An obstacle to acquiring vocabulary is our reluctance to accept forgetting, our vain hope to hang on to vocabulary we have tried to learn. Maybe we should just let go of new vocabulary, repeatedly catch and release, until it sticks.

Language immersion sounds like magic. You go live in a country and once you are there you learn the language. In this video I explain why this isn’t necessarily the case, and what you can do to increase your chances of language immersion strategy success.

Language learning is forgiving. It allows for errors and forgetting. We slowly become better by doing mostly top down, big picture learning, but sometimes we need to look at the details. We just shouldn't expect to remember them.

You’re in charge of your language learning journey, you’re steering the boat. You go where you want to go and don’t worry about who’s behind and ahead of you.

A language teacher should first and foremost be a motivator. I don’t believe you can teach a language to someone not motivated to learn it. Motivating learners is, of course, easier said than done, but it should be the primary goal of any teacher.

How deliberate should we be in learning a language? Should we deliberately study the language or do we just acquire it naturally?

I think we should aim for authenticity in language learning. The language content we are learning from, the conversations we have, need to be as authentic and as meaningful as possible. That way we learn without noticing that we are learning.

I hear people say they want to achieve native pronunciation. A more realistic goal may be natural pronunciation where the speaker and the listener both feel comfortable. To achieve natural pronunciation you may need at first to just let go and play act a little.

Tetsuya of the YouTube channel Morite2 teaches test-taking skills for Japanese people taking TOEIC. We chatted about the state of English learning in Japan and his adventures in language learning.

Tomorrow I will do a livestream with Dr. Stephen Krashen, linguist, educational researcher and activist, where we will discuss language acquisition.

Join us at 11AM Pacific Time on August 24: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7WUxvpPIKQ