My Fluent Podcast

Sarah tells the origin story of her YouTube Channel (reading series), where she started out reading out loud a book in Italian. 

At the time she started reading on YouTube, she had only been studying Italian for 2 months! 

First Video: Reading in Italian until I'm Fluent

of the Reading in Italian Series 

The Book Sarah is reading out in her series: Come Una Notte a Bali by Gianluca Gotto

Italian Book Club (Facebook Group)

Bob talks about his language learning methods and how he ended up in Argentina to learn Spanish. He has been tracking his language learning progress in form of videos in which he speaks in Spanish.

Video Version.

Some of the topics we cover:

• Why Argentina?
• What is Comprehensible Method?
• Messi
• Inspiration for Making Language Update Videos
• Watching Argentinian Videos To Learn The Language

Check out Bob's YouTube Channel. 

My Fluent Podcast was selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 15 Intermediate English Podcasts on the web.

India is a very enthusiastic learner of German from Ireland. She tells us about her language journey in which she mainly used the immersion approach to become fluent in German. The most important part of this whole method of immersion learning is obviosly your immersion. You absolutely need to have fun! India watched a lot of TV series, movies, listened to podcasts, read books and in general had a lot of fun in the process!

➡️Video Version of The Interview (with full shownotes: https://youtu.be/PZFnwsVkYo8?si=8AQd8KIR84fI7O-j 

Learn from her experience and become a better language learner! India even kept track of her journey in form of different stats she wrote down and through recording herself in her lovely YouTube Channel: 

https://www.youtube.com/@indih.244

This is part 1 of 2. Antonello Zanini from Italy is quite an inspiration to me. He is a software engineer and technical writer and is a succesful writer on Medium. 

Spreading knowledge through writing is his mission

Daniel and Antonello discuss the importance of building a writing habit in order to improve your English writing skills (and other skills as well). Spending a lot of hours writing is not necessary to become good at it, but rather consistency and daily practice are key.

Antonello shares his experience using ChatGPT as a language learning tool to replace Italki, which he feels has become more focused on selling courses and buying hours with teachers. He wrote his daily notes on ChatGPT and asked for feedback, finding that the responses are similar to what he would receive from a human.

Antonello Zanini – Medium 

Antonello Zanini | Software Engineer and Technical Writer

In the second part of our chat with Cara Leopold. (Link to first part), we discuss the movie Groundhog Day. The episode is meant to be like a Movie Club. 

Cara Leopold is the creator of the Leo Listening Movie Club where she helps film-loving English learners understand and discuss movies together so they can master conversational English. 

Back-to-School Movie Challenge

From September 13th-20th Cara is organising the Back-to-School Movie Challenge, a 1-week taste of what it's like to be in a movie club. By watching and discussing school-themed movies together, you’ll learn new vocabulary, catch fast-spoken English and practice your speaking and writing skills with other movie-loving English learners. The challenge includes access to a discussion forum as well as a live Zoom session at the end to chat with me and other film lovers about the movie clips.

Time stamps

0:00:01 Introduction to Groundhog Day and Movie Challenge

 0:02:00 Groundhog Day

0:07:16 Childhood Impressions and Expectations

0:07:57 Hilarious Moments that Cracked Me Up

0:08:09 Appreciating Comedy and Bill Murray's Humor

0:09:28 The stages

0:11:34 Making the best of any situation

0:13:20 Profound Character Development

0:15:32 Speculations on the Length of Phil's Time Loop

0:17:32 Phil Murray's Versatility in Comedy and Drama 

0:19:03 A Subtle and Brilliant Performance by Phil Murray

0:22:36 Discussing the usefulness and cultural context of certain expressions

0:25:25 Appreciating memorable scenes and lessons from the movie

Links

Cara’s website: https://leo-listening.com/ 

Cara’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@LeoListening/

Cara’s Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caraleopold/

Back-to-School Movie Challenge

https://leolistening.podia.com/back-to-school-movie-challenge 

Cara Leopold is the creator of the Leo Listening Movie Club where she helps film-loving English learners understand and discuss movies together so they can master conversational English.

From September 13th-20th Cara is organising the Back-to-School Movie Challenge, a 1-week taste of what it's like to be in a movie club. By watching and discussing school-themed movies together, you’ll learn new vocabulary, catch fast-spoken English and practice your speaking and writing skills with other movie-loving English learners. The challenge includes access to a discussion forum as well as a live Zoom session at the end to chat with me and other film lovers about the movie clips.

Cara's challenge:

https://leolistening.podia.com/back-to-school-movie-challenge

Cara’s website: https://leo-listening.com/ 

Cara’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@LeoListening/

Cara’s Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caraleopold/ 

Cara’s Pinterest profile: Coming soon.

Spotify Playlist (Cara Leopold Interviews)

Leo Listening Youtube Channel: 

Time stamps

0:00:02 Introduction and passion for interviewing

0:06:48 Learning French through Observation and Listening

 0:08:54 Lack of focus on listening skills in education

 0:11:02 Contrasting traditional language learning methods with contextual learning

 0:19:08 Misconceptions about TED Talks and Transcripts

 0:25:42 Overcoming Cultural References in Movies

 0:28:23 The Importance of Movie Analysis and Resources

 0:38:48 Challenges of Sound Mixing in Cinema and Home Entertainment

0:41:47 Translating Subtitles and Cultural References

 0:44:55 American Actors Tackling South African Accents

0:46:11 Frustration with movie accents and Leo Listening's mission 0:47:52 Where to Find Cara's Online Presence

Other Links

Evernote (note taking app/website)

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ncx0nPt9IrclOCyh77Ozv?si=ce218cfa3a854b26 

Martin Johnston loves to teach English through personal stories (storytelling) and through non conventional methods. It's great to learn from him and his podcast. He really knows a thing or two about learning (teaching) a language, especially British English. 

His "unfiltered" podcast (Rock N'Roll English, first episode aired in 2016) with real life stories is there to improve our English. 

In this interview, we learn more about Martin's language story, how he ended up in Italy and went back to the UK and how his podcast came to be. It's inspiring and educational at the same time. A shout-out to Martin Johnston!

"You don't have to be great to start, but if you want to be great, you have to start."

Time stamps:

04:02 Who is Martin Johnston?

09:24 Italian vs Regional Dialects (e.g. Sicilian Dialects)

12:26 The Origin Story of Rock N'Roll English

15:12 The First Episode 

24:47 Rock N'Roll Vocabulary Bible

28:25 The Importance of Listening 

39:01 Introducing the Jungle Listening Course

40:11 Module 1: Learning New Movements (the 44 Sounds of English)

43:30 Module 2: Learning to Differentiate Between Smilar Sounds

44:46 End of Module 2 / Modul 3: Transcribing Practice 

46:47 Module 4:  Connected Speech and Word Changes

54:55 Rock N'Roll Family

59:08 Making a Living Out of Podcasting is Hard work!

01:03:33 Preparation 

01:10:03 Favorite Word

Links:

Check out Martin's Jungle Listening Course https://www.rocknrollenglish.com/courses/junglelistening

• Check out Martin's Rock N'Roll English Podcast!
• The brilliant Rock N'Roll English Vocabulary Bible
  • https://www.rocknrollenglish.com/f/rnr-vocab-bible

Video version of this podcast.

You'll find the link to Sheila's Podcast (All About You Podcast) here: 

https://open.spotify.com/show/38xZM7ID8vP1aJR5KuFrQS?si=eaed93c8d9004870

All About You Podcast on YouTube.

The Vocab Man Podcast:

▶ 113 To Be Off The Hook (Ft. Lingo Junkie) | Spreaker

Christina has been learning many languages such as 

• Latin
• Spanish 🇪🇸
• Finnish 🇫🇮
• Russian 🇷🇺
• Turkish 🇹🇷
• Catalan
• Ancient Greek 🏛️
• French 🇫🇷
• Italian 🇮🇹
• Albanian 🇦🇱
• Sign language 🤟
• Swahili 🇰🇪

In this interview, you'll learn about how Christina learn these languages. We also talk about

- dialects, twitter for language learning, Toki Pona (constructed language) and more. 

• "all my English teachers for all my school years were German. So that's why I say learning from native speakers is overrated because I learned my English completely from German people." 
• "Nothing improves your language skills faster than a captivating story."
• "you don't need to learn a dictionary by heart. You just read a book. Let the story grip you. And  you'll have to look up a word now and then, of course, but it doesn't feel like studying."

• Intro by Daniel Goodson  (0:00)
• Start Interview (01:40)
• Glossika challenge - snippet from episode 120 (5:21)
• Grammar is important (6:35)
• Horror of Learning Spanish (Blog) (12:33
• Have the courage to abandon a book (15:16)
• Dialects are beautiful (18:26)
• Toki Pona, a language with 120 words (27:53)
• Using Twitter to learning languages (42:17) 
• Favorite idioms/expressions (45:54)
  • To Lose One's Marbels

• "That's one nifty thing". = Stylish or smart. 

More to come...

• The Pluriglot: Christina's Twitter account.🐦For language enthusiasts.

• The Horror of Learning Spanish:  Nothing improves your language skills faster than a captivating story. Christina's Blog on Substack for Spanish leaners. 

Contact Daniel: [email protected] 

Welcome to my inspirational language learning podcast. Where I interview other language lovers.

Currently, I strive to enhance my Italian skills. One podcast that has become my go-to resource is "3' Grezzi" [grezzi means raw, unedited] by Cristina Marras.

Join me in this episode as I sit down with Cristina, the talented host of "3' Grezzi," a very useful podcast in Italian with a wide range of topics (the podcast is not scripted and comes with Italian transcription and English translation. On YouTube with rolling English subtitles.). In our conversation, Cristina shares her personal language journey, her passion for podcasting, and more.

Resources and Links:

• To discover more about Cristina Marras and her artistic pursuits , visit her website, "Cristina Marras - Art, in all the wrong places."
• Explore "3' Grezzi" and other captivating content on Cristina's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@m.cristinamarras]
• Music: Scott Holmes - Upbeat Party licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.