Language Learning

One of the most common beliefs in language learning is also one of the most discouraging. People assume that real fluency requires living abroad. They imagine that if only they…

Most language learning apps tell you to listen more.More audio, more dialogues, more native content. But listening only helps if it trains the skill you actually need. Understanding sentences you’ve…

If you’re taking your first steps in German and are wondering where you should start, you’ve come to the right place. I am a student of English philology with German,…

Why do children learn foreign languages with such ease, while many adults have great difficulty doing so? The answer may surprise you as much as it surprised me. It’s no…

When was the last time you felt that something came to you with such great difficulty, you almost had to force yourself to do it? And then, after much struggle,…

A good memory is a component of many factors. Unfortunately, human memory does not always work optimally. There are indeed many factors that can affect memory, which can reduce your…

Learning a foreign language is a challenging task because human languages are complex systems with thousands of words. For example, the English language contains about 170,000 words, of which native…

You have probably experienced a situation where someone asked you something, and you totally couldn’t remember what it was about. Or you wanted to say something in English, and the…

Mnemonics is a type of mental technique that aids organization and memorization and facilitates the acquisition of more information. In the context of language learning, mnemonics can speed up the…

Let’s consider when we should start speaking a foreign language and what influences whether it will be easy or not. After all, it is clear that in order to master…

Think of mastering a foreign language like preparing for a marathon. Sure, crossing the finish line requires speed, but what really goes into achieving that burst of speed on the…

I started my adventure with foreign languages back in elementary school, when I was 13 years old. I grew up in post-communist Poland, so learning languages was not the norm….

People sitting in front of computers

I love grammar. As a teenager I was fascinated by German grammar. I loved everything about it and I wanted everything to be perfect when I spoke. My attitude towards…

“Can I stay with you for a week?” she asked.  “Of course,” I replied. At this point I was still speaking English to her, even though I knew some Italian….

Comprehensible input is language you can understand without knowing every word. Stephen Krashen's theory explained: the five hypotheses of the Monitor Model, the i+1 formula, the criticism (Swain, McLaughlin) and what it means for learning a language.

I started learning English when I was still in elementary school, but it took me a long time to achieve fluency. I even had private lessons, yet some of my…

When I studied for exams in college, I often used the so-called “three Z’s” method: in Polish, zakuć, zdać, zapomnieć, or “cram, pass and forget.” It worked great for taking…

Learning a language is strenuous and demanding – after all, you have to learn a lot of new words, understand how to combine these words into sentences, and so on….

The first time I went to Germany was during the summer right after highschool graduation. I wanted to go to college to study philology and decided that I needed to…

A major key to learning a foreign language is memorizing vocabulary. Without a doubt, this is a challenging task. But the good news is we all possess a degree of…

Alessandro just moved from Rome to Amsterdam to take up his dream job. He was surprised that quite often the employees in his company communicated in Dutch, not English, like…

You walk into a café. You notice a group of locals. They’re sitting at the table, chatting in their native foreign language. It’s the one you’ve been trying to study…

Are polyglots just naturally gifted, or are there exact methods for their language learning success? What do they know about how to learn and master languages that most don’t? More…

I was once visiting Rotterdam with my friends and we went out on Friday evening. I had been studying Dutch for a few years back then, and I was able…

While memorising lists of words and grammar rules is one of the most common ways to learn a language, it is also one reason many people end up quitting. It…

If you are not creating your own content while learning a foreign language, you are missing a huge opportunity / crucial ingredient.  In this short video I am going to…

Learning a language by memorising sentences has been one of the most efficient ways to improve language skills for decades. It has been used by linguists and polyglots around the…

If you are trying to learn a foreign language, you are probably wasting your time. In this video I am going to explain why and what you need to do…

Did you know that just 9 words cover 25% of spoken and written English? These words are: and, be, have, it, of, the, to, will, you. With another 50 words,…

Are you learning a foreign language? Do you feel you already know enough to be able to speak but you just mumble – or even worse, freeze – when it…

You always learn with questions and answers. Research has shown that learning in this way stimulates your memory so you remember more and faster.

In February 2016, I was having a lazy morning at the office. I was drinking a coffee, trying to focus after the weekend, when I received a phone call telling…