Episode 5 – Coffee Break Conversations

Join the Coffee Break French team at the France Show in London for this episode of Coffee Break Conversations. Pierre-Benoît is in his element, enjoying all things French from sausages to oysters, et un peu de vin aussi!

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A Spanish Lunch

Hola!

This is a quick note to tell you about a new podcast project I (Ben) have started with my friend Mike Randolph for Spain and Spanish-lovers.

In every episode of “A Spanish Lunch“, Mike and I will be seeking out great Spain stories and experiences before and after a delicious lunch!

All peppered with the sounds of Real Spanish and Spain. (The podcast is mostly in English, but if you understand the Spanish guy who takes our order over lunch, consider your Spanish very very advanced!)

Head over to aspanishlunch.com to listen to the first episode, subscribe in iTunes and help us with suggestions for future episodes.

Saludos desde Madrid,

Ben (y Marina!)

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Survival Phrases #5 - Good-bye in Spanish

Learn Spanish with SpanishPod101.com! A little Spanish can go such a long way! Whether you’re traveling, visiting, or sightseeing, SpanishPod101.com has all the essential travel phrases just for you! Today we cover a high frequency Spanish phrase that you’ll surely find useful on your trip, vacation, or travels to Spain. Even though you’ll likely never want [...]

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Portuguese in 3 Months Mission: 1 Month Update

This an update to Holly’s Portuguese in 3 Months mission. How did I get on after one month of learning to speak Portuguese? If you read my previous mission updates, you’ll remember that my mission is to reach a B1 level in Portuguese in three months. I aimed to do this by focusing on speaking and listening. I wanted to keep reading and writing to a minimum. There were a couple of snags in my first month, including a week-long trip that slowed my progress. But I surprised myself by always getting right back to it. Having a goal and being kept accountable to it really do make a difference. Let’s dig in and take a look at how I did over my first month.

“Forcing Functions” Made Sure I Got Speaking Practice

In my update about the first few days of my mission, I confessed that I didn’t practise any Portuguese with a native speaker in my first week. To avoid making this mistake again, at the beginning of my second week I bought a five-lesson package with Tatiana, my Portuguese teacher from italki. Buying a package of lessons created what I call a “forcing function” - and it works really well for keeping motivated. For example, what’s the best way to make sure you’re motivated to clean your house? Invite friends over for dinner. Inviting friends is a “forcing function” for cleaning. Likewise, buying a package of lessons was a forcing function to make sure I followed through on learning Portuguese. When you buy a package, you pay upfront for all lessons, so you have to follow through with the lessons or you lose your money. If you’re struggling with motivation in your language learning, booking a package of lessons can quickly turn that around.

Portuguese Meetups Boosted my Confidence

After several lessons on Skype, I found a Portuguese Meetup group in my area. About three weeks in, I attended my first Meetup with the group at a local cafe. What a confidence booster! Everyone was so friendly and helpful. And they gave me all kinds of compliments on my language skills, even though I knew I still had a long way to go. It felt amazing to sit in a group of people where they understood my caveman Portuguese and I could even understand a little of what they were saying!

I Ended Up Breaking my “No Reading or Writing” Rule. Here’s Why...

My original intention was to avoid reading and writing Portuguese except in a handful of circumstances (reading song lyrics, setting my phone to Portuguese, and using Duolingo). However, I discovered fairly quickly that purely verbal communication with my teacher on Skype was not going to be quite enough for me to learn the new words she was teaching me. Sometimes I simply couldn’t hear the correct pronunciation, and I couldn’t tell if it was a bad connection, or just my ears. So for tough words, my teacher would type them out so I could get the correct pronunciation. Then I would try to remember the word by using it again in conversation with my teacher. I learned that it’s okay to adjust your methods whenever you find that something isn’t working for you.

My “Un-Routine” Kept Me Motivated to Learn - Every Day

You might be surprised to hear that I didn’t actually have a real study routine for my Portuguese. I didn’t set aside a specific hour or two each day to study. I knew that if I set aside study time, and something came up that cut into this, then I risked throwing away the entire study session because “what’s the point if I can’t follow through on my whole commitment?” Instead, I sat down and studied (or put on some audio lessons or podcasts during a walk) whenever I wanted, for as long as I felt like it. Sometimes it was two hours, sometimes it was fifteen minutes. I didn’t stress over this too much. As long as I did something every day, I knew I was progressing, and it made me feel good. Here are some snapshots of typical study days (I kept a journal of every study exercise I did for the whole three months):

• Day 5: 60XP in Duolingo; two lessons from PortuguesePod101. This was a typical light study day.
• Day 14: Five clips of Got Talent Portugal; one-hour lesson with my italki teacher; seven lessons from PortuguesePod101; memorized the song “Não Pare Pra Pensar” by Pato Fu, a Brazilian band. This was one of my most intensive study days of the month.
• Day 18: Two-hour meeting with the Portuguese Meetup group at a local coffee shop - my first time practising Brazilian Portuguese; two lessons from PortuguesePod101.
• Day 19: Three lessons from PortuguesePod101.
• Day 28: One-hour lesson with my Portuguese teacher; one PortuguesePod101 lesson; one episode of the European Portuguese podcast Private Joke, which is all about movies - and I love movies. I actively listened, but it was still very difficult to understand.

I managed to blast through dozens of PortuguesePod101 lessons in my first month. This is because I go for a lot of long walks with my dog, so it’s a perfect opportunity to put on some audio lessons. One top of that, while I usually read in bed at night, I swapped my ebooks for my iPad and watched Got Talent Portugal most nights before bed. So, PortuguesePod101 and “Got Talent Portugal* became the two staples of my study routine. Once I’d discovered this, I didn’t have to alter my daily schedule very much at all. I love the idea of fitting studying into daily activities that I would do anyway.

My Portuguese Mission After One Month: Video Update

I made another update video at the end of the month to show my progress in the language. (Full disclosure: I actually made the video a little closer to the six-week mark, a) because I missed over a week of study during my first month while I was on vacation, and b) because I had to cancel and reschedule the Skype chat I had planned for earlier). This chat is with my good friend Nancy, who’s originally from Thailand but moved to Canada in 2002 (where she learned French), then later moved to Brazil (where she learned Portuguese) and now lives in Australia! Click below to watch my one-month(-ish) update video. You’ll need to turn the sound up for this one; I made the rookie mistake of pointing my uni-directional mic in the wrong direction (!) so the sound is quite low. Be sure to activate the English subtitles to see the translation: httpvh://youtu.be/kgrzPTuir1w Nancy speaks Brazilian Portuguese, so I tried to speak in that dialect too. However, I still spoke with some obvious Euro-Portuguese tendencies. For example, when I asked “What are you doing these days?” I said “O que você está a fazer?” before I corrected it to “O que você está fazendo?” The first way is how it’s said in Portugal. I find the Portugal phrasing easier since you can just use the infinitive! Despite the differences in our dialects, Nancy and I had very little trouble understanding each other. If you’re considering studying Portuguese and aren’t sure which dialect to choose, I personally don’t think there’s any problem with doing a little of each. However, when you’re speaking the language, it’s best to pick one for the duration of that conversation. You’ll sound a little funny and unnatural if you use both in the same conversation - as you can see from my video :) .

Next up: Month Two

After a month of using nearly the same resources each day, I branched out a little more in month two and discovered many new interesting methods. Check back soon to read about month two of my Portuguese mission, and to watch my two-month update video.

The post Portuguese in 3 Months Mission: 1 Month Update appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

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No More Excuses! How to Stop Whining and Start Learning a Language

What holds you back from speaking another language? Perhaps you tell yourself:

• I’m not good at language learning. I flunked languages in school.
• This language was okay when I started, but now it’s too difficult.
• I don’t have enough money to travel the world and properly learn this language.
• I’m too old to learn a language.
• There’s no point learning a language because so many people speak English.

Do any of these sound familiar? Let’s take a look at these excuses in depth, so you can break through the barriers that hold you back from language learning and actually get on with learning a language.

“I was no good at languages in school, so I’m not cut out to learn languages”

I hear this one a lot. You studied a language for years at school and never got good grades. Or maybe you did get straight A’s, but shocked yourself at how badly you did when it came to using the language in the real world. Either way, it convinced you that becoming fluent in a foreign language was never “meant to be”, and this made you feel better about your apparent defeat. The exact same thing happened to me in school, and I told myself the same thing. I managed to convince myself for years that I didn’t have what it takes to learn a foreign language. The truth is, all I needed was to look at language learning from a different perspective. Once I found the way that worked for me, I realized that my grades in school were in no way related to my ability to learn (and love!) other languages. Regardless of the subject, you should never use your performance at school as a predictor of your future success or failure. When Charles Darwin was at school, all he studied was Ancient Greek, Latin, as well as a little geography and history. Science didn’t enter the equation. And he didn’t even do well at school. In Darwin’s own words:

“When I left school … I believe that I was considered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect.”

Imagine if Darwin said, “Well, I’d like to learn about the natural world, but I wasn’t smart at school, so...meh!” The way languages are taught in school doesn’t suit everybody. As an adult, you can develop your own approach to language learning. Languages are particularly well-suited to this. There are tons of ways to study languages! I use a variety of methods, and have refined them into a language learning system that works for me. My approach might work well for you, too, but if it doesn’t, don’t be afraid to experiment to find the ways that do work for you.

“The language I’m learning is too difficult”

Have you ever stalled in your language learning and felt that the language you’ve chosen is too difficult? It happens to all of us. Over the years, I’ve discovered that a language’s difficulty is purely in the eye of the beholder. If you’re ready to throw in the towel on one language, chances are, you’ll end up doing the same thing on the next one, even if it’s supposedly “easier”. This is because for every comparatively “easy” feature of a language, you can find another comparatively “difficult” feature. The level of difficulty ends up balancing out among languages. Therefore, your perception of your chosen language as “too difficult” really comes down more to attitude than to the actual difficulty of the language. Try to focus on the easy aspects of your chosen language to boost your motivation. Are you finding Hungarian difficult? Well, at least you don’t have all those tones and characters like Mandarin! Are you studying Mandarin and finding it hard? Well at least you never have to deal with all those noun cases like Russian, which has seven! I could go on, but the point is, any language can be “too hard” if you choose to look at it from that perspective. In my case, Spanish was my most difficult language to learn, because it was the first new language I learned as an adult. I lived in Spain for months without learning anything beyond the basics. Spanish was difficult because of the mental hang-ups I had about language learning - not because it’s a difficult language to learn.

“It takes years to learn a language”

This is a really common myth, because it’s partly true. Reaching mastery in a language does take years. I firmly believe that anyone can start speaking a language as little as a week. Think about why you want to speak another language. Most people want to learn another language to communicate. To connect with other people. This absolutely does not require mastery of the language. Do you need to understand Shakespeare to have a chat in English about your city with your taxi driver or to order a rum and coke at a bar? Of course not! So why put these demands on yourself to do the same thing in your target language? Drop this perfectionist mindset and focus on short-term goals instead of your endgame. If you truly do wish to master your foreign language to native-like proficiency someday, that’s a really admirable goal. If you’re determined, then you will get there eventually. But right now, focus on what you want to learn today, or this week. Remember: every time you learn a new word or phrase in your target language, that’s something extra you can communicate to a native speaker. Fluency is nothing more than a series of small victories like this. And it can be achieved in much less time than you think.

“There’s never a good time to start”

So you’ve been meaning to sit down and start learning a new language, but every time you decide to do it, something gets in the way and postpones your plans. Yes, life happens to all of us. But if life continuously gets in the way of your language learning, then you need to ask yourself: Am I really committed to language learning? Suppose you’ve been planning a big birthday party for a friend, but on the day of the party, you find out that the custom cake order you had placed at the bakery got lost, and now there’s no cake! What do you do? A) Cancel the entire party. Without that custom cake, what’s the point? B) Postpone the party to another day when the custom cake is ready. C) Head to your local supermarket or bakery and pick up a generic cake, and have the party today anyway even though it’s not exactly what you had planned. I bet you picked option C. Sure, the conditions aren’t perfect, your funny birthday message wasn’t written on your friend’s cake and it’s not their favourite flavour, but I bet it still ends up a fun party! Why, then, do so many people choose the equivalent of option A or B when it comes to language learning? Instead of treating their study plan like a birthday party that could easily go ahead despite a few hiccups, they treat it like a shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral that could be a question of life or death if atmospheric conditions aren’t perfect! Believing that “someday” the conditions will be perfect enough for you to start some task is as much a lie in language learning as it is in the rest of your life. You don’t ask your professor to postpone the final exam because you don’t feel ready for it. You just go in and do the best you can with the amount of studying you managed to squeeze in. You wouldn’t skip dinner because you don’t have enough time to cook that filet mignon you’re craving. You’d just cook something that takes less time. And you shouldn’t put off studying the language you’ve always dreamed of learning simply because the conditions aren’t perfect. Allow me to let you in on a secret. You will never see the “perfect” conditions for studying your target language. Stuff might come up that eats into your study schedule. If you were planning to study for an hour today but can now only spare twenty minutes, don’t just skip your studying altogether. You’ll end up filling those twenty minutes with an episode of The Simpsons or something (unless it’s an episode dubbed in your target language, in which case, carry on!). Meanwhile, you could have spent that time learning two new sentences patterns in your target language, reviewing what you learned yesterday, or memorising ten new words of vocabulary. Even if you can only spare five minutes today, don’t skip it. That’s five fewer minutes you’ll need to spend tomorrow. All those small chunks of studying will add up to some huge strides in your language skills. Remember: “A year from now, you’ll wish you had started today” —Karen Lamb

“I’m too old to learn a new language”

More lies! If you’re alive, and alert enough to read this sentence, then you’re not too old to learn a language. There’s a common myth out there that children are better at learning languages than adults, which is nonsense. Popular opinion is easily swayed based on one flawed, but highly publicised, research study when another one might come about with other data that contradicts it. Then everyone just takes the result for granted, and never questions its validity. It can take years, even decades, for the damage from such studies to be reversed. Wherever this old, worn-out myth about children and languages came from, we’re finally seeing modern, verifiable research that proves adults are actually better at learning languages than children. Not that I really needed to see the research to know that it’s true. Adults of all ages, myself included, are constantly proving that they can be successful at language learning. And so can you! Just look around you at all of the successful adult language learners out there, and take your inspiration from them.

“English is all I need anyway when I’m travelling”

It’s true that the tourism industry around the world largely operates in English. When you go on holiday in a foreign country, this can give you the impression that everyone in that country speaks English at an intermediate level. Stray from the main tourist areas, however, and you’ll likely get a big wake-up call about the English skills of the average citizen of that country. If all you ever want from a vacation is to stick to the beaten path, and for all your interactions with foreigners to be completely dependent on their competence in English, then sure, I suppose English is all you need. But what if you want more? Many people want to experience the world differently. They want to speak with people that they never would have been able to otherwise, at a level beyond average, superficial daily interactions. They want to get deep inside a culture and see what it looks like from the perspective of someone who speaks the local language. If this describes you, then English is definitely not all you’ll ever need.

“I don’t have enough money to learn a language”

Do you have enough money to afford an internet connection? Then you have enough money to learn a language. Language exchange sites like italki are free. Omniglot is a free site featuring a list of useful phrases for every language imaginable. Self-study apps like Duolingo are free. There are hundreds of free podcasts for practically any language you could want to learn. The internet is full of free web forums for language help and encouragement. You might have to do a bit of digging to find resources that work for you, but trust me, they’re out there. It’s true that free language-learning resources can vary in quality and usefulness. If you have a little bit of money to put toward your language mission, there are also some highly affordable and cost-effective paid products and services out there that provide a huge return on investment. For instance, you can pay a community tutor on italki for regular Skype lessons that fit your schedule and goals. They can be as frequent or as occasional as you like, and you and the tutor can work together to tailor the lessons to your needs and wishes. They’re also generally far more affordable than an in-person private tutor, or even a full-sized language class. You can also spend a few dollars on joining a good community such as the Add1 Challenge. This allows you to get together with like-minded language learners to share language learning tips, work together toward a common goal, and keep one another accountable. Things that you don’t have to spend big bucks on to effectively learn a language include expensive software with lofty promises, a plane ticket to the country where your target language is spoken, and local language school courses with a dozen other students whose goals are vastly different from yours. Don’t be deceived by the notion that you need to spend, spend, spend to achieve your language goals. Far better to carefully target your dollars into effective language products.

What’s Your Excuse for Not Learning a Language?

Have you ever tricked yourself into believing a false reason for stalling in your language progress? I want to hear about it! What changed your mind? Head over to the comments and tell me your story.

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CBC 1.01 | Asking “how are you?” in Chinese

Welcome to this first lesson in our brand new series which will help you learn Mandarin Chinese. Join teacher Crystal and learner Mark for this coffee break lesson and start learning the basics today. In lesson 1, you’ll learn to say “hello” and “goodbye”. You’ll also learn to ask “how are you?” in Mandarin and answer this question in a number of ways. If you’ve never learned Chinese before this lesson is perfect for you.

Listen to the episode

The audio lesson is free, as are all the main audio lessons of Coffee Break Chinese. Use the audio player to listen to the lesson, or subscribe in iTunes to receive this lesson and all future lessons automatically. If the player below isn’t working, click here to access this lesson of Coffee Break Chinese.

Accessing the Premium Version

The premium version of Coffee Break Chinese provides additional materials which will help you move forward more effectively with your Mandarin Chinese studies.
The premium version includes the following elements:

• video flashcards: listen to each lesson and see the words and phrases covered in the lesson displayed on the screen of your computer, phone or tablet (mp4 format);
• bonus audio materials: use our review lessons to practise the language covered in the main lesson, and to pick up some useful bonus vocabulary (mp3 format);
• comprehensive lesson notes: study the language of each lesson in greater detail and access additional information about the Italian language (pdf format).

The members’ version can be accessed on the Coffee Break Academy

Access the Coffee Break Academy

 

Subscribe links

Subscribe in iTunes | RSS Feed | Purchase members' audio and transcripts

 

 

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3 ways to overcome your fear of speaking Spanish

Learning and actually speaking in another language is a pretty big deal. It’s a massive change for you in so many ways and massive changes can be scary. Check out these 3 ways to overcome your fear of speaking Spanish…

 

When you are embarking on learning a new language, you instantly feel like a child again: you lack the words to express yourself and must struggle to put up a face of dignity while being intensely self-critical of your language abilities.

Your perception is also that the other person you are speaking with is judging you, that your mistakes are making you look dumb, and that your inability to communicate well somehow reflects a lack of self-worth.

A voice in your head says something along the lines of “don’t speak, you’ll come across as stupid,” and, often, especially as a beginner, you tend to obey that internal little voice. Even worse, we imagine others are believing you are stupid when you speak and that talking to you is a pain.

However, you can never progress as a serious student of Spanish unless you venture out in social situations and actively use the language you’ve been learning. When you find yourself trapped in self-doubt, you must move forward, exert self-confidence and become a proficient foreign language speaker who is daily conquering the small obstacles to Spanish fluency.

Beginners are not the only ones susceptible to these moments of vulnerability, more advanced speakers get tripped up with intimidating social situations and suffer from moments of feeling unintelligent.

Don’t fear – whether you are a beginner or an advanced student, here are 3 ways to overcome your fear of speaking Spanish so that you can communicate with dignity.

 

 

1. Accept the Fear

 

You may believe that fluent speakers of Spanish don’t experience fear, that one day you’ll have accumulated enough language knowledge to not be scared of being judged negatively when you speak. The truth is that more experienced speakers, and even native speakers of Spanish, can feel intimidated by the act of communicating in the foreign language.

Fear is a fact of life and when you count yourself among those who regularly make an effort to master their fear, you are well on your way to significantly advancing in your mastery of the foreign language.

Mark Twain once said that courage is the resistance of fear, not the absence of fear. Facing your fear on a daily basis is the path to overcoming it, and as you do so, you will realize that the monsters you imagined were never real and created by your own imagination.

So start by taking small steps in leaving your comfort zone by practicing Spanish with native speakers. With practice, you will realize that it’s no big deal after all.

 

2. Embrace Speaking Spanish as a Fun, Daily Habit

 

Practiced learners of Spanish understand you have to apply what you study in daily life and create genuine experiences with the language. The best method of doing this is to practice the language in a practical, fun and convenient manner.

The more you embrace practicing Spanish in your daily life, the easier it will be to find your inner courage to speak it. This is where traditional methods of learning the language can work against you. Traditional methods typically focus too much on grammar while placing little emphasis on the experience of learning Spanish in a live action environment.

Some methods for actively learning Spanish are: listening to Spanish music and Spanish podcasts, watching movies and TV in the language, and engaging with native speakers online and in person.

When you start learning Spanish in an actionable way on a daily basis, you will experience the following:

• You will start feeling calm and relaxed in social situations despite not understanding everything.

• The Spanish learning process gets easier as you grow accustomed to the rhythms and sounds of the language.

• You will grow more enthused about the learning process as you participate in more and more authentic learning experiences.

 

3. Master Greetings and Goodbyes

 

A terrific way to overcome your fear of speaking Spanish is to master your hellos and goodbyes beyond the simplest forms of opening and ending a conversation.

Your greetings and goodbyes are used in every face-to-face situation and when you become practiced enough in starting and ending a conversation, you experience moments of perfect comprehension, which makes all the difference for your confidence level.

If you can make a reliably solid first and final impression when you connect with a person at the beginning and end of a conversation, you’re more likely to tap into your inner sense of confidence that will slowly extend to the rest of the conversation with practice.

You will be able to connect with native speakers of Spanish in a friendly and natural way which will predispose them to helping you with your Spanish. You will begin and end every conversation on a positive, high note which will make you feel good about yourself. With just a handful of phrases and an ear for the typical responses, you can start and end every conversation with fluency, confidence and dignity.

Your repertoire of greetings in Spanish can include: “Qué tal?” (How are you?); “Cómo andas?” (How are you doing?); “Todo bien?” (Is everything okay?). Your list of simple goodbyes can feature: “Que descanses,” (May you rest well); “Fue lindo hablar contigo,” (It was good talking to you); “Que tengas un lindo dia/viaje/(una linda) semana,” (Have a nice day/trip/week); and “Hasta luego,” (Until later).

These greetings and goodbyes instantly enable you to connect with any Spanish speaker in a fun and dynamic fashion.

 

Article by Sean Hopwood

Sean Hopwood, MBA is founder and President of Day Translations, Inc., a Spanish translation services provider, dedicated to the improvement of global communications. By helping both corporations and the individual, Day Translations provides a necessary service at the same time as developing opportunities for greater sympathy and understanding worldwide.

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