Do you have one of those friends who can just pick up and travel whenever he or she wants? How can they just take off of work at the drop of a dime and afford a life of traveling? SO jealous. With modern technology and the advances in the work field, this lifestyle is becoming increasingly easier to obtain. Here...
Learning French: The following movies are contemporary classics, all of which are available on Netflix. They are also all movies without too much dialect. If you are a beginner or low-intermediate student of French, you should probably watch them with subtitles first and then watch them again without subtitles. If you are a high-intermediate or advanced student of French then you...
Learning Spanish: The following movies are contemporary classics, all of which are available on Netflix. If you are a beginner or low-intermediate student of Spanish, you should probably watch them with subtitles first and then watch them again without subtitles. If you are a high-intermediate or advanced student of Spanish then you should watch them twice each without subtitles. - Maria Full...
Guess what the most popular 5 slang words are in American English? According to Alina Dizik (link to her WSJ article below), they are: Dude. (But I think my college friends would give "dude" a run for its money with "bro"!) Chilling. (But as most of us insiders know, we usually write/say "chillin.") Psyched. (I am a big user of psyched--probably have been for...
I'd like to write about some of the ways linguists talk about motivation in language learning.To break it down into the two main categories, we have: integrative motivation and instrumental motivation. Of course, these two types of motivation can exist in the same person but in order to separate them in your mind, here are their traditional definitions: Integrative motivation: when you...
In a recent story in the New York Times (link below), the benefits of bilingualism were spelled out in a very comprehensive way. The benefits are now scientifically traceable from infancy to old age. The article is not written in an overly scientific register but here are some Plain English translations of what you will find there (a link to the...
If you are a beginning or intermediate student with a new language, pick up a newspaper or magazine in the target language, and choose one article that looks interesting. Slowly work on reading that article and learning the words that you didn’t know. Similar to my points in other posts about movies or music, choose a style of magazine or newspaper...
Listen to music in your target language. Whatever your favorite style of music, it is practically guaranteed to exist in your target language. Invest some time researching your preferred style of music in the language you are learning and you will find an artist or two that you like. Once you start listening to their music (and reading their lyrics), the...
Language Learning Tips: Watch movies, and try to watch them at least twice each. It is very important to suspend your total comprehension. You won’t understand everything, but you will absorb valuable expressions from every movie you watch. Once you are somewhat familiar with the cinema industry in your target language/target country, you will have favorite actors/directors to look for. And...