More Free Resources - Self-Test

Another test, provided by Juan Ramon de Arana. Go on, take a spin.

BabelFish

I recently received an email written entirely in another language, and rather than asking someone to translate, I decided that this would be a perfect chance to practice and learn.

So I found some tools, and translated the text - the language was not a common one, so I had to use special tools. But just after that, I learned about BabelFish. A great tool - you simply plug in the text, choose the to/from languages, and click submit.

I've used it since for German, French and Italian, and it works pretty well! Enjoy!

Parenting & Language Learning

As an adult learner, it's hard to read an article like this and not feel a bit, well, cheated. But if you have children, it should really reinforce a) your attempts to learn language, and b) the impact of you learning a language on your child.

I find the idea that kids older than 5 or 6 have missed a window of opportunity a little hard to swallow, but on the other hand, it is also motivating.

There are also plenty of ways to expose a child to a foreign language:
- Video programming
- Friends who speak a foreign language
- Travel to foreign countries

The point made in this article that is most important to me is how crucial the parent is to language development. If you have kids, your learning pursuits can make a difference to them.

Motivating Statistics About Spanish, pt. 2

Wikipedia has an interesting entry for Spanish Language in the US. Again, maybe the most important thing is gaining a little extra motivation for your study. If you aren't studying Spanish, you might look for a link for your language.

The table indicating the Spanish-speaking percentage of the population by state is really interesting!

Using the Verb "Tomar"

For those of you studying Spanish, you'll find this article from About.com interesting.

Tomar is one of those words that means all kinds of different things. So it can either be a high value piece of vocabulary, or confusing as heck!

Free Resources for Spanish Practice

In my regular search for resources to help me learn, I stumbled upon this test from the BBC. It will, at least, give you a sense for what you are learning as you practice.

Motivating Statistics About Spanish

As I've mentioned in past posts, sometimes, keeping your motivation level up is the most important thing you can do to achieve your language learning goals. So here are a few "did you knows" (courtesy of the Baltimore Public Library Site):

• Spanish is the official language of 20 countries
• There are more than 30 countries and territories in which Spanish is widely spoken
• Spanish is the third most widely-spoken language in the world? 250 million people speak Spanish as their mother tongue
• Spanish ranks 4th in official language population. 280 million people live in countries where Spanish is the official language

Surviving the "Dip" - 5 Rules

Here's a thought for you - 5 Rules for Surviving the Language Learning Dip.

1) Have clear goals & write them down - When you hit the tough times, if you don't know why you are working so hard, you will be more likely to quit. Have a goal(s) written down in your study area so you can refer to it daily. Make it exciting and challenging - mine is, "Learn enough Spanish over the next year so I can go there to live for a month or two." Always helps if there's a reward in it for you.

2) When you get bored, shake things up - Vocabulary drills can be mind-numbing. Although I do practice vocab, I don't do it daily. But if you're getting bored, change things up - find a foreign language paper online, and try reading a sentence. Look up the words you don't know. Flip on an foreign language internet radio station - try writing an email to someone in Spanish (you don't even need to send it).

3) Stay focused, practice daily - Think of it the same way you would think about exercising - if you don't work at it daily, you won't get in shape. Make time for it each day.

4) Challenge/reward yourself regularly - Nothing is more motivating than taking a risk (such as speaking to a native) and being rewarded with a positive reaction ("Your accent is great!"). More traditional rewards are good too - you might also set a short-term goal (learn how to conjugate verbs...) and then buy yourself that iPhone you've been waiting to buy...

5) Work within a community - This may be the most important thing of all - seek out people who are also trying to learn, people you can talk to. That way, you'll have extra motivation to learn, and support during the rough times.

Can I Talk To A Native Speaker?

No matter how much you practice, you will probably never be entirely comfortable in talking to a native speaker. Let's face it - it's the same reason that talking to an attorney about law or a professor about their discipline can cause you to roll over and agree with anything they say.

They are the experts, right?

Although I've been practicing Spanish diligently for months, I still get tongue-tied and make mistakes when I try to actually speak with a native.

Speaking to another person is a lot like public speaking - you may feel as if your whole value as a person is being judged! But working through that feeling is valuable.

So here's a technique I've recently developed - feel free to use it. You don't even have to give me credit:
1) Pick some people you know are not primarily English speakers (regardless of what language they speak)
2) Learn one or two words in their language (I recommend hello and goodbye)
3) Every time you see those people, use these words
4) If they correct you, try to implement what they suggested next time. If they don't correct you, ask them if you are saying these words correctly.

Although you may learn 5-10 words in languages you will never speak, you will get practice using simple words to speak to someone in another language. And that practice will help you lose your fear of speaking the language you are trying to learn.

Staying On Track By Getting Off Track

A post from Thomas Crawford about a Seth Godin idea called the "Dip" - definitely something for you to read if you're starting the adventure of learning a new language. The post also references Karl Kapp (whose recent book Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos features our product), who reinforces the same idea from a different direction - that of trial and error.

Take the two ideas together, and you end up with an empowering idea for anyone trying to learn - it's OK to get stuck in a rut, and varying and rethinking your studies, even if it means a loss of productivity (getting off track) might hold the key to getting you back on track.

This is a knowledge fractal you'll see show up across lots of disciplines - my Tae Kwon Do instructor talks about periods where you "plateau" in terms of your development, and no matter how much effort you put in, you don't seem to move forward. Times passes. Then you hit a magical breakthrough point, and you're off again.

Look back at Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions and you'll find the same idea of "punctuated equilibrium" or paradigm shifts.

Bottom line - Expect to have periods in your process of learning where you seem to be running in place, and when those times hit, get out of your routine and try something different. And give yourself a break. Part of the solution is time passing...