Hello All,

Welcome back to the fifth episode of our podcast. This episode is going to be entirely in English because I'm going to discuss all the tips and tricks that I have used over the course of time to learn Dutch and this is aimed even for absolute beginners to understand.

So first of all, I must say that I'm still not an expert in Dutch language. I'm currently at B1 level. I make lot of faults, my pronunciation goes wrong at times, my sentence structure is incorrect. But that's totally okay. My main aim in building this podcast is to create a platform where I get a chance to speak to you all and that's the most effective way to learn a language. Isn't it?

So, here are some of the practical tips that I used and still use to improve my language skills based on 4 categories.

1. I first logged into Youtube and looked for basic videos that helped me to get started
2. I enrolled in some of the online language learning platforms like Duolingo, Dutchpod101 and started practicing there
These two steps laid foundation for my "listening skill"

3. I then started to read letters, posts and other magazines that came home. 
4. I started to keep stock of Ah Allerhande magazines and read them whenever possible. 
These two things helped me in building my "reading skill" to some extent

5. I picked few sentences from my daily life and started translating it into Dutch, of course I took help from google translate. However, I must admit that I didn't do it quite often. 
This step helps in improving "writing skill" to a great extent

6. Finally comes speaking part. Initially, it is very difficult and daunting to speak. I was reluctant to speak in Dutch, was comfortable speaking in English with others and I took a lot of time to start speaking to others in Dutch. 

I mainly concentrated on reading and listening at the beginning. Once I started to get the hang of the language, then I slowly started to speak to people in AH, other stores, parents of other kids etc


One realistic thing to note here is that learning a language is not an easy task specially as adults when we have so many other responsibilities and to-do lists to check every single day. Language learning needs consistent effort, time and patience just like any other skill. It took me 3 years to be able to speak without any hesitation and I still fumble a lot of times. That is totally okay. No one is perfect right. Our leaning curve will not be linear all the time. Some days are super cool, sometimes things don't happen as we wish to. Life comes along the way and we totally skip learning or we tend to procrastinate due to various reasons. All of this is natural human tendency. What is important is to bounce back again and keep going no matter how tiny our progress seem to be

Well, good news is that you are not alone in this language learning journey. We are all together in this process and let's use this platform to leverage our skillset. One most important and non-negotiable thing that you need to do every Wednesday is to listen to this podcast. Apart from that, pick just one thing among all the tips that I have shared in this podcast and keep going at it. Start small and then increase your pace and speed. That way you will save yourself from being overwhelmed.

Dat was het voor deze aflevering. Tot volgende week woensdag. Pas goed op jezelf, doei!