Grammar

When it comes to grammar, I really am not a big fan. In all actuality I truly believe grammar is a good thing to go over, but not a good thing to master. At least mastering it should not be your goal. Bad grammar is not only common, but perfect grammar often sounds stranger. While I believe we should all strive to improve our language and the language of those around us, that is a long term goal, not something worth focusing on in the first year.

One piece of grammar that you cannot neglect, however, is conjugations. My favorite resources for conjugations are:

• Reverso - Reverso is an amazing all around tool if you aren’t already using it. I have every single student use it

• Linguno - Linguno gamifies conjugation. It is not as repetitive as Duolingo, but it is also something that is very limited because you are not the one controlling the sentences.

• Wordreference - Wordreference is similar to reverso, but a bit more academic and less user friendly. We used it a lot back in the translator days and if you are looking for precision towards the end of B2 beginning of C1, this is probably your best bet.

Grammar books are good and you can get them cheap from second hand bookstores, but grammar is something that is far easier to master through making mistakes than through attempting to be perfect. At the end of the day, the “perfect” grammar is the grammar that is used where you are. Memorizing the “vosotros” conjugations in Spanish for a move to Costa Rica is not worth your time.

Share

If you do know where you plan to start using the language, one of the more enjoyable ways to learn grammar is to learn what is different between that place and the place where the language originated. Sometimes it is easier to remember the things that are different than it is to remember novel things. And you never know when having these fun facts in your back pocket might pay off.

YouTube is also incredibly helpful when it comes to this, but precision is important here. Learning from a generalized video is maybe a good first run through, but you should ultimately be finding videos that address specific issues that you are having. The only way, or at least the best way, to figure out what specific issues you have to address is by writing everything down.

Subscribe now

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is a bit more enjoyable to build, in my opinion. Not because it’s easier, but because it is more relevant. Think about it in your own day to day life. If someone comes up to you and says, “I’m ran late today” you would likely get the idea. Is it a little awkward? Yes. But that’s just how it goes at the beginning. Vocabulary, on the other hand, can be a mess.

Imagine instead of using the incorrect conjugation, someone came up to you and said, “I crawl early today”. Quite a bit more decoding that has to be done in that case. This is how it goes in every language. The grammar is important, perfect grammar is a phenomenal goal, but correct vocabulary is far more important. That said, if you mess up a word, the person you are speaking to will let you know.

So, how do you build your vocabulary fast? Do these things today:

Read books above your language level

People fight me on writing the most, but this is probably the second biggest fight I have with people. My students do not read children’s books. I recommend children’s books, but only if you are working solo. If you have a teacher or a tutor or a friend or spouse who can help you, the comfort of children’s books will become a crutch that you may struggle to drop.

For more on how to get the most out of this exercise, read this article:

Thesaurus

I bring this up pretty often, but using a thesaurus when you are writing is the easiest way to grow your vocabulary. Not even necessarily because you lack certain vocabulary in your native language, but rather because you do have a certain default vocabulary. The last thing you want is to be stuck with a set, limited, amount of vocabulary with which to express yourself.

Subscribe now

You should be using a thesaurus to write irrespective of which language in which you are writing. The best thing you can do is move vocabulary from your passive to your active memory. It’s fantastic that you can recognize and understand the meanings of new words when you come across them, but even better is the ability to use them freely whenever you want.

For more on growing your vocabulary through targeted exercises, make sure you read this:

Media

The final place that you need to be looking for materials where you can learn new vocabulary is in media. Social media, news media, entertainment media, all media. Why? Because those are the words people are using today, right now, to describe the world around them. Even if those words differ from how you may have seen them in a dictionary. Take the word “tio” in Spain, for example.

Share

As aggravating as it can be, these places are where you have to come to find out what is happening in the present day. Language evolves, often far too quickly, meaning you are left at the mercy of the modern speaker, not the person who wrote the grammar book. If you only learn terms for their literary use, you will end up freezing in the midst of conversation when a word is used colloquially.

Translation

Translation is probably the most powerful tool you have available to you when it comes to improving both grammar and vocabulary. Alongside reverso and wordreference, you should be challenging yourself to need as little help as possible. Begin with short one sentence translations from your target language into your native language.

The major jump comes when you begin translating pre-planned sentences from your native language into your target language. You are already doing this in your head anyway, doing it on paper is a fantastic way to accelerate the process of linguistic integration. Once the language is fully integrated, translation is no longer necessary. That said, it will always be a valuable tool for improvement.

Doing all of this on paper, in pen, will multiply the benefits. It may seem silly, but once per week I have someone reach out to tell me they started writing after one or two or even three years and how much they wish they would have listened to me sooner. You can, and should, learn from their mistakes. Do not come to me in a year telling me you wish you could go back. For more on that, read this:

One bonus tool for those of you who are in the habit of juggling multiple languages at the same time. This is something that was introduced to me by a friend and fellow polyglot and after getting used to it a bit yesterday, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Even if you only use it for one language to increase listening time. Find it here.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

These are the tools that my students use day in and day out throughout the course of their education. We use them in class, of course, but these resources are things you should be using daily, with or without a class attached. The best part? All of them are free to use. After all this time, I thought it would be helpful to share the tools we use in class. I hope you are able to use these indefinitely to accomplish your goals.

The right tools and the right habits are all you truly need to accomplish any language related goal you have. In fact, those two things should be enough to help you accomplish any dream you have. It will be difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great. So get out and do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.

Leave a comment

If you’re stuck in the gap between understanding and speaking, you’re not alone, and you’re not broken. The Guides library (paid subscribers) includes structured output protocols designed to bridge exactly this gap, day by day.

The fastest way to break through is with someone who can hear you, correct you, and push you in real time. That’s what my private courses are built for. Read what students say about the experience.

Technology

I have always prided myself on being someone who is capable of living in the moment. Admittedly that has become more difficult as a business owner, but I do try. Especially with friends and family. However, it has become so normal to be ~near~ one another while existing in completely different worlds.

It starts out innocent enough. Watching TV after dinner. After all, you are still together and spending time with one another, right? Soon one or both or all of you realize that you would rather be getting your algorithmically hand picked content instead of some TV show you are probably rewatching for the 3rd time chasing that nostalgia drug.

Subscribe now

A long time ago a teacher told me, “if it’s free, you are the product” and for an even longer time I didn’t really understand what that meant. Now I get it. You pay. We all pay. A LOT. But it isn’t money that we use. Instead we pay with the only thing we can never get back: our time.

Your time is valuable. The time you spend with your loved ones is also valuable. Do some math with me really quickly.

How many times do you see your parents every year? Once? Twice? 10 times?

How many years do you honestly think they have left? 10? 20? 30?

Let’s say we take the max of both. You will see them once per month for the next 30 years. The best case scenario is that you see them 360 more times. How many of those times can you afford to not be present? What if they only have 10 years left? You will see them 120 more times if you never miss a month. Life is so fragile. Do not spend it wrapped up in a world that barely exists inside your phone.

90s living

Lately, as a consequence of having a baby, we have been watching maybe a quarter of the TV that we used to watch. The result? We spend more time playing together, more time laughing together, and more time loving on each other. The change has been so delightful that we are discussing ways to run a “90s” household in the modern era.

• Steaming doesn’t exist, that show will be on next week at 5pm. We better not miss it!

• They only play cartoons on Saturday mornings!

• You have to read the book before you can see the movie.

• Get outside and don’t come back until the sun goes down!

• The wifi/cell service turns off at night, the company will turn it back on in the morning, don’t worry.

This is how I grew up (though wifi wasn’t around yet) and I look back incredibly fondly on my childhood. In fact, to this day I credit my parents for not caving and getting me a smartphone. That was one of the best parenting decisions they made, and they made a large number of very good decisions.

Share

When I was really young, my mom was in medical school so we had to get out of her hair and let her study. Anyone who has ever tried to accomplish tasks that require zero babies while there are more than zero babies around understands this. So we spent 23 weekends out in the woods camping, hiking, mountain biking, and roasting marshmallows.

I think one of the reasons that there is so much nostalgia for the 90s is because the vast majority of it all isn’t recorded. Memory is a funny thing. My wife and I are very into “type 2” fun. That is to say, things that seemingly, or actually, suck in the moment but are fun to look back on and laugh. In all likelihood, there is something like this on a larger scale going on with regards to that time period.

Perhaps the 90s weren’t that great, but the memories of a time before everything was digitally recorded are. Anyone who works with me knows that I am always pushing people to go analog. Digital is great, but the diminishing returns come quick and they are difficult to recognize before it is too late. Much like slowly gaining weight and ~suddenly~ struggling to go up the stairs.

Subscribe now

The “Yes” rule

Before going on exchange, my good friend, who happened to be the German exchange student we were hosting gave me some advice. This particular piece of advice changed my life on exchange and well after. That is, say yes to everything (within reason, obviously). Someone asks you to go do something? I don’t really care how bad you don’t want to go, you go.

Human behavior is hilarious. A child doesn’t want a bath, until they are in the bath. An adult doesn’t want to go to the gym, until they are in the gym. 80% of every battle is simply going to the place where the thing is happening. That is how low the barrier to entry is. All you have to do is show up. In your friendships, in your relationships, in your career, all you have to do is show up.

Here, again, is an area where I fail constantly. However, I used to be way worse 5 years ago and I was worse last year than I am now. Just like learning a new language, how you perform today is only relevant when compared to how you performed yesterday or the day before or the week or month before that. You will be shocked how often doing things you do not want to do will result in an amazing memory.

With all of that said, remember, relationships take two. If you are always showing up and you are always present and you are always saying yes, then you have done all that you can do. You cannot control what others do. In fact, you can hardly influence their decision making at all in most cases. You never know who will follow your example, but do not be discouraged if others do not reciprocate.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

Ultimately, my goal is to turn technology into an event. We are all going to sit down and watch a movie together. We are going outside until the sun goes down. We are settling in together for a night gaming together. We turn our phones off at night so that we can spend time together. I am far from perfect on this, but all progress is progress and I have come a long way just this year.

I highly encourage you to do the same things. It is difficult. In fact, this might be one of the most difficult challenges that I have ever discussed and it is only tangentially related to language learning. If you succeed, though, your education and your relationships and your career and your family will all improve simultaneously. So do the difficult thing. Join me in the present. I am rooting for you.

Leave a comment

Working on your French? Paid subscribers get access to the French medical handbook, the full language patterns guide, and every deep dive in the archive. Start your free trial here.

If you want personalized instruction, I offer private French courses tailored to your level and goals, from complete beginner to professional fluency. One of my students went from years of Duolingo stagnation to watching films and holding conversations in French within 8 weeks. His full review is here.

Forming a habit

There is something called the 21/90 rule which states that it takes 21 days to form a habit and 90 days to make it permanent. While there are obviously other variables at play that can make things more complicated, let’s assume that the core idea is true. Three weeks to build a habit, three months to integrate it into your daily life permanently.

If you had a roadmap to build the habits that would take you to fluency in a matter of months or years, would you use it?

In the month of August, I will be running a Habit Building challenge with the goal of helping people develop the proper habits to not only master their current target language, but any foreign language they wish to learn thereafter. 30 days of targeted activities to maximize the study time of anyone who wishes to join. Designed specifically for working adults and parents.

Most people know why they want to learn a language, most people even know how to learn a language, at least in theory. So I want to provide the “what” as in what to do every day so that you can look back after one month and be proud of how much you have accomplished. Hopefully more than you ever have in your target language before.

Share

One of my students kept the very first sentences she ever wrote before class started. Then, I took her week 6 homework sentences that she wrote. Look at how far she has come in under two months!

One month will never be enough to get fluent. It will probably never be enough to reach a conversational level. However, it is more than enough time to put the habits into place that will result in fluency in any number of languages. Once you understand what to do and why you are doing it, everything becomes almost formulaic. Plug and chug, as my old calc teacher used to say.

Building things that last

Everyone wants something that works instantly. If you are here, especially if you have been reading for a while, you know that I won’t lie to you about how long things take. The amount of work it is necessary to put into developing any skill is consistently understated by people who are trying to sell false hope. If you want to ~master~ a new language, it is going to take you 10,000 hours.

Building things, especially things that last takes time. I also find that many of these salesmen have begun to freely interchange the words “easy” and “simple” which are anything but synonymous. Learning a new language is simple. In fact, language acquisition is completely solved. At this point, anything other than successful language education is a deliberate choice.

Nevertheless, it is one of the more difficult things that you can do, especially as a working adult, especially especially as a working parents. Sometimes all that is missing is a roadmap. Having a mentor is tremendously beneficial. In fact, I cannot overstate the benefit of having a high quality mentor. Not because they know how to do everything right, but because they have already made the mistakes.

Wherever possible, you should be learning from the mistakes of others. Learn what not to do, find out what is and what is not a waste of time, do not reinvent the wheel until you intimately understand how the wheel works and why. If you must make your own mistakes, track them at the very least. Otherwise you may find you are making the same mistake years into learning.

The last thing you need to do if you want to build something that lasts is keep going. It doesn’t really matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t really matter how many times you give up, as long as you come back later. Of course, if it is possible to avoid giving up then that is ideal, but I know many a polyglot who gave up on a language for years at a time before returning and mastering it.

Subscribe now

Just keep showing up and the progress will follow. It is impossible to avoid given a long enough timeline. That is one of the reasons I wanted to do this challenge in the first place. I will give you the metrics for what “showing up” means. Then I will give you the ways to integrate exercises into your daily routine so that showing up doesn’t feel like work. The goal is lifestyle change.

It worked too well

One quirk I have noticed among human beings is that when things are going well complacency doesn’t just stop progress, it ends up causing people to stop entirely. “It worked so well that I stopped doing it”, in short. Think back in your life, there is more than likely an instance of you doing this very thing whether it be with regards to exercise, nutrition, education, or something else, it is normal.

Just because something is normal, however, does not mean it is the ideal for which we should be striving. This is the reasoning behind a month long challenge. If 21 days is enough to form a habit, I want to go for 30 days to ensure that the “it worked too well” syndrome doesn’t have time to rear it’s ugly head. Beyond the 30 days I will also provide a 14 day momentum guide for after the challenge.

Ultimately the only thing you get out of such a challenge are the habits to learn any new skill, the concrete progress you make in your target language, and, hopefully, a greater appreciation for what you can do in 30 days provided the right guidance. If that is something you want to be part of, then make it happen.

Join the August Challenge

Conclusion

Whether or not you want to join the August challenge, developing the right habits is a gamechanger when it comes to progressing toward any goal you might have. You want to be more fit? Habit development. You want to become exceptional at a skill? Habit development. You want to become fluent in a new language? Habit development. That does not, however, mean you have to do it all alone.

I mentioned before the benefit of having a mentor, but what I did not explicitly mention is that the benefit is being held accountable. No one cares more about your success than you do. That is true. However, no one is quite as susceptible to your excuses as you are either. If you don’t want to join us this next month, find someone who will hold you accountable for your actions. I am rooting for you.

Not sure where to start? Start Here! This maps out the entire site based on where you are right now.

Want something you can use today? Grab the free vocabulary frameworks and practice exercises: Free PDFs

One of her pet peeves was, and likely still is, redundancy. To this day I still remember her specific examples.

“Don’t say this morning in the AM. If it’s the morning I already know it is the AM.”

“Deja vu all over again makes no sense. ‘Already seen all over again??’ Do not be redundant!”

Some of the ones that now irk me, since she so graciously imparted this pet peeve onto me, are: basic fundamentals, past history, and free gift. All of these are examples of ways in which many people mess up their own native language every single day. This is a conversation I have with all of my students. irrespective of your ideal timeline, mastering a new language is a lifelong endeavor.

Efficiency

A common theme amongst my students is a desire to use as many words as necessary to express themselves. That is standard. In fact, if you are learning a new language right now you are likely doing the same thing. Keep doing it. I only point it out because the natural next step is learning to express as much as possible using as few words as possible.

Effectiveness is important during the beginning phases of language acquisition. Effectively communicating matters far more than efficiently communicating when every word is a fight. In fact, this very same process is mirrored physiologically in the brain as the neural pathways you are developing at this stage are effective, but they are far from efficient.

Share

Working with an instructor is a good way to avoid a lot of this. After all, if you can learn from someone else’s mistakes then you should. Save yourself the time and trouble of making common mistakes by learning what common mistakes look like. You should do this in both your native and your target language since they often overlap.

With how many mistakes English speakers make in their native language every single day, it really is not surprising that foreign language education in the US is so painstaking. You are ultimately limited by how much you know and if you have to learn a new concept (that you already use in your native language anyway) you are spending valuable time trying to understand things you already know.

That is why I created the “English for Foreign Language Learners” guide. The purpose is to give you names for the highest ROI grammar concepts in English so that you know how they correlate with grammar structures in foreign languages. For the vast majority of you reading this, you probably already know 50% of what is in the guide. If you do not, however, I highly recommend you download it.

English For Language Learners Guide

309KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

I am making this guide free because I think it would be a national disservice to do anything else. If you like it, be sure to check out the Guides page of the website for new guides released every month. Paid subscribers will receive every guide drop direct to their inbox so consider supporting if you aren’t already!

Subscribe now

Giveaways

Some of the common giveaways that someone might not completely understand their own native language involve forming perfectly good sentences that are widely employed, just incorrectly. For example, ending sentences with prepositions. That is, the word for or with or at or or or.

A mistake like this becomes a major issue when learning a new language because in a great number of languages it is impossible to form a proper sentence that ends with a preposition. If you don’t believe me, try and construct a sentence in your target language that ends with the word “with”. While it can certainly be done in English, that is technically grammatically incorrect.

Another telltale sign not understanding your native language is redundancy. In almost every system, redundancy is the first thing one attempts to reduce. The extra brain power necessary may seem inconsequential, but if you do it all the time then you are wasting brain power for no reason.

Share

“5 am in the morning” is redundant.

“A free gift” is redundant".

“To revert back” is redudant.

“An ATM machine” is redundant.

The more you know, the more you understand, the less you have to stress about wasting brain power on things that don’t matter. As a working adult, you have way too much going on to be wasting your energy inefficiently. Fortunately, by catching yourself making these mistakes you will improve in both your native language and your target language along with any subsequent language you learn.

Improving your ability

Vocabulary expansion can happen in a few different ways and in order to get the most out of your time you need to make sure you are doing the right things to reach your goal, whatever that goal might be. Vocabulary expansion is made up of two parts: recognition, or words that you can recognize when you see them, and retrieval, or words you are able to employ yourself.

Work with me

Both parts are necessary and you really can’t have the latter without having the former first. Compression is an exercise that will help you train your retrieval and your precision. So, what is compression?

1. Write out a story. It needs to be at least 10 sentences long, but the more the better.

2. Now, take that story and cut it by 20% WITHOUT losing any of the intended meaning

3. Iterate

This is a pretty advanced exercise, but you will still get something out of it if you are a novice. You can also achieve similar results by choosing someone else’s words and compressing them or paraphrasing them into your own words. Another way to do it is the same way in which Benjamin Franklin did it.

1. Read an article/essay/story

2. Take notes

3. Reconstruct the article based on memory and notes 48-72 hours later

4. Compare against the original

5. Grade yourself

   1. Where were you right?

   2. Where were you wrong?

   3. What could you improve?

   4. When will you try again?

Exercises by what they train:

Retrieval and precision:

1. Take any paragraph you wrote and cut it to half length with zero information loss. The word count is the score.

2. Banned words: rewrite a page without very, thing, good, bad, get, nice, interesting. Bans force retrieval of the specific word the lazy word was covering for.

3. No repeats: write 500 words in which no noun or verb appears twice. This will be brutal and immediately reveal of how small your active vocabulary is.

4. Taboo descriptions: define or describe something without using its five most obvious associated words.

Discrimination:

5. The distinction game: take near synonym pairs (envy and jealousy, vague and ambiguous, continual and continuous, uninterested and disinterested) and write the one sentence where swapping them changes the meaning. If no such sentence exists, you’ve learned they’re true synonyms, which is also knowledge.

6. Register laddering: one proposition, five registers, from the bar to a legal brief to King James. That is to say, write the same thing to 5 different recipients with varying degrees of formality to train your true understanding of cultural norms where your target language is spoken.

Acquisition:

7. The usage quota: writing words into a notebook is worthless without a usage rule. Three genuine uses within a week (conversation, email, anything real) or the word you are going to have to learn the word twice. Retrieval effort is what moves a word into the active set; rereading a list ultimately moves nothing.

8. Root harvesting: take one Latin or Greek root per week and generate the whole family before checking a dictionary. See my Latin roots material for help with this challenge in guide form; the challenge version is doing it from memory first.

Structural pressure:

9. Strict verse: sonnets and blank verse force vocabulary search the way nothing in normal writing does, because the right word must also fit into the structure. Writing to conform to standards is a powerful way to force yourself into using words and grammar mechanisms you might otherwise try to avoid.

10. Round trip translation: translate a paragraph into your target language and translate it back a day later, then compare with the original. The gaps between versions become a personalized vocabulary syllabus.

A quick warning with regards to compression and editing/translation in general. When something is truly written well, it will be nearly impossible to compress. When an author actually uses every word to the fullest, trying to compress the writing means diluting or altogether destroying the intended meaning. If you are getting frustrated, move on to the next sentence or the next excerpt.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

My classes have an incredibly condensed timeline. 3 months is not a long time, while it is also a pretty long time. Therefore, I cannot afford to waste my students time or brain power. Every single person I work with has a full time job, most of them have children, efficiency is absolutely paramount to their, and my, success. That is why we do most of these things and why I think you should, too.

Adding these exercises into your weekly routine will drastically improve your vocabulary which, if you were to ask me, is the most important part of learning any new language. After all, there are far more words than there are grammar structures. It is certainly difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great. So get out and do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.

Leave a comment

Exams reward a specific kind of preparation that most self-study methods don’t provide. Paid subscribers get access to exam-focused strategies and frameworks in the Guides library designed to complement what you learned in this post.

Need to hit a score by a specific date? I build exam-specific private courses with targeted preparation for TOEFL, CLEP, DELE, DELF, and more. One of my students passed his TOEFL and got accepted to a New York university after working together for three months. Read his story and others here.

If you are receiving this email, it is because you are supporting me and my language acquisition project directly. Thank you for choosing to do so. With how many resources exist out there, I am truly grateful that you choose to use my resources and support my work. Without you, this platform would not exist.

With that, I wanted to let you know that…

Read more

Share

A1-B1

As mentioned above, most of the things I recommend people do are the same, they are just done at different levels of complexity. In fact, for the first three to six months (read A1 to B1) most of the content is beyond comprehension. That is intentional. If you understand everything, you are not learning anything. Besides, you won’t understand everything for years.

There is an interesting phenomenon where people who are learning a new language expect that they are going to understand everything at some point. While that might be true, the amount of time it takes to get to that point is more than most people expect. The reasons for this vary, but the biggest are dialect, accent, and cadence. You may understand everything regionally, but that isn’t everything.

At first, as much as it pains me to say this, the quantity is far more important than the quality. I was just telling a student this afternoon, “for everything that I can do, I cannot consume 1000 hours of content from native speakers for you.” The minimum to begin understanding anything approaching ~everything~ is 1000 hours of exposure. That is the true power of immersion, not just access to natives.

I created my Passive Input Guide explicitly for beginners because passive input is your easiest win as a novice in any new language. The point is never to understand everything immediately, that is wholly unreasonable. Rather, you should listen and give yourself a baseline. Write that baseline down. Then, spend the next three weeks pumping volume and see just how far you can get.

Subscribe now

B1-C1

For those who are beginning to feel the difference after a month or two, you should begin working on much more difficult exercises. Dictation, or transcription, is by far the best thing you can do at this stage. Especially during the B1/B2 stage. Listening to native speakers and writing down what you hear seems like a waste of time, perhaps, but do it for 3 weeks and watch the evolution.

Focused listening is the biggest difference between the As and the Bs when it comes down to it. This is almost entirely due to the fact that Bs are able to do focused listening while the As are still trying to master basic sentence structure, cadence of speech, and colloquialisms. Once you can understand 50% of a sentence, it is time to sit down and dedicate 30 minutes to listening daily.

Start small, something with annunciated speech discussing a topic that you know already. Ideally you are working with a video that has an unfamiliar orator as the more you listen to one person the easier it will be to understand that one person. Diversifying your input is incredibly important at this stage. During your A phase, differentiation is less important. Now, however, it is imperative.

The final step in this progression is listening to multiple people simultaneously. I’ve written about this before, so if you missed that, catch up here:

In short, once you can understand one person speaking to you, you have hit the first false peak. Unfortunately, this is a lesson everyone has to learn sooner or later, so better to break the illusion sooner, in my opinion. Having a target to aim at is incredibly important, but if that target is wholly unrealistic, it will have a deleterious effect rather quickly.

Share Second Language Strategies

Continued education

My program is called “3 months to conversational”. The reason behind this is because it is impossible to reach fluency within 3 months. However, once you can hold a conversation, the sky is the limit. In fact, once you can hold a conversation, the true battle begins. After all, it is all but guaranteed that you have quite a bit more you could learn about your native language, let alone your target language.

Building a content library is a terrific first step. Of course, if you have been following along with my methodology to this point, you should already have a solid repertoire, but now that you can hold conversations, it’s time to expand. For more on efficient expansion, read this:

If you are maxed out on content, it’s time to start moving towards integration. That is to say, rather than consuming content as part of your language learning process, start consuming it as if it is in your native language. Medical professionals should be studying medical vocabulary, lawyers should be reading legal texts, musicians should learn from those who speak their target language.

Specialized language is something I think everyone can benefit from and the deeper into your language acquisition you are, the more important it will become. For many, I often find that introducing it early on is beneficial, but you have to make that decision for yourself. If you are in the medical field learning Spanish or French, you can get my versions of specialized language to add in immediately.

Medical Spanish

Medical French

Conclusion

I know how frustrating it is to listen to something and understand absolutely nothing. I have done it 5 times already and I am currently doing it again right now. It will feel like you are wasting your time. There is nothing I can do about that. You don’t have to trust me, but if you read this far, try.

Give me 21 days of immense audio exposure. Should you see no changes, leave a comment and I will respond to see what went wrong. At first the breakthroughs will come in singular words. In a sea of noise, there will be a small signal. More expose, more signal.

Your brain is a descrambler that is more effective and efficient than anything any human could possibly create. It just needs time to work. Often more time than anyone really wants. It is difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great, so get out and do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.

Leave a comment

If this post made you rethink your approach, the next step is replacing what isn’t working. My free downloadable PDFs give you exercises and frameworks that no app provides. Real output practice designed to get you speaking, not just tapping.

Want to skip the trial-and-error entirely? My private students go from zero to conversational in 12 weeks with a course built around their goals, their schedule, and their life. See what that looks like.

Subscribe now

How language works

Language learning is unique from other types of learning because much of it is dependent more on exposure than dedicated studying. Most other subjects demand sit down sessions of an hour or more to wrap your head around different concepts. Languages, on the other hand, are far more reliant on the amount of exposure than just about anything else.

At a minimum, you should expect 1000 hours of exposure before you are able to comfortably understand native speakers. This is exactly how you learned your native language, too. Not by understanding everything, not by optimizing your comprehensible input, not by balancing the perfect levels of understand and not understand. Just pure volume and lots of patience.

Ultimately, one dedicated sit down hour per day is enough to learn a new language on a pretty condensed timeline. Just about any language in just about a year, when done properly. However, I often recommend some exercises and, for those exercises, 20 minutes is more than enough. For more on those, read this:

Being busy is real. Everyone has things to do and most of us have bills to pay. Nevertheless, adding a new language to your repertoire doesn’t have to feel like adding even more to your list. If anything, adding a new language should make everything feel easier, even if that is not necessarily the reality. If you haven’t begun to already, now is the time to reframe.+

Share

Reframing

One of the major reframes almost all adults need to make is that of appropriate timelines. If you missed the article on realistic timelines for adult language learners, you can read about it here:

Your second hurdle is defining your milestones. In school, milestones are decided for you and, usually, graded with multiple choice tests. If you actually intend to learn anything, you have to step away from this system. Since you are now the person who is most invested in your education, if you weren’t before, that means the most important part of your new system is that it works for you.

Setting up these milestones is incredibly important because if you aim too small you will be basically running a Duolingo program. Learning nothing with 10 minutes of input per day over two years. On the other hand, if you aim too big you will grow frustrated quickly. Worst case you quit altogether because you didn’t give yourself a reasonable target.

Start small, but grow the difficulty over time. It is quite remarkable how much overlap there is between physical hypertrophy and the act of learning new things. Progressive overload is a concept worth understanding for your body and your brain. With the brain, though, you can benefit from far more snowballing momentum. That is to say, the plateau comes much later with languages.

Subscribe now

Stealing from Peter to pay Paul

As a busy adult, there is one final concept that you need to understand in order to avoid falling into common pitfalls. Think about it. How many adults do you know who are actively trying to learn new things and master new skills? Far fewer than one might hope. The simple fact that you are trying already puts you in the top 10%. Directing that energy in the most efficient way possible is only common sense.

Inefficiency in learning is like inefficiency in anything else: it burns unnecessary energy. And when we are dealing with a closed system, burning unnecessary energy is a mistake that we cannot afford to make. So, to avoid burnout, you need to learn to listen to your brain. Most people have a pretty good gauge of when their body is worn out, but brain strain is real and requires ample recovery.

Of all the things that people forget, the worst is probably the fact that sometimes you do just need to take a moment to catch your breath. Taking a break, especially as a busy adult, can feel like you are losing out on some of the valuable free time you actually have. In reality, the opposite is true.

You cannot take care of someone else from your deathbed. This is a phrase I use quite often with my friends and with my students. Point being, if you don’t take care of yourself first you will find it impossible to adequately provide for anyone else. To truly unlock your maximum potential, you must be getting enough rest. Otherwise studying anything is an exercise in futility.

My final secret for working adults is the same as it would be for any adult who was looking to add more into their schedule without losing out on time with their family. The concept is called (well, I call it), “stealing time”. In my life, that means waking up at 4am to get 2-3 hours alone to work on whatever it is I need to work on before being joined by my wife and baby for the day.

Stealing time looks different for everyone. Personally, my brain works best between 4am and 11am, so that is when I choose my time. You might find you get the best out of yourself from 9pm-midnight or maybe during lunch. It could be during your commute or while you fold laundry. Doing dishes and cleaning the floors. There is time available to you, all you need to do is find it and take it.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

Full brain syndrome is real. There is a max capacity. Fortunately for you and me and everyone, however, that capacity is not fixed. You can increase your capacity and you can lose capacity. I say this to my students often, but it bears repeating: the material is not getting any easier, you are getting better. That is your goal, especially when you are first getting started.

Passive input allows you to train yourself into a larger capacity without being overbearing like immersion can be. Learning a new language is unlike learning anything else and it can largely be built into a busy schedule. If you need help building your curriculum into your schedule, fill out this form and I will reach out to help you:

I want to get serious

It will be difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great, so go out and do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.

Words you already know

One of the ways that someone might connect the dots for you is by showing you all of the words you already know, even if you don’t exactly realize that they are in a different language. For example, the German word paprika. Of course, you likely recognize the word paprika as a powdered red spice that you have always had in your cabinet. Did you know that it is just the German word for bell pepper?

So, paprika is just dried bell pepper. Turns out, a kindergarten is a garden of children. Gesundheit is interchangeable with bless you, right? Well, kind of, and much like “salud” it means health. Fondu? It’s just cheese, right? Well, yes, it is melted cheese. Fondu is the past participle (if you don’t remember what that is, you really need to read this article) of the French word “fondre” which means “ to melt”.

Have you ever chanted “encore” at a concert? You were yelling “again” at the performers, just in French. Your souvenir from the last vacation? Something to remember the trip because souvenir is the French word for remember. Everyone knows what salsa is, but not many know that salsa is just the Spanish word for sauce. That is the biggest difference between a good and a great instructor.

You already know all of these things. You just haven’t had the connection made for you. Out of all the classes I have, my favorite are always the ones where someone has an out loud “ah ha” moment. The added bonus of doing this is that you now have a word that you know well and use correctly in English to add to your repertoire in your target language.

Work with me

Asking questions

That said, I know not everyone is interested in having an instructor. So here are some ways that you can start to connect some dots on your own. First, be curious. You have to ask questions about everything in order to uncover any connection. Is this a necessary step to becoming fluent in a new language? Not at all. Will it accelerate the process and make all subsequent languages easier to learn? Yes.

Curiosity is a super power, much to the chagrin of our dear cat fellow. If you aren’t asking “why” multiple times per day, you have an opportunity to improve. For more on that, read this:

In short, never take things at face value. Is it possible that there are no connections to be found between words or concepts that seem related? It’s certainly likely. But that doesn’t diminish the utility of the times when it does work. Besides, the worst case scenario is that you now know a few more obscure facts that you otherwise would not know. Doesn’t seem a terrible trade off to me.

At the end of the day, this is the baseline analysis you should be putting into everything throughout your daily life. Maybe not all day every day, but when you pay close attention to the words you, and other people, use it can be rather illuminating. If nothing else, I would encourage you to expect more from yourself. Instead of learning one word, learn one root word and 5 variants, for example.

Subscribe now

The value of vocabulary

Aside from learning 5 new words for every new word you learn, improving your vocabulary in your native language comes with the added benefit of growing your vocabulary in other languages. Nothing comes from nothing. That is to say, every word you use comes from somewhere, has a history, and can be investigated to reveal more information.

Some words are higher ROI than others, but getting in the habit of pulling the string until everything unravels makes it easier to do each subsequent time. Curiosity, much like courage, is a muscle that must be worked and flexed over time in order to improve. Start small. Look up the etymology of 1 word this week. Choose a word that you know has related words across languages.

• Dormant

• Hope

• Believe

• Edifice (and in this, to build)

Share

These five words will give you not only a ton of other words to learn and work with, but an overall better understanding of English and, for native English speakers, it will show you some of the ways in which your mother tongue is rooted in so many other languages. Native English speakers have a massive advantage relative to other language learners.

But looking into the roots of words is not the only way to use your curiosity to your advantage. You can, and should, also be seeking out synonyms at every opportunity. Diversify your vocabulary and find ways to express yourself in ways you have not previously. For those of you who have been taking my advice to write more often, you can simply go back and make improvements to your writing.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

I recently wrote an article about learning languages as an adult that seemed to resonate. In that I mentioned how adults have a unique advantage over children when it comes to learning languages and that is the ability to infer. While this remains true, it is entirely irrelevant if you are not willing to take the time to build up the reference points you have available to you.

At first it might not feel like you are getting anything out of the exercise, but over the course of just a few weeks you can build in dozens of new hand holds to climb when the time is right. Unfortunately, much of this is more akin to farming than it is to hunting, but both yield results when done correctly. Not only that, but with languages you have the freedom to do both; and you should do both.

Leave a comment

Working on your French? Paid subscribers get access to the French medical handbook, the full language patterns guide, and every deep dive in the archive. Start your free trial here.

If you want personalized instruction, I offer private French courses tailored to your level and goals, from complete beginner to professional fluency. One of my students went from years of Duolingo stagnation to watching films and holding conversations in French within 8 weeks. His full review is here.

Enhancing your daily routine

Learning a new language is unique in that you can actually make progress while completing mundane daily tasks. I know several people who learned how to understand Spanish by watching their favorite shows during their cardio workouts. For those with pets, even walking the dog is normally enough to provide ample audio input on a weekly basis.

At the very least, you can add in your audio comprehension practice to anything that everyone has to do. Showering? Spanish music. Doing the dishes? French podcast. Walking the dog? German comedy show. The options are basically endless for the vast majority of languages and the point of doing this is not to understand everything you hear.

Of all the possibilities, the best option for the average working professional is the commute. Aside from daily cardio, nothing is as certain for a daily habit as a commute. If you have over a 30 minute commute that is a guaranteed hour of language immersion you can get every day of the week. Then take the weekend off, sometimes a little time off is important. To see why, read this:

Whatever you do, having a growing list of resources is going to be crucial to your long term success. Fortunately, the better you get the more options you open up for yourself. However, this is where most people end up over doing it with regards to consumption while neglecting their production skills. Remember, for every hour you consume content, you must produce for 30 minutes.

Building your list

Building your list is easier said than done. In reality, the vast majority of content you encounter is not going to be overly interesting to you. Worst of all, the content that is interesting often has downsides like bad audio quality and no new or updated content. A good way of avoiding frustration, well, at least of mitigating it, is by diversifying the content.

Yes, it is helpful to have things that cover various topics, but you also need to diversify the medium. Personally, I find videos with subtitles to be the most effective. TV shows and movies are often too scripted to help with natural speech and pure audio means giving up visual cues that are helpful from the start and all the way throughout your language acquisition journey.

When you are in person, you are going to have gestures and mannerisms and body language to read that all end up being equally important when in actual conversation. Even amateur lip reading provides insight into where the words you are hearing begin and where they end. However, for pure vocabulary and for learning how to speak fluidly (not fluently) written media is next level.

Subscribe now

Depending on how much you are willing to challenge yourself, that written media can range from a short children’s book to something like Atlas Shrugged and everything in between. Personally, I recommend picking a challenging book and using websites that discuss things in which you are interested. Unfortunately, most websites are just sales pages now, but there are some good ones left!

All of my students get a personalized resource document and some of them say it is their favorite part of the whole class, which only hurts a little bit. You can make your own, I can make you one, or you can have someone else make one, but having a resource document with a variety of content so that you aren’t always doing the same thing is incredible for avoiding boredom/fatigue/frustration.

Share

Exercises to try

Once you have built up your list, there are a few exercises you can add into your daily routine that will help accelerate your language acquisition. For most of these, more than 30 minutes comes with diminishing returns. The audio itself should be playing for hours if at all possible, but that does not mean you should be actively engaging with everything you are hearing.

Those who have been in full immersion know that, after a while, you just stop hearing anything. People can speak to you and you just don’t hear anything. It is a very strange phenomenon. However, the entire time you think you are hearing nothing of value, your subconscious is reorganizing and you are learning to hear the new language in a new way. It takes time, but it does work.

When you think about it, and when you are alone ideally, mimicry is one of the most powerful language learning tools you have at your disposal. For more on how to use mimicry to improve your second language, read this:

Aside from that, reading out loud is incredibly beneficial. Learning how to read fluidly means learning how to speak fluidly. This is one of the fastest ROI activities that you can do with tangible results showing up in as little as three weeks. It’s pretty easy to take this recommendation as something that won’t help, but give it a shot for 21 days. Record yourself on day 1 and on day 21. See what happens.

Share

Finally, the most effective exercise that I am always trying to push onto people. This is the one that is most critically done in short bursts. Anything more than 30 minutes becomes an exercise in futility which can cause burnout to happen much faster than it otherwise would. That exercise is dictation, or transcription. I learned about it in Belgium and I have used it for 10 years.

In short, find an audio, play it for 20 second, write down what you hear. That’s it. No tricks, no secrets, just pain. For a full break down and step by step, be sure to read this article:

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

Electronics are ubiquitous with daily life nowadays and to pretend that most people are willing to opt out is just silly. So, that means we have a choice to make. Do we choose entertainment as a distraction or do we use it as a tool? Personally, I think if you can get to 50:50 you are doing phenomenal. Anything more than that is just gravy.

At first it is one of the most frustrating experiences, but that period is temporary and it truly does not take much time to get to the point where you are enjoying the same content you already enjoyed in English, just in a totally new language. It will be difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great. So go out and do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.

Leave a comment

Second Language Strategies is a reader-supported publication. The strategies in this post are a fraction of what’s available to paid subscribers. The full Guides library, including The First 30 Days blueprint and advanced acquisition frameworks, is waiting for you on the other side.

If you’re ready to stop reading about language learning and start doing it with personalized instruction, learn about my private courses here. 29 out of 29 students have spoken their target language after completing the program.

Keeping a written record of your life

As much as this is advice for people who are learning a new language, it is also something that is worth doing in your native language. Every day will not be interesting. That is clear. Writing on the dull days will, however make it easier to write on the days when you have something to exciting to discuss. Even if you only do it 4 days per week, the habit will pay dividends quickly.

Your life is more than likely not an epic tale of fighting off monsters and rescuing innocent civilians. If it is, you really have no excuse to skip journaling. Even if it is not, you can write about it in a way that makes it feel more exciting. This may, or may not, end up having real world effects. You will never know unless you try it out for a few weeks, though.

Always start with the most important or exciting things, but you real challenge is to make the mundane feel exciting. If you can’t make it exciting, make it funny or sad or hopeful. Use the time to dream about what life could be versus what it is or reflect on how things have changed over the past 5 years. Personally, when I look back five years, my life is unrecognizable in all of the best ways.

Share

But if I hadn’t been doing this very exercise throughout that time, it would be easy to overlook the small steps that were taken to reach this point. People say to “enjoy the journey” but the reality is that, in the moment, the journey can really suck. Only upon thoughtful review can much of daily life be appreciated. It’s like when you live close to a beautiful location.

When I lived in Arizona, the grand canyon was close. So close, in fact, that most people never really made it out to see it. Why? Simple. It was always there. When something is ever present, taking it for granted is very easy to do. Once I did finally go, I made it my goal to go with as many people who have never been as possible. What an incredible couple of years that ended up being.

You never know what you are taking for granted unless you give yourself a chance to sit down and think about the things you do and have in your life. If you are truly struggling to write about things, write down 10 things for which you are grateful. Gratitude has a way of inspiring. Who knows, you might start with 10 things and end with 10 pages.

Passing on the things that matter

Personally, one of the main reasons that I spend so much time writing is because I have never thrown away a handwritten letter. If someone took the time to sit down and actually write something to me, then it is something that I deem worth keeping. Since this is true for me, it is likely true for others as well. With that in mind, I like to believe that books filled with my thoughts are something my children deem worth keeping.

Long after I am gone, I want my children and, ideally, their children to have the ability to pick my brain. There are many moments throughout the day in which I find myself wanting for the words of wisdom from family and friends who have passed. You can’t control everything, you often can’t control much of anything, but you can control the legacy that you leave behind.

We all know that our parents walked five miles up hill both ways in the pouring rain to get to school. But imagine if you could actually read the things they were thinking and feeling in that moment, rather than how they think and feel about it now. Imagine reading about your parent’s nascent relationship and how they felt as they planned for their family.

Subscribe now

Of course you do not have to write with the future in mind. Most of the time when you finally have a spare moment to sit down and write, you will not be thinking about the future. If anything, this is the one time when you will be unable to think, or worry, about the future. Getting the days events out of your head and on to paper will, though, have quite the clarifying effect.

Above all, the reason you should be writing is because your ability to think has a ceiling. If you would like to raise that ceiling, you must write. Thinking often happens outside of the mind. Speaking to yourself, bouncing ideas off of someone, or writing. Either way, thinking is incredibly difficult to do when alone. As you write, you give yourself a person with whom you can share and test your ideas.

Growing your language skills

Whatever you do choose to write, one of the important steps that most people skip is review. I understand. In fact, I am one of those people who skips the review more often than I should. The truth is, however, that the first time you do something is rarely going to be the best. Setting aside even 10 minutes once per week to improve your writing will have a measurable impact on your language abilities.

Making mistakes in front of yourself should not be an issue. If it is, that is something you need to work to overcome immediately. Yes, you will always be your own harshest critic, but it will be next to impossible to confidently hold a conversation with a native speaker if you are afraid to make mistakes when no one else is watching or listening.

Improving your second language almost always involves improving your first. Writing is hands down the best way to improve your native language abilities because it is one of the few times in your life when you will have everything you think laid out. It is incredibly easy to breeze past mistakes when you speak. In any language. This is not true of writing. Those mistakes you can see; those mistakes you can correct.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

No one knows your story but you. That means that no one can tell you that you are explaining it incorrectly. No one can correct you on your narrative except for you. That said, no one can write your story for you either. If you want your story to be told, and you should, then it is incumbent upon you to tell it; and if you are going to make the effort to tell your story, you should tell it to the best of your ability.

This is not the first, and it likely won’t be the last, time that I bring up writing. It is still and has always been the one thing that everyone fights me on because it is hard. I understand that it is hard. However, there is simply no replacement. Nothing will pay off quite as much in the short and the long term. It will be difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great. So go out and do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.

Leave a comment

Second Language Strategies is a reader-supported publication. The strategies in this post are a fraction of what’s available to paid subscribers. The full Guides library, including The First 30 Days blueprint and advanced acquisition frameworks, is waiting for you on the other side.

If you’re ready to stop reading about language learning and start doing it with personalized instruction, learn about my private courses here. 29 out of 29 students have spoken their target language after completing the program.

Share

But I saw the movie

When I was a kid my parents had a strict rule. I could watch the movie, but I had to read the book first. We did this all the way through Harry Potter. To be perfectly honest, that really wasn’t my favorite thing. At least not at the time. As it turns out, reading the books before the watching the movies was one of the most valuable lessons that my parents taught me.

Set aside the fact that the movies are never as good as the books for a moment. The truly incredible part about this exercise is that it made the worlds even more real. I had already spent weeks living in the walls of Hogwarts, following along with characters and growing alongside them. By the time I watched the movie, I really felt like I had a good understanding of the new world.

With regards to language, though, one of the main reasons that you should read the book in its original, much like Le Comte de Monte Cristo in its original French, is because translations are never as good as the original either. In a way, a movie is a translation of a book. Translating from written media to visual media. In theory that gives you more freedom, but in practice it is incredibly limiting.

This is even more true if you are watching a movie in a foreign language. Anyone who is able to read their target language will no doubt notice how often subtitles are mistranslated or, at the very least, poorly translated. Though they are useful, relying on them entirely can be ultimately detrimental to your language acquisition. As with everything, trust but verify.

Translation and interpretation

The reason you need to verify is because, at the end of the day, every single translation you encounter is an interpretation to a certain extent. Of course, some offenders are far worse than others, but even those with the best intention must at some point make the decision to choose between two words that mean almost the same thing.

You can facilitate something or you can make it easier. You can cool something off or you can chill it. You can be hungry or you can be famished. Every translation involves choices. Some translators work harder than others to maintain the author’s original intent. Irrespective of the best intentions in the world, there will always be multiple ways to say the same thing.

That said, one of the things that I always recommend to my adult students is to read something you have already read, just in their target language. As of right now I have students reading Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, A The Picture of Dorian Gray, Atlas Shrugged, Count of Monte Cristo, I Am Pilgrim, The Pillars of Earth. Mostly in Spanish, but a few in French.

Without fail, when I introduce this idea to a new student, they look at me with fear in their eyes. My favorite…but after a month, they are confidently reading and, usually, enjoying the process. Even if they don’t enjoy it, no one disputes that reading in a new language is an incredibly potent sleep aid. Once they are able to read, it is time to shift from consumption to production.

Creating your own narrative

The first assignment I give every student I have is translating their favorite song in their target language into English. They do have the benefit of having me build them a personalized playlist, but often they bring me a song they have liked for a long time. This is a lightweight introduction into the next phase of their language acquisition journey.

It is one thing to translate someone else’s words. It is another thing entirely to translate your own thoughts. For that reason, once we are into week 3 of class and we have worked through everything else, it’s time to start writing their own narratives. In an ideal world, I would make them write a story and build a world of their own. However, 100% of my students have full time jobs.

So, what is the next best thing? Writing about their lives! At the end of the day, the only reason anyone learns a new language is to communicate with more people. Since that is the goal, writing stories about your own life gives you the opportunity to practice the things about which you want to talk before you ever have to face a native speaker.

One of the things we focus on in class discussions is having conversations that may possibly arise in the real world. As a consequence, I end up becoming rather close with many of the people with whom I work. After all, you can’t spend that much time speaking to someone about success and failure and love and dreams and goals and history without becoming friends.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

Original works are powerful tools for your second language acquisition. Whether you are consuming them or creating them, they will serve to improve your vocabulary, enhance your ability to think, and, hopefully, elucidate obscure grammar technicalities. That said, the biggest trap language learners fall into is relying too much on consumption.

Production, speech and writing, is far more difficult. Listening comprehension is mostly a function of time. Reading comprehension as well. Speech and writing are dependent on you speaking and writing. It is difficult, but you can do difficult things and become great. So go and create something incredible. You never know the dividends your efforts will pay in the future. I am rooting for you.

Leave a comment

If you’re working on your Spanish, grab the free Spanish PDFs to supplement what you learned in this post. For the complete system, including targeted vocabulary guides and the language patterns framework, upgrade to a paid subscription.

I also offer a 12-week Conversational Spanish course with optional weekly one-on-one sessions. My students consistently learn more in the first month than in years of traditional study. Read their reviews and get started here.

These specific documents are companion worksheets that can be paired with the guides. The goal of the “Beginner” versions is to provide scaffolding for new vocabulary and concepts to accelerate the consumption portion of language acquisition. The “Advanced” versions are focused on production. Forcing you to use the new things that you are learning from the guides or during your studies.

Several of the worksheets are language agnostic and can be used time and again. For those of you who plan to make use of them, I highly recommend printing them out and creating a small binder. For many of them, a cheap lamination option from Staples or Office Max will make it so you can use them over and over again for as long as you are learning new languages.

If it has been a while since you last checked back, make sure you scroll through all of the guides. New ones are added every other week. Should there be anything you would like me to put into a guide, please don’t hesitate to respond to this or leave a comment. I am happy to help when and where I can. Guides and worksheets won’t be enough to reach fluency, but they sure help along the way.

Much of these materials are developed for individual students with whom I work, but their utility extends beyond our individual classes. They have helped hundreds of people along their way to bilingualism and I hope they will help you along your way as well. Best of luck and please let me know if I can be of service in your language acquisition journey.

Best,

BtOdin

Share

The critical period myth

Neuroplasticity is real and to ignore it’s impact on learning would be a disservice to anyone reading this. However, it is also incorrect to treat it as the only thing that matters when it comes to education. Especially considering how many advantages adults have over children as the concepts become more complex. The true critical period is any period of time in which you can commit yourself to improvement.

Children have an advantage that, if given to an adult, would be the cheat code to improving faster than anyone could possibly imagine. What is it, you ask? Simple: a lack of responsibility. Children don’t have to pay rent or go to work or go to the gym or make meals or do chores and everything is paid by someone else. If you were in the same situation, I dare say you could accomplish quite a lot in 90 days.

Fortunately, there are ways to build language learning into your life, even as a busy working professional, you just need to temper your expectations to match your availability. For the best ways to build your language studies into your daily life, check out this article:

Children also don’t have the same embarrassment and shame regulation that adults have. While this can cause issues at times, when it comes to language learning it means they don’t really care if they make mistakes or not. A non child specific advantage that adult language learners can take and steal for themselves. Furthermore, they have absolutely no expectations with regards to timelines.

For an adult, especially one to whom most things come easy, the prospect of being bad at something for months or even years is anything but appealing. Some things simply take more time as an adult, but that doesn’t mean those things are not worth doing. If you want to know what a reasonable timeline looks like as an adult, read this:

Cognitive advantages of adult learners

Adults are aware of trends and patterns that children simply do not have the background knowledge to comprehend. The more you know about a variety of topics, the more likely it is that you have hidden ways to remember words based on your life experience. Even without expressly expanding your own horizons, the mere act of aging is enough to provide you with plenty of scaffolding.

Your vocabulary, in theory, is also larger than that of a child. A larger vocabulary in your native language means a larger vocabulary in your target language. There really is no way around this. That is why I am always urging people to improve their native language skills at the same time as they are working on learning a new language. Both work symbiotically to improve your overall cognition.

Context may seem like something you cannot prepare for and you largely cannot. However, the situations in which you can find yourself are limited. If you have had an experience before, speaking about it in a new language will be easier than working from complete scratch. Again, the act of aging is more than enough to provide you with more relevant experiences than a child has.

Finally, you have motivation. If you are reading this, chances are you have decided to take your language acquisition seriously. This is an advantage that you have over children. Most children don’t want to learn anything. Being here right now, reading this, means that you do want to learn. And, now, you are in control of your education which means doing things you actually enjoy.

Adult specific challenges

That is not to say, of course, that adult learners do not face their own specific challenges. The first and most prevalent is limited time. You do, in fact, have to go to work and do chores and cook meals and maybe you even have to chauffeur your kid(s) around. Your time does not look anything like theirs and therefore you have no business trying to approach education the way that a child does.

You also have to unlearn the fear of mistakes that you developed as you aged. It is normal to fear embarrassment. It is equally harmful to your language acquisition success. Courage is a muscle that needs to be worked in order to develop. If you need help developing your delusional confidence, find out how here:

The final and most difficult hurdle you have to overcome is that of maintaining your momentum alongside your responsibilities. Fortunately, that does not mean you need to be perfect. Instead it means that you need to be honest with yourself about what is possible and give yourself grace in the moments when you fall short of your goals.

Life happens. Emergencies, accidents, children, and responsibilities abound. But that is life. Those things are no reason to avoid doing things you want to do. Learning how to prioritize and optimize so that you can accomplish as much as possible takes time, but you, as an adult, are far more capable of accomplishing those things than any child would be.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

Learning a new language is incredibly unique in that once you have done it, it is done. That is to say, it is incredibly difficult to “lose” your language skills once you have them. Try to enjoy the process because, unless you choose to learn another language (and I think you should) then this is a one time thing. Train yourself to enjoy the journey, it is temporary.

You are, right now, in this very moment, the youngest you ever will be. If age has been an excuse you have been using, waiting only makes it worse. That is true of all things for which you use age as an excuse to avoid. It is difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great. So get out and do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.

Fun quirks of language

Polysemy is one of the things I have discussed in the past and that is the capacity for a word to have multiple meanings. If you missed that article you can read it here:

Using synonyms for your second language studies is helpful because you will not always be able to recall the word you wish to use. When that happens, it is incredibly convenient to have 2 or 3 other words that are similar that you can use instead. It doesn’t always work, but having more options is always advantageous. When in doubt, use the word you can remember.

Share

Antonyms are similar but more so in that they are perfect for uncovering new vocabulary to throw into the mix. Sometimes you won’t be able to think of the right word, a contrived, backwoods way of doing things (hi, it’s my way) is to run through antonyms and look for possibilities among them. Of course, this is where your curiosity will serve you more than anything else. To master that, read this:

Contranyms, my new favorite linguistic component. In short they are unique words that have two opposite or contradictory meanings depending on the context in which they are used. For English language learners, this can cause some major issues with things like “buckle” that can mean to fasten, like a seatbelt, or collapse, as in buckling under the pressure.

Here is a list of just the words in English:

• Cleave — to cling to / to split apart

• Dust — to sprinkle particles onto / to remove particles from

• Seed — to plant seeds / to remove seeds (as in a watermelon)

• Skin — to cover with skin / to remove the skin

• Trim — to decorate by adding / to neaten by cutting away

• Buckle — to fasten securely / to collapse

• Bolt — to secure in place / to flee suddenly

• Sanction — to permit / to penalize

• Screen — to display / to conceal

• Weather — to endure / to wear away

• Clip — to fasten together / to cut off

• Rent / Lease / Hire — to provide for payment / to obtain for payment

• Garnish — to decorate (food) / to seize (wages)

• Fix — to repair / to render unable to reproduce; also “fix in place”

• Strike — to hit / to miss (in baseball)

• Resign — to quit a position / to sign on again

• Enjoin — to urge / to forbid

• Peruse — to read carefully / to skim (newer secondary sense)

• Scan — to examine closely / to glance over

• Hold up — to support / to delay or rob

• Wind up — to begin (wind up a watch) / to conclude (wind up an event)

• Toss out — to suggest / to discard

• Overlook — to supervise / to fail to notice

• Help — to assist / to prevent (”I couldn’t help but laugh”)

• Apology — an expression of regret / a formal defense (apologetics)

  

(Un)Fortunately, you have the opportunity to explore these and many others in your target language. Since these all hold dual meanings, looking for their translations might not net the expected results. Language is incredibly complex and, in many cases, it is evolving constantly. Be patient with yourself, you are not the only one confused my these sorts of words.

Improving your vocabulary

By understanding these different linguistic components, you have the opportunity to always learn one more word. One of the most frustrating aspects of learning a new language is trying to ensure you are learning things that are relevant to you. However, what may seem relevant now may not be so relevant when you are speaking to a local and they go off on a tangent.

When doing this, my recommendation is to write down the new words and immediately use them in sentences of your own construction. Even if you need to write the sentence out in English first and translate it later, that is still better than looking at the word and hoping it will stick. As nice as that would be, the reality is that you need to be using words if you want consistent access to them.

Subscribe now

Words you might not use are still important because the words you use make up less than half of the words you need to be capable of fluid comprehension. Just because you can’t foresee yourself having a certain conversation does not mean it will not happen. You never know what people are going through and you likely underestimate how much most are willing to share.

Furthermore, you should be seeking to grow your vocabulary in your native language. Recently there has been a trend of students at different schools around the USA having their classmates attempt to read flashcards. See an example here:

You can read more and find the video here.

Since that is the world in which we currently live, it is crucial that you raise your own standards. No one else is going to do it for you. No one else cares if you do or do not. Read above your level, write with the goal of being eloquent, speak in a way that makes you proud. Fortunately, doing so in one language makes it far easier to do in each subsequent language.

Expanding your abilities

As far as improving your vocabulary goes, there is one foolproof method: the thesaurus. However, since this is a language you do not know very well, I would recommend using reverso.com instead (or alongside) so that you can be sure of the translations you are receiving. Reverso allows you to see various synonyms in contextualized sentences so you know you are choosing the best option.

Reading books that you believe are beyond your level is also incredibly helpful. Each one of my students reads a book. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Atlas Shrugged, The Count of Monte Cristo, A Portrait of Dorian Gray, and many more. These are people who know little to none of the language when we start, but that does not make their reading any less effective.

The goal is never to understand everything. Especially not at first. In fact, if you were to pick up one of these books, I would be incredibly impressed if you knew the definition of every word within, even in your native language. That’s the point though. You will never know everything, so you might as well get started adding to your repertoire.

Share

After a few weeks (or months, depending on how seriously they take the assignment) everyone, universally, reports being shocked by the fact that they can, in fact, read rather fluidly. Of course, the goal at the beginning to read 1 page per night out loud. Only after a month am I even beginning to think about having them dedicate time to translating what they read.

Your final hurdle, though, has nothing to do with reading. Done right, you can be adept at reading very quickly. No, unfortunately there is a much greater obstacle to overcome. Even more so than having a conversation with a native speaker. That is, learning how to speak in a group setting. One on one is a challenge, but moving to speaking in a group is like going from junior varsity to the pros.

Practice by listening to podcasts and TV shows. The news is particularly good for this due to the format. It happened to me and it happens to everyone. You finally have an hours long conversation with someone only to find out that you do not, in fact, speak your new language fluently the moment you are flung into a group of 2 or more native speakers.

This is another one of those things that is “the only way out is through” and exposure is your cure. If you want to improve, you have to spend more time listening to multiple orators at once. It is frustrating, and it will be frustrating, until it isn’t. Persevere. When groups are your biggest challenge, you are truly approaching fluency.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

As someone who finds more utility in vocabulary than in grammar, these idiosyncrasies in language are incredible useful. You can use synonyms to learn new ways, often better, to express yourself. Antonyms are perfect for expanding your vocabulary with approximations and exact opposites. Contranyms help with the understanding of polysemy and the multifaceted nature of language.

The best and worst part of learning new languages is that there is no such thing as perfection. All you can do is be better than you were yesterday. Do that for long enough, often less time than you think, and you will inevitably become fluent. This is true of any goal you have. It is difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great. So get out and do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.

Leave a comment

If you work in healthcare, I’ve built Medical Spanish and French Handbooks with dozens of clinical patterns and vocabulary frameworks you won’t find anywhere else. Available to paid subscribers.

I also build custom courses for professionals. Doctors, nurses, engineers, and anyone who needs targeted language skills for their field. Every program is tailored to your specialty, your patient population, and your schedule. Learn more and get started.

Theory and practice

In general, I am in favor of diving deep into topics that are well understood already. For people who love to cook, cooking and recipe videos are incredible practice. Gardeners will get a lot from watching gardening videos, especially if they are looking to solve problems already. However, generalized vocabulary is just as, if not more, important than specialized vocabulary.

Sometimes in my classes I can feel my students rolling their eyes at some of the vocabulary we see. After all, when will you really ever use the word “undermine” in Spanish? My answer to that question is a question of my own, “Why can’t you foresee a situation in which you will use more unique vocabulary? As frustrating as it can be to forget basic words, that is no reason to avoid complex vocabulary.

More importantly, you have absolutely no control over the words other people use to communicate with you. Perhaps you never will use the word ameliorate, but what if someone else uses it whilst speaking to you? Then what? Not every word you learn is meant to be a word you use. The advice I give my students is to learn 5 words and use the one or two you can remember for certain. (see fig. 1)

Nothing is quite as brutal as keeping up with someone throughout an entire conversation only to get stopped in your tracks by a new word you never learned because it can’t be found in a top 100 list somewhere. If you are going to put all of this time and effort into learning a new language, you might as well do it to the best of your ability.

Subscribe now

Broadening your horizons

Learning how to do new things is one of the better ways to learn a new language. As much as I think people who love to cook will get a ton out of recipe videos, the truth is that those who are not adept in the kitchen have even more to gain from the very same exercises. But this doesn’t stop at the kitchen. Just about anything you want to learn, you can learn in a new language. Read how here:

There are few reasons to broaden your horizons more profound than learning a new language. If you are planning to share your life with a group of people who don’t share your native language, you are going to be confronted by topics you do not speak about in your native language. Through no fault of your own, of course, different countries have different problems and cultures and histories and you can’t possibly know them all at the beginning.

When I was first interviewed for my exchange program, the interviewers asked me what I knew about Belgium. The truth was, I didn’t really know much at all. I knew it was a country, I knew where it was, and I knew they spoke 3 languages officially. That was my primary reason for choosing that country with Switzerland being my second choice.

Subscribe now

By the time I returned home, however, I understood far more. Part of broadening your horizons that I think is too often overlooked is that you don’t have to be the one to do all of the work. All you need to do is be willing, other people will happily fill your time with stories and explanations if you give them the opportunity. This is also your escape from generalized vocabulary.

Becoming interesting

Once upon a lifetime ago, I was the manager of a sales office. In my training, one of the things I focused on was authenticity because that was always my biggest pet peeve with sales representatives. Learning how to get people interested in a product is very similar to learning how to be interesting as a person. Fortunately, there isn’t really anything you need to do in order to be interesting.

Share

Like it or not, the most interesting person is an interested person. Being an interested person is in your best interest (ha ha) because it is the easiest, most efficient way to learn new things and meet new people. In short, you can both expand your understanding of the world and grow your circle of influence simultaneously by learning to listen.

Listening is a skill and it is a skill that pays dividends in all things language. Using language, interpreting language, parsing language, crafting language, and much more. That said, it is also one of the things that is most frustrating because no one wants to spend their whole life sitting in silence. The nice thing is that the better you become at listening the less time you will spend sitting in silence.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

Everyone starts somewhere. That means there is utility in the small talk you will go through every morning. You can gain a lot form speaking about very little if you know where to look. Pay attention to the mannerisms of people you speak to while they listen. Imitation is a powerful tool you have at your disposal through speech, listening, translation, and every other aspect of language acquisition.

Depth of conversation can evolve, but it cannot start out deep. The profundity of any conversation is dependent upon both your ability to express yourself and your ability to completely comprehend your interlocuter. If you are not where you want to be yet, start by learning words you can’t see yourself ever using. You never know with whom you will end up conversing.

Leave a comment

Everything in this post is part of a larger system. If you want the full methodology in one place, 3 Months to Conversational is available now on Amazon. It’s the same framework my private students use, designed for independent learners.

If you want that framework customized to your target language, your goals, and your schedule. Check out the private course options.

Why does this happen?

It is normal for comprehension to develop before production. Especially with regards to reading. In fact, reading should be something that can become reasonably fluid in a month or two. What is important to remember is that once reading is fluid it begins to serve you. All of the work you put in to get to that point is merely laying the ground work for the future.

Most apps rely on reading primarily because they expect you to read and answer questions. While apps that focus on listening comprehension do exist, the sad truth is, no amount of listening to hypothetical conversations can beat having your own conversations using your own thoughts and your own language, with all of the limitation that follow.

There is a lot of talk about comprehensible input and it is important, but with all of the focus on input, output often takes a back seat. Speech, however, is exclusively output. For that reason alone, you desperately need to include at least as much output in your language learning strategy as you have input. Watching TV for an hour? Write for an hour. Listening to music? Write down the words you hear.

Production takes more time to become fluid because it relies on you having the most efficient neural pathways possible. At the beginning and throughout the majority of your time learning a new language you are going to struggle specifically because your brain has not had enough time to build efficient pathways. To understand this better, read this:

Cortisol spikes

Real time conversation triggers stress, especially when you are conversing in a language that is not native to you. Stress shuts down the language centers of your brain. It doesn’t matter which language, if you are stress all of your linguistic abilities are going to suffer. This is why there are full college courses for public speaking. Cortisol management is critical for successful language acquisition.

Subscribe now

While having a tutor or a teacher to guide you is helpful, you have to be careful to not fall into the trap of always speaking to only them. After a certain amount of time, you are going to become comfortable and, while that comfort may serve you while you are in class, it is risky to put all of your eggs in one basket.

Diversifying your conversation partners is simultaneously the most difficult and most important part of successful second language acquisition. Training under pressure is a good way to practice even on your own. Set yourself a timer, answer questions, record yourself, and show someone the recording. Ask for tips and ways to improve, then do it again with a new set of questions.

The power of feedback

Writing and speaking alone is great. However, it can be dangerous if you are making mistakes and you do not know it. Training is good, but training wrong can have lasting consequences. Fortunately, since this is language we are talking about, those consequences are neither lethal nor dangerous and they can be remedied with time.

Share

Still, it would behoove you to ensure that you are not making the same mistakes consistently to avoid this altogether. This step is quite difficult without outside help, unfortunately. You could use AI, but that is limiting in its own way, you can see more on why here:

Ideally you have a native speaker or at least someone who speaks the language you are learning that can offer you some help. Tutors, teachers, professors, those are great (and I would recommend having one), but they are not necessary if you have someone who is willing to help you out with this. If not, there is still one thing you can do.

Start reading more. If you are constantly making the same mistake, especially while writing, then reading will show you very quickly what mistake. Understanding why is another question and that is where a tutor pays off, but at the very least you will have a starting point and can work towards correcting it yourself. Teaching yourself is difficult, but it is not impossible.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

It is incredibly common to find yourself in a place where you can understand a language, but can’t speak it. This may come as a surprise to some because it is just as easy to end up capable of speaking without being able to understand native speakers. True language acquisition is all about balance. My pushing creation this hard is only to bring balance to the amount of consumption most prevalent.

Consumption of content is easy, creation is far more difficult. However, both are equally simple. Make time to write about your day, your life, your hopes, your dreams, your goals, and check back often to see if you are headed in the right direction. Adding another language to your life means learning to be you with new, often more expressive words. It doesn’t change your core. Go create!

Leave a comment

If you’re stuck in the gap between understanding and speaking, you’re not alone, and you’re not broken. The Guides library (paid subscribers) includes structured output protocols designed to bridge exactly this gap, day by day.

The fastest way to break through is with someone who can hear you, correct you, and push you in real time. That’s what my private courses are built for. Read what students say about the experience.

Share

Early signs of success

While there are no guarantees, one of the early signs of success that I have seen in people who do flip this proverbial switch is that they are consistently working every aspect of foreign language acquisition. They are reading and writing and speaking and listening every day. For more on hitting all of the components in your own daily life, read this:

They also take me seriously when I talk about building an immersive environment. Of course it is easier to just live somewhere where you are immersed in your target language, but that is not an option for everyone. For those who do not have such an option, choosing to fill their time and space with their target language is the next best option.

Even if it starts out as only one change, if you make one change every week for a year your life will look unrecognizable to what it was. For help on building yourself an immersive environment at home, check out this article:

The biggest thing, however, that you can do to put yourself in the optimal position is create at least as much as you are consuming. Most people neglect this because they believe speech is something that stands on its own. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Speech depends on a variety of factors not the least of which is the ability to understand the person with whom you are speaking.

Writing is probably the single best way to train speaking abilities aside from attempting to hold actual conversations. The same recall mechanisms are at work with none of the pressure. Do it often enough and you will realize that the words you write consistently are easier to recall during conversation. That one realization should, in turn, convince you of how important writing is.

In the thick of it

Once you are in the thick of it, all of the writing you did early on will come back to pay dividends. Seeing your early work is much more powerful than trying to remember mistakes you may or may not have made during a given conversation. In fact, sometimes when you are struggling to come up with things to write, going back over old conversations is perfect for advancement.

Keeping a record of your progress is something far too few people do. Not only with regards to language acquisition. If you truly want to improve a skill, you need to start by tracking where you are and decide where you want to go from there. For those who are struggling to set realistic language learning goals, be sure to follow these steps:

Avoiding burnout is your next challenge as someone who wants to make it through to the other side. Monotony is dangerous and if you are already bored before you even sit down to begin studying, it is going to be incredibly difficult to continue as time progresses. By having a variety of materials you can work through that cover every interest you have, you give yourself the best chance of making it through to fluency.

A little talked about trick that I use with all of my students is that of a rest week. Just one week where we completely stop talking about the target language. That is not to say that they avoid the language, I work with a great many people who are immersed in their target language. Rather they stop their dedicated study time for one week to allow the material we have covered time to sink in.

Coming out on the other side

Normally, the first blip of success happens on the other side of one of these rest weeks. Which we normally take at the end of week 8 of class, for those who are curious. Today, in fact, I had a student recount to me that he was able to understand directions clearly from a fitness instructor for the first time in 4 months. That’s an incredibly exciting development, but only the first step.

All of these are small wins you need to be looking out for in your own daily life. Are you able to understand a little bit more of the song you love? Is the show you are watching making more sense, even if it’s only one of the actors? Have you found yourself wondering how you might say different things in your target language? These are all wins that you should be checking off of your list as you go.

These precursors lead to eventually going form thinking about objects to thinking about conversations to thinking about ideas all in your target language without any interference from your native language. Slowly, then suddenly, you will go from looking at a window and thinking “ventana” to looking out the window and day dreaming in your target language.

The final indication that you are through to the other side is that you are no longer translating in your head before you speak. This one is the one that sneaks up on you. One day you will wake up and step outside, go up to someone and strike up a conversation, and only hours later will you realize that you didn’t spend any mental bandwidth translating during that conversation.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the worst part of all of this is that it is impossible to understand unless you have experienced it before. Sure, you can use the analogous experiences to approximate the feeling, but there is no replacement for experience. I want everyone reading this to understand exactly what I mean and I am fortunate to have had the honor of seeing so many people experience it thus far.

I can’t say it is easy, but it is simple. Do these things every day for 21 days and you will be shocked at just how far you will go. Of course, 3 weeks is nowhere near enough time for you to start speaking a new language, but it certainly long enough for you to make undeniable progress. I look forward to hearing stories of your triumphs. I am rooting for you.

Leave a comment

Eager for more resources?

Everything in this post is part of a larger system. If you want the full methodology in one place, 3 Months to Conversational is available now on Amazon. It’s the same framework my private students use, designed for independent learners.

If you want that framework customized to your target language, your goals, and your schedule. Check out the private course options.

Subscribe now

Gustar

Almost universally, when it comes to the verb gustar in Spanish, people believe, or at least associate, it with the verb to “like” in English. This makes sense if we are translating for meaning. Of course we say “I like x” in English, so why would it be different? Well, because “gustar” means “to please”, not “to like”.

This makes sense when we think about the word “gusto” as in “mucho gusto” or “much pleasure. What many who learned Spanish in the public school system have come to believe means “nice to meet you” and that’s because, well, it does. What it translates to, however, is different. By layering these various meanings over the actual translations the way Spanish is largely taught has caused more problems than not.

Once we know that “gustar” means “to please” it is far easier to understand the conjugation. After all, if it was “like” we would say, “yo gusto” and not “me gusta”. Since we are saying x pleases me, it follows logically that the verb needs to be conjugated for x and not for me. Learning, or worse teaching, that “me gusta” means “I like” may be true, but it is more harmful than taking 5 more minutes to explain why it is not that simple.

By making this small switch in your brain, you will be able to express you wants better because you can immediately employ the polite “me gustaria” knowing that it translates to “it would please me” rather than “I would like” even if the meaning remains the same. Learning to understand meaning over translation is a huge step, but without the foundations it can be tenuous.

Hasta

As with the above, “hasta” is often taught to be understood in conjunction with other terms. This is fine, for a phrasebook. However, when it comes to practical, useful language, thinking of “hasta” as part of “hasta luego”, “hasta pronto”, or “hasta mañana” (see you later, see you soon, and see you tomorrow respectively) is rather detrimental to long term success.

Hasta has nothing to do with the verb ver and the verb ver has nothing to do with the word hasta. Instead, it is well worth it to learn to read the word as “until”. Yes, that makes the “see you” examples slightly different, but this is why I always recommend direct translation during the early stages of language acquisition. You need to know the direct to truly integrate the implicit. For more on that, read here:

The utility of “hasta” reaches beyond the word “until” in English, but understanding it as until will make those other opportunities make more sense as you come across them in the wild. This is one of the most misinterpreted words I come across with new students. It makes sense to teach it that way when passing a test is the goal.

At the end of the day in order to accurately interpret meaning, you have to know the mechanisms leading to linguistic variance. If you don’t understand why something is happening, using it correctly is exponentially more difficult. Yes, with enough time and exposure you can build an incredibly close approximation. Learning the direct translation and sentence formation is just easier, and faster.

Bueno vs bien

This one is pretty simple. Most people associate these with good and it is not because they are taught incorrectly, though they may be. Rather it is because a great many native English speakers are unable to speak English with proper grammar. What is the correct answer to “how are you” assuming you are going to respond with what most people say?

The correct answer, grammatically, is “I am well” not “I am good”. Fortunately, the mechanism is also very simple. Good is an adjective and well is an adverb. All that means, for you, is that you will use “bueno” or variations with an accordance between gender and plurality (buena/buenos/buenas), to describe nouns. So, good for people, places or things.

Bien, on the other hand, will never have to worry about a gender accord because the word bien is only used to describe verbs. Something being done well, for example. Now, in Spanish it is often used as an enhancer as well for “very” but always with a verb. You have to be careful, of course, because that verb could come in the form of a past participle. For more on those, read here:

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

I understand the desire to jump straight to understanding the meaning. Especially in those moments when direct translation fails you. But in order to sprint you need to be able to walk with confidence. Walking is direct translation and it is just one step you will need to take on your way to fluency. Unfortunately, for many people that means unlearning bad habits.

The process of unlearning things is more painful than it ought to be, but you only have to do it once. Plus, once you get to the part where translating for meaning is actually effective, you already have a leg up because those same things hurting you now will come back to serve you in the future. It is difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great. So get out and do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.

If you work in healthcare, I’ve built Medical Spanish and French Handbooks with dozens of clinical patterns and vocabulary frameworks you won’t find anywhere else. Available to paid subscribers.

I also build custom courses for professionals. Doctors, nurses, engineers, and anyone who needs targeted language skills for their field. Every program is tailored to your specialty, your patient population, and your schedule. Learn more and get started.

English grammar rules

For as much as people tend to believe grammar is important, the vast majority of native speakers struggle to speak their native language with perfect grammar. This is especially true for English speakers, though native German speakers often mess up their grammar. Of course, German grammar is far more complex, but the point remains. Perfect grammar is largely a fever dream.

A major sticking point for native English speakers learning new languages are prepositions. About, for, on, at, by, to, and dozens of others cause major issues because, well, most English speakers cannot explain why they use them and when it is appropriate. In this instance, let’s take the word “for” as an example.

When you say for, do you mean you are making an exchange? I will give you two of these for one of those.

Do you mean you are in favor of something? I am for the freedom of expression.

Are you trying to explain a reason you did something? I did it for you.

And these are just three examples. Unfortunately, the versatility of the word “for” means that you may need to learn up to 5 words in your target language in order to properly express all of these ideas that only require one word in your native language. Let alone the fact that that is merely one of the dozens of prepositions that carry multiple uses in every language.

This is to say nothing of contractions and the myriad of people who fail to use them correctly in English. Mixing up “they’re”, “there”, and “their” is bad enough in English, but it is horrendous to make this mistake when translating in your head to another language. This is why I am so adamant about understanding one’s native language before learning a new one.

Finally, a problem in English that doesn’t exist in the romance languages is that of having words that, in the romance languages, are actually tenses. Those words are “might”, “may”, “will”, “have”, and “would”. I have a full write up on that you can find here:

Subscribe now

When you can afford to mess up

You can’t! Just kidding. Honestly, depending on the language of course, there are very few things that you cannot afford to mess up. Verb conjugation is one of the things most people get hung up on during the beginning stages, but so long as you get the timing right, you can work towards getting the person right. In fact, even if you get the timing wrong, using the correct word is more important.

Think about this in your daily life. Have you ever been speaking to someone who said, “We go to the store tomorrow”? Obviously “we are going to the store tomorrow” is correct, but you understand the message being conveyed nonetheless. The same is true when you are speaking to just about anyone. Unless they are an unreasonable person, conjugation mistakes are far from the end of the world.

Another very common aspect to languages that far too many people take far too seriously is word order. Yes, word order is important, but it is, again, one of the areas where you can afford to mess up, so long as you are using the correct word. Word order will work itself out with time. After all, you can only encounter so many examples before the correct formation begins to stick permanently.

The same is true of gendered words. In the vast majority of cases, using the wrong article with a word or failing to use the appropriate ending with an adjective is not a problem. Over time you should strive for perfection, but perfection is impossible. Very few people, if any, are actually capable of speaking a language perfectly. Using the right word is far more important.

Foundational structures for fluid speech

Since all of these things can become more fluid with practice, the foundations you need to put in place immediately are, in fact, the same as the areas of speech where you can afford to mess up. Mistakes are incredibly important for foundation building. Knowing what not to do is often more helpful than knowing what to do. The fastest way to learn is to fail early and often.

Word order is one of the first things you will be introduced to and it is something you should have a cursory understanding of from the start. However, that does not mean you should wait until you understand it perfectly to begin using the language. Most language are replete with exceptions and the most expedient way to learn the exceptions is by treating all rules as hard rules.

The same is true of verb tenses. You should learn the past, present, and future. Being able to correctly use each of the three will ensure that, at the very least, the person with whom you are speaking knows WHEN you are talking about, even if the WHO you are talking about is less than clear. This is why we cover 6 tenses in 6 weeks during my classes. Using them is the best way to learn them.

Finally, learning descriptive words is important for a sturdy foundation due to the fact that they will often open up several vocabulary vectors for you. If you know slow then you know slowly and to slow and slower and slowest. Each new vocabulary word you learn gives you the opportunity to build a deeper understanding of the language.

Descriptive language is great because it allows you to be more eloquent in your speech. It also forces you into mistakes with regards to word order and gendered words which is feeding not two, but three birds with one scone. At first you will have to express yourself however you can express yourself, but your goal is, and should be, to express yourself however you want.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusions

Learning a new language is often less about rules and more about balance. If you focus exclusively on the rules, you are going to paralyze yourself into silence. Striking the perfect balance between progressing towards perfection and speaking with delusional confidence is easier said than done, but that is what makes it the perfect goal.

Do not fall into the trap of seeking perfection, especially not in the first year of your language acquisition. Improvements will come, but only if you are willing to put yourself out there and sound stupid. Otherwise you will hypothetically speak well, which doesn’t mean much to anyone at all. Effort, on the other hand, means the world to people who speak your target language natively. It is difficult, but you can do difficult things and be great, so do some difficult things and become great. I am rooting for you.

Leave a comment

Second Language Strategies is a reader-supported publication. The strategies in this post are a fraction of what’s available to paid subscribers. The full Guides library, including The First 30 Days blueprint and advanced acquisition frameworks, is waiting for you on the other side.

If you’re ready to stop reading about language learning and start doing it with personalized instruction, learn about my private courses here. 28 out of 28 students have spoken their target language after completing the program.

Share

What Duolingo does well

My favorite part of Duolingo is also one of the things that it does best: it has an extremely low barrier to entry. It’s free, provided you are okay with spending a fair bit of time watching ads, and it is the perfect start for someone interested in getting back into language learning. The vocabulary may be sporadic, but you cannot walk away without knowing any words. That is certainly something.

Aside from a base level of vocabulary and the way in which it excels at getting people started, Duolingo really is not helpful. I like to think of it as a sort of gateway drug. People will start up with it, some will stop there, others will set out for something more potent once the novelty of gamified education wears off. Of course, it should be said they expertly sell the feeling of learning a new language.

Where it falls short

After the first 30 days, you might start to notice that there is such thing as too much repetition. When you can do the exercises in 1.5 minutes because you have the every vocabulary word they have showed you memorized, it’s time to put the phone down and get to work on the things that will actually move the needle for you. The limitations of Duolingo far outweigh the benefits.

For instance, relying on a robot to understand your speech is dangerous. Not only that, but the opportunities that you do have to converse with your phone are almost entirely devoid of actual, practical context. The vocabulary is generic and directionless meaning it does not adapt to you or the things you actually need to express yourself in your target language.

Personally, I find the most egregious failure of Duolingo is that there is no incentive to write. Writing is incredibly important for complete language acquisition and without that aspect your abilities will always have a ceiling. For more on adding writing to your language learning routine, check out this article:

It is also lacking in effective feedback mechanisms. No one in a real world conversation is going to stop you and tell you that you are wrong because you used “el” instead of “la” while speaking. So even the feedback that is being provided is largely unhelpful in a real world context. At a certain point, there is no replacement for human feedback.

Finally, it is almost too “fun”. That is to say, there is nowhere near enough pressure applied in the lessons. One problem most people run into when they finally escape the silent period is contending with the cortisol spikes inherent in high pressure situations like speaking to native speakers for the first, or hundredth, time. Learning to manage this stress is crucial. You can learn how here:

Duolingo is capable of progressing you towards a low intermediate level. From there you will likely find yourself on a near endless plateau. You could go 100 days in a row or 1000 days in a row and it will not change your ceiling in any real sense. Worst of all, you will find yourself in the ever common “I can understand but I can’t speak” trap.

As I mentioned above, my favorite part about Duolingo is that it gets people rolling. If you are taking your second language acquisition seriously, however, you could begin speaking a new language confidently faster than your friend can reach a 100 day streak on Duolingo. You just need to choose the things you focus on wisely.

What should you do then?

I would be remiss if I didn’t provide options for how you can advance quicker. Do I think you should remove Duolingo entirely? That depends. If it is the only thing keeping you tangentially tied to your target language and associated goals, then you should keep using it as much as possible. However, if you are craving more, here is what you should do.

1. Start writing immediately

   1. 50 sentences per week

      1. Tell as story

      2. Teach someone something

      3. Keep a journal

   2. NO TRANSLATION HELP

      1. Do not use translation help for this. Fight for every word and find ways to say things any way that you can rather than the best way that you can.

   3. Iterate

      1. Everyone gets caught up on repetition. Yes, repetition is crucial for successful language learning. But that is only the first part of the equation. Once you have done your repetition it is necessary to begin iteration. Take the sentences you have written, use reverso.com (or something similar) and learn to speak/write how you want rather than how you must.

Subscribe now

1. Start reading

   1. Read something above your language “level”

   2. Read the news

   3. Read about things you want to learn more about in general

   4. Read out loud to practice fluid speech without needing to come up with your own words

   5. Translate texts to improve your vocabulary and understanding of grammar structures in your target language

2. Speak

   1. Hire a tutor

   2. Call a friend

   3. Record yourself

   4. Review conversations you have had and translate them to your target language

   5. rehearse in the mirror

Doing these three things for 21 days straight will completely change your language learning experience, especially if it has been primarily limited to Duolingo and other language learning apps. Continue to use the apps as supplementation, sure, but if you truly want to see meaningful progress, you have to step outside of your comfort zone. Push beyond the apps.

Share Second Language Strategies

Conclusion

If you have hit the Duolingo wall, it’s time to accept apps for what they are: supplementation. Trying to learn a new language with an app is equivalent to trying to get into shape by taking BCAAs and creatine. Those things can help, but they will not do much if you are not working to improve the foundations your are building. Supplements are good, but exercise is better.

I understand the desire to maintain a streak. In fact, Duolingo’s marketing team pretty much relies on the human desire to maintain continuity in order to keep their user base. What if, though, you built your own streak? How many days can you read in a row? How many days will you write? Speak? Challenge yourself to find out and see how far you can take your linguistic skills.

Leave a comment

If you’re working on your Spanish, grab the free Spanish PDFs to supplement what you learned in this post. For the complete system, including targeted vocabulary guides and the language patterns framework, upgrade to a paid subscription.

I also offer a 12-week Conversational Spanish course with optional weekly one-on-one sessions. My students consistently learn more in the first month than in years of traditional study. Read their reviews and get started here.