News #195 - New Free App! Get Daily Mini-Lessons on the iPhone & iPad

The year has just started and we already have new study tools for you! What’s new? Daily 1-minute mini-lessons with the Daily Dose App. Learn a little bit of language every day! Free! Click Here to Download the Daily Dose App for the iPhone & iPad! Click Here to Get 20% OFF Premium! Ends January 27th, 2016! In [...]

Shared by learntospeakspanishquickly.com: http://ift.tt/1S3iZa2

Spanish Vocab Builder #28 - Music

Learn Mexican Spanish with SpanishPod101.com ! Our Mexican Spanish vocabulary lists are listener favorites, and now we’ve made it even better! In each lesson, you’ll hear the Mexican Spanish words and phrases from the Mexican Spanish vocabulary lists. Join us for Mexican Spanish Vocab Builder! In this lesson, you’ll learn words and phrases for Music. Click [...]

Shared by learntospeakspanishquickly.com: http://ift.tt/1OGVMGv

How to Speak Korean – It’s Easier than You Think

Korean is hot property. Interest in the language has soared over the past five years. [caption id="attachment_17635" align="aligncenter" width="506"] Google searches for "Korean", 2009 - 2015[/caption] “Gangnam Style” by Korean pop icon Psy was the first YouTube video to reach one billion views (and the first to hit two billion views). [caption id="attachment_17639" align="aligncenter" width="634"] Korean pop star Psy performs "Gangnam Style".[/caption] K-Dramas - Korean television dramas - are a rising trend that’s set to take the world by storm. Korean novels such as Please Look after Mom are starting to enter the international bestsellers list too. [caption id="attachment_17636" align="aligncenter" width="272"] Bestselling Korean novel, "Please Look After Mom".[/caption] What’s more, South Korea is a young, tech-savvy country that’s home to popular tech brands including Samsung and LG. Why not make Korean the next language you learn?

Is Korean Difficult?

Although Korean might be ranked as one of the more difficult languages to learn by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), it is by no means impossible. In fact, compared to Japanese and Chinese, Korean has some huge advantages that make it easy to learn. Let’s find out more about these.

Why the Korean Alphabet is Easy to Learn

The first step in learning the Korean language is becoming familiar with the Korean alphabet, as it’s likely considerably different from the other languages you’re familiar with. When first seeing the Korean alphabet, many people assume that it is just a bunch of squiggles and that it is as impenetrable as learning the thousands of Chinese characters that students of Mandarin face. Believe it or not, this causes some learners to give up before they even start! While there are ways of learning Chinese and Japanese characters quickly, the Korean alphabet is nothing like Chinese characters. It is far easier to learn than even the Japanese ‘script’ alphabets of Katakana or Hiragana, and maybe even Cyrillic. The reason for this goes back centuries and lies in its origin. Unlike other alphabets that grew organically, Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was invented. Not only was it invented, but it was made with the specific purpose of being easy to learn and use. Basically, it’s almost impossible to design a simpler writing system than Hangul that would still work with the Korean language. It is said that “a wise man can acquaint himself with them [the alphabet] before morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days.” The truth is that using modern learning techniques, anybody can learn Hangul in just ninety minutes. Think about that for a second – this language was constructed with language learners in mind! Hangul exists not to confuse and intimidate learners, but rather to give them the quickest access to Korean culture possible. The alphabet itself is not intimidating at all – the only intimidating part is the initial unfamiliarity you can get past in less than ninety minutes. With only twenty-four letters in the Korean alphabet, it doesn’t take long to learn. Equally, while some writing systems look impossible to scribe, Korean is easy. One of the letters is a circle, one is a square, and two are literally straight lines! Hangul has another huge advantage over Chinese characters in that it is phonetic. Even if many Chinese characters may have phonetic elements to them, Korean is entirely phonetic. There aren’t hidden sounds or pronunciations that new learners are expected to know right off the bat. In fact, it has this advantage over the Latin alphabet too. For example, if you are an American travelling to the U.K. and you come across a sign saying ‘Leicester’. You may well assume that this is read ‘Lie-kest-er’ when it is in fact pronounced ‘Lester’. There are countless examples of this in English and in the Romance Languages. For example, there are many different ways to pronounce ‘ough’ in English. The differences in spelling and pronunciation can make it difficult to put two-and-two together. Yet, you are fluently reading English right now, despite the tricky spelling and pronunciation that comes with the territory. If you can read Hangul, then it is very rare that you will have similar problems with pronunciation. When pronouncing a Korean place or name, there are only a handful of situations where the pronunciation isn’t exactly the same as how the word is written. Luckily, you can easily learn these exceptions in no time! That’s why it’s easy to connect written and spoken Korean. For example, if you hear somebody talking about going to an ‘an-gwa’ then you might remember that word when you are walking down the street and see a sign saying ‘안과’ above a shop selling spectacles. The link between the sound and the written word makes it easier to remember these new words. After you become familiar with the characters in the language, acquiring new Korean words will happen in no time! Hangul is so easy to learn, that an online comic can teach it to you in 15 minutes!

Word Families: How Korean Words Are Built

You might be thinking ‘if the Korean alphabet is so logical, then why are all the letters jumbled up instead of just being in a straight line?’ Well, this is the genius part of the Korean alphabet that makes learning new words and ideas very simple! However, it is most likely different from the letter orders in the alphabets you are most familiar with using. In Korean:

• ‘ㅅ‘ sounds like ‘s’;
• ‘ㅏ’ sounds like ‘a’;
• ‘ㄴ’ sounds like ‘n’.

When put together they look like ‘산’ , which is pronounced as ‘san’. Rather than being just three letters in a line, it makes a nice self-contained block! Korean is essentially made up of three types of words:

1. Words that are ‘pure’ Korean;
2. Words that are based on English (we will come to these later);
3. Words that are based on Chinese characters.

When we see 山 in Chinese we know this means mountain. Equally, in the Korean words that are based on Chinese, each block in Korean has the same meaning as a Chinese character. 산, in this context usually means ‘mountain’. This means that any time we see 산 at the end of a word, we can guess that it probably has something to do with a mountain. Easy enough, right? In English, the spelling of the words ‘volcano’ and ‘iceberg’ are totally different from ‘mountain’. In Korean, they are 화산 (fire-mountain) and 빙산 (ice-mountain). This can help you learn words very quickly and guess new words without ever seeing them before. When you learn one word, you will have access almost instantly to other words and phrases that build upon that first word. For example, from our earlier word 안과, if we are walking around the streets and see words like 내과, 치과, 피부과, etc., then we can guess that they have something to do with medical care. Equally, if somebody asks if you wear 안경 then we can guess that they are talking about glasses. Look at the following list to see how quick it can be to learn new words using a bit of logic.

• 1 (and sun) = il
• 2 = ee
• 3 = sam
• 4 = sa
• 5 = o
• Moon = wol
• January = il-wol
• February = ee-wol
• 1st March = sam-wol il-il
• 2nd April = sa-wol ee-il
• 3rd May = o-wol sam-il
• Country = guk
• Korea = han
• Middle = jung
• Person = in
• Language / fish = eo
• Korea = Han-guk
• China = Jung-guk
• Korean language = han-guk-eo
• Chinese person = Jung-guk-in
• Mermaid = in-eo

How to Pronounce Korean Words: No Tones

When you begin learning Korean, you’ll start with learning how to read words in the Korean alphabet, then move on to learning how to pronounce those words. While learning pronunciation can be intimidating at first, it’s easier with Korean that with many other languages. Each Korean word, or letter-block, has several different meanings. However, they are all pronounced the same way. This is great news as you don’t have to worry about tones,. Tones are an entire additional element to language that can make the learning process much more complicated. Of course, the fact that one word can have many different meanings can be confusing. For example, 어 (pronounced like the ‘o’ in the word ‘song’) often means either ‘fish’ or ‘language’. However, realistically, how many times are you going to be having a conversation that involves both fish and language? Context clues are everywhere in Korean and will greatly speed up the learning process for beginners.

Konglish: You Already Know Thousands of Korean Words

Every day new words are added to languages. The good news is that with Korean, these new words are often based on English. That means that every day you are getting better at Korean without even studying (unless you are North Korean)! Some Korean words such as computer, taxi, and ice cream are almost exactly the same as English words in both their meaning and pronunciation. Other words are based on English, but have slight differences to standard English. However, because they are based on English words, they are easy to remember. As a speaker of English beginning to learn Korean, you will find that you are already pretty familiar with some Korean language words and concepts – it’s almost like the work was done for you! The parallel between Korean and English words isn’t the only easy part about learning Korean -- Korean tenses and grammar are also much more straightforward than languages like French and Spanish.

Korean Grammar Is Really Easy

If your average French class at school consisted of hour upon hour of ‘I am’, ‘he is’, ‘they are’ and so on, then try not to jump for joy when I tell you that you don’t need to do this in Korean. In fact, when you start out learning Korean, it’s best not to bother with pronouns at all. When learning Korean, you can speed right through conjugation pretty quickly. Korean verbs change based on several factors, such as tense and politeness level. However, even when they do change, then they change in a predictable way based on the final consonant of the verb (or vowel if it ends in a vowel). Since there are a limited number of consonants, and only about five types of irregular verbs, learning how those verbs change doesn’t take long. Even better, the verbs stay the same when the pronouns in the sentence change. For example ‘to do’ (하다) will always be 해요 (do) regardless of whether ‘I do’, ‘he does’, or ‘they do’. Pronouns are rarely used in Korean, so you can often just say the verb. The other person can guess from context who you are referring to. As a result, here is a verb conjugation list for the verb 먹다 (to eat) in the present tense:

• I eat – 먹어요
• you eat – 먹어요
• he eats- 먹어요
• she eats – 먹어요
• they eat – 먹어요
• we eat - 먹어요 (in case you didn’t notice, they are all the same).

I have more good news: this applies to adjectives too! If you want to tell somebody that the gimbap, a popular Korean street food, was delicious, then you can just say ‘delicious’. Likewise if you want to ask somebody else if that food was delicious then you just ask, ‘delicious?’ Tenses in Korean are also regular, so you don’t need to learn extra words like you do in English (teach-taught, is-was, etc.). There aren’t any special past participles, either. Instead you just stick an extra word onto the end of the sentence to change it from ‘ate’ to ‘have eaten’. Easy enough, right? Luckily, due to how straightforward grammar and tenses are in Korean, you can make a lot of progress in learning Korean before you have to tackle the more complex elements of the language.

Deal With the ‘Difficult’ Parts of Korean Down the Road

When learning Korean, you can put off the difficult parts of the language for later. One difficult aspect of Korean is that it is a hierarchical language. This means that you use different words depending on who you speak to. While this sounds daunting, if you just use the regular form of the word (verbs that end with ‘yo’) then nobody will be offended. Stick to the “yo”, and you’ll be good to go! Apart from that, if you use the wrong word with somebody who is older than you, the worst that will happen is that they will correct you (optimists could see this as ‘the worst that will happen is that you will receive some free expert tuition from a native speaker’). As you get better at Korean, you can start using the different levels of language properly and fluidly. However, you don’t have to get worked up about early on in your language study. There’s no reason to be apprehensive about using your new Korean knowledge with native speaking strangers – if anything, it’ll only stand to help you acquire more knowledge! If you are wondering how honorifics and hierarchy work in Korean, basically there is a way of speaking for people who are close to you, and a way for speaking to people more distant. The more distant version (ending in ‘imnida’ or ‘sumnida’) often comes up in textbooks early on. However, you will only ever use it if you are doing a job interview, giving a presentation, or speaking on the news (things that are unlikely for beginner students to be doing). Therefore you should focus on the ‘yo’ system, which you will be using much more often. If you are speaking to somebody who is younger than you and close to you, then you can drop the ‘yo’. This will be handy when you begin making Korean friends and acquaintances. Honorifics are used for showing respect to people above you. This basically involves inserting a 시 somewhere into the verb (not too difficult in itself). Some words have special versions that should be used when speaking using honorifics. For example ‘to eat’, ‘to exist’, ‘birthday’ and ‘age’ all have special words (there aren’t too many special words, only about twenty or so, so don’t worry). You should never use honorifics when talking about yourself, but unlike Japanese, you can use them when referring to your own family (especially your grandparents). These different levels of Korean often scare people, but English and other languages also have these levels (For example, “to die” vs. “to pass away”). When you think about it, Korea’s hierarchical system is easier to explain than trying to explain these levels in the English language, and you’ve already been using a hierarchical system for years whether or not you’ve realized it! Once you’ve learned the more approachable parts of Korean like the alphabet, tenses, and words based on English, you’ll feel comfortable enough to begin using Korean conversationally. It’s through conversation and exposure that you’ll become more comfortable with the more complex parts of the language like hierarchical changes and words that aren’t based on English.

Breaking Apart Korean Words

Using Korean words is very simple. If you want to use them as a verb, then you can just stick the verb ‘to do’ (하다) at the end of the word. Once you learn how to change this verb into different tenses and how to attach modal verbs to it, then you can suddenly say a ridiculously large amount with very little effort. Remember, you rarely need to use pronouns and you don’t need to conjugate based on pronouns. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you will learn how to communicate basic concepts in Korean with relative ease! Another thing that makes picking up these new Korean words and concepts a breeze is how accessible Korean-learning resources are. After you begin your journey to learn Korean and start looking around for help, you’ll be surprised about the abundance of resources available through books and the Internet.

Why It’s Easy to Find Resources for Learning Korean

Of course people have been speaking Korean for thousands of years – it’s not exactly a new language. However when learning Korean, you won’t have to learn using the Korean version of Shakespeare or anything equally antiquated. The rest of the world started caring about Korean culture much more at the start of this millennium so most of the cultural resources for learning Korean are very new and easily accessible. There are many great online resources for studying Korean, and often teachers will give modern examples or use recent video clips when explaining difficult concepts. When studying the Korean language, the last thing you will be doing is looking through a dusty old textbook. Korean resources are current and relevant, making the learning process that much more fun! Along with modern cultural resources, you’ll also have the opportunity to learn by speaking Korean to native speakers as soon as you’re even a little bit conversationally fluent.

How to Get Korean Speaking Practice

Most Koreans are very proud of their country and language, and would love it if more people could speak Korean. As a result, there are plenty of people who are willing to teach you Korean. Especially in Seoul, it is quite easy to find free Korean classes. Equally, Koreans rarely expect foreigners to speak Korean perfectly so they won’t judge you as harshly as people from some other countries if you mispronounce a word. Learn the basics with some help, and then get out there and experiment with all the doors that you’ve opened by beginning the Korean learning process! Those Korean dramas aren’t going to watch themselves…

The post How to Speak Korean – It’s Easier than You Think appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

Shared by learntospeakspanishquickly.com: http://ift.tt/1S9yWcZ

Episodio 182: Latinismos (parte II)

Latinisms are words and expressions that come from Latin. Today, they're still used. Learn some important latinisms you often hear or read in Spanish. We also talked about this in our #136 episode. Transcript available: "Hola de nuevo, bienvenidos a Spanishpodcast.net. ¿Tenéis ya un propósito de año nuevo? Si es así, esperamos que los consigáis pronto. En el episodio de hoy volvemos a hablar de las palabras latinas que continúan manteniendo su forma original o muy parecida desde la antigüedad ..."

Shared by learntospeakspanishquickly.com: http://ift.tt/1Jkff0T

Beginner Lesson S4 #14 - “There Will Be” a Tomorrow in Spanish, Right?

Learn Spanish with SpanishPod101.com! You and your friends are so excited to go to the Spanish concert. You’ve saved your money, and now you’re so excited that you cannot wait another minute - you’re ready to dance and sing the night away to music with Spanish lyrics. You walk to the ticket counter expectantly, and [...]

Shared by learntospeakspanishquickly.com: http://ift.tt/1PGQqZz

Inner Circle #24 - December Inner Circle: How Mastering A Language Has Changed My Life

Now, we’re at the end of 2015. I’ve reached my 45-minute Spanish speaking goal for the year. Have you reached your goals? You should know that learning a new language is easier when you’ve mastered one before. In this final Inner Circle, you’ll learn just why I’ve been able to hit my goals.   In this Inner [...]

Shared by learntospeakspanishquickly.com: http://ift.tt/1Jkff0F

The Goldilocks Technique: How to Set Language Goals that Are Just Right

Do you ever struggle to reach your language goals? In my 13 years of language learning, I’ve set myself some big language goals. Some have gone fantastically, and some have totally flumped. Over time, I’ve got better and better at setting goals that inspire me to do my best, but that are also realistic I’ve learned this through trial and error - using what I call the Goldilocks method (this is an idea I borrowed from fellow language learner Andrew Barr). Some of my language goals were way too big, and I failed to reach them. Some were far too simple, and they didn’t challenge me as much as they should have done. The best goals were just right. These goals stretched and challenged me without overwhelming. I’d like to share how you can use the Goldilocks technique to set language goals that are just right for you.

Step 1: Reach for the Skies

I called it ambitious, but some other people have had different names for it. “Ridiculous”. “Unreasonable”. “Impossible”. Whether or not this is true, it hasn’t stopped me from aiming high and challenging myself. I like to start by dreaming big. I think it’s far better to aim too high and then fail with just “pretty high”, than it to aim low, get bored, not push yourself and achieve way less than you could have. Why are big goals good? You get to test your limits and push them as far as possible. You also end up accomplishing much more than you could ever have dreamed if your goal had been more modest. A modest goal will give you the satisfaction of saying you achieved exactly what you set out to do. However, it won’t teach you to stretch yourself. It won’t push you to your limits and beyond. There’s one question I hate to be stuck with: “How much further could I have gone if I pushed myself?”. I don’t like having this question lingering in the back of my mind. So I aim high. That said, I want to make it clear that I only set goals I believe are possible to achieve. I don’t just aim for B2 in all my language missions then hope for the best. For example, if I only have an hour a day to study, then pushing for B2 (CEFRL scale) in three months is way over the top. It’s why I haven’t had any such project for the last two years; until recently I’ve been travelling intensively for a world-wide booktour, which is time consuming and exhausting and means I’d rarely have more than that single hour free. With this in mind, I’ve had to adjust my goals and have instead tried to cram as much Bahasa Indonesia as I could into 4 hours, be sure my French was at a C1 level so that I could follow the long road to a definite C2 level, reactivate my Mandarin after a long break, and even coach another person to learn another language quickly. So I know exactly if and when a three month project isn’t possible, and adjust to other goals when it isn’t. How high you aim in your own language mission will depend on your own personal factors:

• How badly do you want to learn the language?
• How do you intend to use the language at the end of your mission?
• Are you in an immersion environment?
• If not, are you willing to set up a virtual immersion environment and put the time into make sure it you stick to it?
• How much free time do you have to study and practise?

I’ll look at each of these factors below, and explain how you can expect them to affect your language mission. For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to talk specifically about appropriate goals for a three-month language mission.

Step 2: Assess Your Motivation

Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to learn a new language. Some people learn a language because otherwise they get brain itch. They need to be learning or they get bored. Are you constantly curious about the world? This could be you. Some people want to get an inside view of another culture. They’d like to see the world in a new way, and learning another language is a brilliant way of doing this. Still others learn a language for practical reasons. Perhaps they’ve married someone from another country, or they’re required to travel for their job. Whatever your reason, it must be enough to keep you inspired day after day. Learning a new language is a wonderful thing to do. But there will be days when it’s a slog and you’ll feel like quitting. It’s only by trying that you’ll see how deep your motivation runs. If you find you keep starting to learn a new language, then quitting after a few weeks, perhaps you need to investigate your motivation. Sometimes when I really press people, I see that it just “sounds cool” to them to speak another language, or it’s on a long “bucket list”, or for bragging rights. None of these will ever motivate you to do the work necessary, so you need to really think about, and possibly change your big “why” for learning the language in the first place. What if you still need an extra push? I recommend joining an online language community like the Add 1 Challenge. You’ll meet other language learners who also want a push, and who will support you in your language learning. Accountability is a fantastic motivator. You will probably end up achieving far more than you expected.

Step 3: Set a Timeframe

Goals are meaningless unless you have a deadline in which you want to achieve them. I originally started setting three month language goals because I’d be visiting countries on a three month tourist visa. I’d visit a country and immerse myself in the language and culture for three months, aiming to reach fluency in that time. Back to Goldilocks, I’ve found that 3 months is in the zone of being not too little, so that I get a genuinely good idea of that culture and can make a couple of friends, but not too much, so that I could still explore several places. So I’d still spend 3 months in some countries even if tourist visa limits weren’t effective (like in the European Union, since I’m an Irish citizen). It’s also the amount of time when I can work intensively on a project enough to both make huge strides of progress, and to push myself just enough to not burn myself out. Even if I’m not able to travel, I find that setting a deadline of three months works well for me. It’s far enough into the future that it’s possible to achieve big goals. And close enough to the present that I can see the finish line. So that’s why the timeline is relevant to me. Three months may be a completely random number to you though. It’s way better to pick a goal that fits with your lifestyle. Are you leaving on a trip in six months? Do you have a semester abroad coming up in 6 weeks? Do you have 2 months off for the summer and the time to realistically invest in such a big project? Is your grandmother who only speaks Czech visiting you in September? Then that is your ideal end-goal.

Step 4: Know How You’ll Be Using the Language

Are you learning a new language so you can:

• Meet interesting people from around the world?
• Travel the world and be able to order food?
• Attend an overseas conference?
• Conduct business deals in your target language?
• Grow in confidence around other people?

We live in busy times, and most of us only have a little bit of time to spare each day for language learning. Knowing how you’ll use the language will help you use those precious minutes to the best effect. If you’d like a more general goal, I recomend aiming for A2 level. It’s a reasonable target for three months of language learning, even alongside family commitments and a full time job. And it will mean you’ll be ready to hold interesting conversations with native speakers. Why do I recommend setting a specific goal such as A2 level? If you don’t have a concrete goal to work toward, it will become too easy to just start letting your studying slide for days or weeks on end. After all, you have, literally, “all the time in the world” to learn the language. The problem is that “all the time in the world” quickly becomes weeks, months or years of procrastination.

Step 5: Stop Looking for the “Perfect” Language Learning Environment

Yes, it’s good to set big goals. But just as important is how you achieve those goals. It’s easy to set big goals. It’s even easier to find excuses for failing to achieve those goals. What can you do to avoid this? Stomp out potential excuses before they come up. A common excuse is: “I don’t have the right learning environment”. Perhaps you feel too busy to learn, or concerned that you live thousands of miles from people who speak your target language. There’s no perfect place to learn a language. You can just as easily learn French from an air-conditioned office block in Australia as you can by frequenting the coffee shops of Paris. The environment in which you’re learning your target language actually isn’t as important as you might think. So don’t let where you live hold you back from setting big language goals You can learn a language at a fast pace no matter where you are in the world. Even if there isn’t a single native speaker if your target language within hundreds of miles of your home, it’s still possible to learn your target language quickly. In fact, staying at home can be better than travelling. If you travel the world, it’s easy to get drawn into tourist cafés and ex-pat communities. This is especially the case if your native language is English. In most countries, you’ll find plenty of English speakers, and it’s easy to get on the slippery slope of thinking there’s no need to speak the local language, even just “while you settle in”. That said, if you’re fortunate enough to be able to live abroad, take advantage of it. Challenge yourself from the beginning to never use the phrase, “Do you speak English?” no matter how difficult it gets (barring emergency situations, obviously). If you’re serious about your mission and commit to maintaining your immersion environment every day, then you’d be amazed at what you can do in three months. I know this is possible because not only have I had huge successes in many of my three-month projects, but many other people have too.

Step 6: Assess How Much Time You Can Set Aside for Studying

Along with motivation, the time you have available is the key factor in establishing what would be a realistic language goal for you. Clearly, a person who’s able to devote three hours per day to language learning is going to achieve much more than someone who only has thirty spare minutes. This doesn’t mean that it’s bad if you can only study thirty minutes per day. It just means that you should set a different language goal for a three month mission than someone who has more time to devote to theirs. As I’ve said, most people can realistically aim for the upper beginner, or A2 level, within three months. This is ambitious, but still perfectly reasonable if you study smart. What if you want to stretch yourself even further? Then reaching the lower intermediate level B1 is within your grasp. At that level, you’d be able to have lower-intermediate conversations on a wide variety of topics, as long as the person you are speaking to speaks slowly and patiently. This will mean an intense study schedule of at least two hours a day, ideally more if it’s your first language project. How much time can you realistically spare? Take a hard look at your typical daily schedule. You probably have a job that takes up the bulk of your day. Then there are after-work errands you need to run, picking up kids or dry cleaning. Plus socialising and any hobbies other than language learning. Once you’ve decided how much time you can spare each day, cut that figure in half. Then half it again. So if you thought you could spare an hour, you’ll end up with just 15 minutes. That’s your minimum daily study time. Why set such a low minimum? Because it means you’re more likely to stick with it, even when you’re busy or feeling overwhelmed. Also, getting started each day can be the hardest part. By setting yourself a low goal, you’re more likely to get started. Then also try the opposite. If you think you can only spare an hour, then see can you push that further out? Would it be worth giving up Netflix (at least their English programming), reducing nights-out to once instead of 3 times a week, or making some other sacrifice, for three months to achieve a lifelong dream?

What if You Fall Short of Your Goal?

Let me make one thing clear: if, at the end of three months, you’ve not reached your goal, you have still succeeded in something else that’s also extremely important - provided that you maintained a daily habit of language learning. You have greatly improved your language level and know that you’ve truly pushed yourself to your absolute limit. I’ve had a couple of projects where I ended up with a B1 level instead of a B2 level. Calling that a failure is insane - I could converse with another culture, make friends, travel independently and do so much! I acquired a new skill that will enrich my life. And I’ve learned what my limits are, and what I did wrong that I should change in my next three month project. Having big dreams matters. We all need them, as dreams give us purpose and something to strive for. But just as important is taking action to achieve those dreams. If you’ve stuck it out for the entire three months, through the rough parts and the plateaus, and you came out the other side speaking your target language substantially better than you could at the beginning, then you’ve succeeded. There are many ways to succeed at language learning. The only way to fail at it is not to attempt it at all.

The post The Goldilocks Technique: How to Set Language Goals that Are Just Right appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

Shared by learntospeakspanishquickly.com: http://ift.tt/1niB7Qn