zone of Proximal Development and it’s little brother, scaffolding. Whether this is teacher-initiated or self-guided scaffolding it doesn’t matter… finding [...]

I think I’m safe in assuming that actively studying vocabulary isn’t very popular for most people. It’s something that is often tedious and associated with rote memorisation. This doesn’t have to be the case as there are a few other popular methods out there. Your best bet is to fiddle around and find out what [...]