The 5-Week Linguist Show: Seasons 1, 2 and 3

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Languages: Why 5 Weeks?

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Hola, bonjour. Konnichiwa on yourself Bongiorno. Hello. I hope you are all well today. I want to talk about a question I get a lot.

The name of this show obviously is the Five-week Linguist. I have a book by the same name and there’s a reason for it. So I wanted to explain where the five weeks came from.

When I was a young language teacher, I had about nine weeks of not working during the summer and that time was absolutely precious to me.

When I was a young Spanish teacher, I was at a similar proficiency level to where a lot of non-native speaking college graduates were. That sort of intermediate high/ Advanced low. B2 kind of approaching C1.

At the end of the day, I knew that I needed to learn more Spanish, especially if I was teaching upper levels. I also had the experience of teaching at a university (English) and so they were completely different experiences with English being my native language.

It was a lot easier for me to be able to answer any question I needed to, and I wanted to be able to do the same in Spanish. I knew that it would be better for me. It’ll be better for my students. So I always had five weeks that I could find during the summer to work on my language skills, whatever to work on them fairly intensely.

And some of the things that I did early on was study in Spain very intensively and intensely during that time. I took classes there, did some private tutoring, and even did a master’s degree some of which are classes met during the summer in Spain for five weeks. I’ve been to private language schools during five week periods.Basically, it came out of being able to fit it into my schedule. And as the years went on I discovered that.

Time had a huge impact on language proficiency. So I would try to get in as much time as possible. And I used to do something called the 200-hour Challenge and I would make huge progress by investing 200 hours in language study. And this also looked many different ways. As I said I spent time working on a master’s degree.

In Spain I spent time studying Spanish at private language schools, and spent time traveling. I’ve also spent five-week periods where I didn’t leave my house very much and I read and did courses.

The 200 hours comes from research. So basically Spanish being a category one language, t’s fairly close to English and you can make marked progress by investing about 200 hours in activities that allow you to understand new language and produce new language. So when you’re an absolute beginner, in that 200 hours you can make huge progress.

You’re going to make less progress in that 200 hours. And then when you get to doing that sea level that advanced that advanced into Superior on the actual scale. The progress is a whole lot slower. And that’s where I was the first time I did the Five Linguist and the 200-hour challenge etcetera. I knew that 200 hours was based on research.

To give me marked progress, I would get results. And as I said, it was really important to me the level I was at going through that advanced level. It takes at least three times as long to make the same amount of progress as it does when you’re beginning in a language and then if you think about languages that are more difficult like a category two or three)I&...

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Teaching Languages Remotely: Must-have Apps

Student-centered activities while teaching languages remotely:

I wanted to share a few student centered activities that I loved as a learner and as a teacher to share with you, and I hope you find them helpful. They’re a really positive thing. I think that can come out of all of this, which I know it’s really difficult to find positive things with all the suffering and so many bad things happening.

At least from a teaching perspective is to really create some engaging activities that are student-centered that can help students independently study languages successfully when they’re done with school.

So this first one I just wanted to share with you. It’s called La Vie. It’s a YouTube channel obviously and they have lots of real life videos from France, real life shows, etc. They play lots of trailers. This is great language immersion. You really see it. It’s all French lives, life in French, and it’s one example, so there are so many that we could use but using something like YouTube, that has free access. 

Of course, you’re going to have to fit some of these things to give students a really immersive experience, you know, they can watch they can write a summary, find something that really interests them and is school-appropriate, of course, but the idea rings true we have the ultimate language learning lab online.

Really love language immersion. So technically language immersion. Of course, you’re learning something through comprehensible input in another language that you’re learning content. And of course the language is how the medium is being delivered. One of my very favorite activities for Spanish is to do something that involves TPR-Total Physical response. YouTube is a great resource for salsa.

This is a really fun one that a friend introduced to me some years ago called but Batuka, and so this gives great brain breaks if you’re in your physical classroom or students can spend some time doing this. You can send them the link on Google Meet.

How to play the guitar, you could learn history through watching documentaries, you could learn to watch current events news if that interests you you can learn cooking and French there’s so many possibilities, but I absolutely love it.

Journals

So fluency journals. I’m a huge fan of fluency journals. I do these as regularly as I can.

This is great for independent language learners. And this is a great time to assign something students sent you to your class.

So basically, students. You would give them tasks to write about and would actually have to physically- write it, you can have them do it on a Google doc. I personally don’t like to do that, especially when we’re doing distance learning. I like to do it as an independent learner for a couple of reasons. I’ll talk about in a second basically give them a topic family whether something and you set a timer and they write and you can give students.

A few prompts for a week for them to do whatever you’re studying. And I’d have them handwrite it and maybe they can send you a picture of it if that’s not possible. Google Docs works. But of course Google Docs, you have the danger of the Google Translate,

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Fluent Language: Set Goals and Measure Progress

Want to be fluent in a language? Learn how to set goals and measure progress.

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In today’s lesson, we’re going to talk about, what is fluency? Learner’s dictionary defines fluency, as the ability to speak easily and smoothly. Collins dictionary, talks about fluency. To work as a translator, you need fluency in at least one foreign language.

Let’s look at the adjective, form of the word. Someone who is fluid in a particular language, can speak the language easily and correctly. You can also say that, someone speaks fluent French, Chinese, or some other language.

So, I’m going to ask you to think differently about fluency, as far as, learning a new language. So, if you look here at these speech bubbles, right? It talks all about, becoming fluent in a language, and this could be your own language, your native language, the one that you learn. We all pass through these different stages of fluency, and at the very top that you can’t even see, because it’s so tiny.

You start with words and sounds. And then, those words and sounds start becoming phrases. And then, those phrases become longer phrases. Longer phrases with more polish, then become sentences. And then, those sentences become longer, more expressive sentences. And then, when you start talking two and three sentences in one go, they start looking like paragraphs. And then, they become paragraphs, maybe three to five sentences long.

As you develop more language and more ideas that you can express in that language, they become longer paragraphs. And then, when you become really expert and specialized on a topic that you know a lot about, you can speak in connected paragraphs. And then, you get into extended speech. Think about college professors, that type of TED talks, that type of speech. We all pass through all of these stages in a language. And it doesn’t matter, again, whether it’s your native language or a second language, a third language or fourth language, we all go through those phases of fluency.

But I think it’s really important to understand, that fluency, there are different, it’s just a continuum. You can still be a speaker of a language, if you’re speaking words, right? Up at the very top of that bubble or, if you’re speaking in extended speech, right?

Those are just different levels of ability. And I think, it’s really important to see that as a learner, that you don’t have to get to some magic point to be a speaker of that language, right? And I think it’s important also, to understand these different phases. It’s not a black or white point, just, you need to understand just as your skills grow, you can get better and better and better and better and better.

There is one point on that continuum that I want to talk about, and that’s the paragraph level. And that’s the point, where a lot of people consider themselves or are considered to be fluent in a language. And I want to give you some concrete examples and we’ll go into more depth in another lesson. So, if what I’m saying, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to you, it certainly will, in the next lesson. This paragraph level, this is the Common European Framework Reference B2 level. If you follow Benny Lewis,

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Learn Italian at Home: Yabla

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Comprehension.

I wanted to share with you one of my very favorite tools for comprehension. I’ve said it over and over again and I’ll continue to say it over and over again. I listen and I read twice as much as I speak and write.

Listening is probably one of the most difficult skills to develop in a language, in my opinion. But we’ve entered an age in the world, in the development of technology where it doesn’t have to be that much of a problem because we have so much access to opportunities to listen to other languages, without the pressure of having to respond like you would in a conversation.

And I wanted to share one of my very favorite tools to learn Italian at home. I am an affiliate, for full disclosure, and a very proud affiliate. This is a fabulous tool I’ve loved for years. I’m currently working on my Italian, but I’m going to give you a quick tour of Yabla. And again, whether you’re learning Italian or not is irrelevant. It’s great if you are, if not, it is available in Chinese, French, Spanish, and German. And I think more languages are perhaps coming. So let’s just take a quick look. So I’m going to start with this drama here.

You can make it slower.

As you see, there is closed captioning, right? And you can look up the words here.

And this also is subtitled and you can turn them on, off. There it’s got some great games. So let’s look at the multiple-choice. Let’s start the game.

All right.

You fill in the missing word. Again, a great comprehension exercise. Let’s try another one.

I don’t love the fill in the blank and I’ve not tried scribe. And I would think that those come a little bit later. You can do these videos over and over again and you’ll learn something new every time.

Vocabulary Review. So they’ve given you a list of words and phrases in chunks, as we talk about in vocabulary …

And you play a game.

How cool is that?

Let’s try another one. This looks amazing.

This is deep comprehension right here in these multiple-choice questions. It’s amazing. You watch the video, you answer the questions. You learn languages by understanding messages [inaudible 00:00:03:07]. And look, there’s lots and lots and lots of videos in this particular series. So, we’re going to X out and you see that there’s other types of content. So, there are lectures.

All right.

And there is Italian courses. One of my favorite things that they do…

Lectures on different places. Sometimes they have a person who sort of takes you around different cities. There’s more dramas, you can learn from music. Let’s find a music video. Surely there’s one up here.

Lots of great search options, movies.

There are thousands of videos to learn Italian at home. There’s new ones every week. You can create flashcards there’s a active community, there’s lessons, you can find lessons on all sorts of great topics in whatever language you’re studying.

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Studying Krashen: Benny Lewis and the 5 Theories

Dr. Stephen Krashen has done so much for the teaching and learning of languages through the research and publication of his five theories of language acquisition.

Studying Krashen’s 5 Theories

Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition consists of five main hypotheses:

* the Acquisition-Learning hypothesis;* the Monitor hypothesis;* the Natural Order hypothesis;* the Input hypothesis;* and the Affective Filter hypothesis.

Here’s my cheat sheet of Krashen’s theories:

Acquisition-Learning

Acquisition is natural. Learning is intentional and more artificial. Think about the way you learned your own language as a child. You were immersed in messages. You were read to. You watched television. You listened to songs. You read. 

With learning, think about some of the formal instruction you had in school. For example, what a noun is or what an adverb is. Instruction on parts of speech and grammar exercises are examples of formal language instruction that many of us have experienced.

Monitor 

This is the practical result of the language learned. It discusses how learners monitor what they have learned and acquired in the new language.

For example, some over-monitor and as a result, are overly measured in their language use, ultimately at the expense of communication. Some under-monitor, at the expense of accuracy. Optimal learners remain aware enough to monitor their use enough to allow for continued progress yet don’t let mistakes halt their progress.

Natural Order

As Krashen says, “For a given language, some grammatical structures tend to be acquired early, while others late.”

I like to use the example of children again. Think about some of the simple things they say when they’re first learning to speak. They’re choppy and rough. Think about by the time someone graduates from college how sophisticated and polished their language is relative to a small child, and the ease of expression they have. While this natural order seems to be similar among languages and learner profiles, grammar does not need to be learned in a specific sequence.

Input

In order to keep your skills growing in a language, you need comprehensible input. This is language that you can understand, with some new things in there that let you problem solve, think and acquire new structures. They allow you to work on language that is slightly more difficult-just slightly above your level of language- into what you already know.

Affective Filter

This can have a huge impact on how quickly you learn languages. Learning languages can be pretty scary.

Do you have an outgoing personality? Are you an extrovert? Are you willing to put yourself out there, or are you a perfectionist, measured with your communication? 

In order to really bring these theories to life, I’d like to share with you the story of Benny Lewis from Fluent in 3 Months. Benny’s better known as the Irish Polyglot. 

Benny’s a smart guy. He studied engineering at university.

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Teaching online? Here is an engaging activity for language classes that will get your students speaking your target language.

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Teaching Online: Using Google Apps to Host Guest Speakers

Welcome to the 5-week Linguist Show. If you want to learn a language or you teach a language, you’ve come to the right place. Join Janina each week for tips, resources and advice for making engaging language learning happen anytime, anywhere.

Using Google Apps to host guest speakers from anywhere in the world. In this presentation, you’re going to learn how to plan and organize a guest speaker session in your target language. Very useful now that so many of us are teaching online.

For your students, you’re going to learn how to host a session using Google Apps. You’re going to learn how to record the session to use later as a listening comprehension exercise, and you’re gonna learn how to find guest speakers to invite to your classroom. I’m Janina Klimas. I’ve a B.A. in Theater Arts and Foreign Languages and an M.A. in the Teaching of Languages. I’ve had wonderful opportunities to be able to work with lots of teachers all over the world through ACTFL at their annual convention,  and through publishing on The Language Educator.

I have another side to me that’s also a polyglot who loves languages, and try to learn what I can from people learning and teaching online. So I spend a lot of time studying languages on my own because it’s a passion, but also because I find my best language learning or teaching activities for my students.

The most engaging ones come from my own personal engagement in language study, and this activity is one of them. So why have guest speakers you students will get to have authentic communication with people outside of the classroom community. They’ll gain confidence in the target language. They’ll have exposure to different accents and dialects. They’ll get an opportunity for true immersion using the knowledge and language of a native speaker of the language you’re teaching. And it will show students ways to build skills without necessarily going abroad. It’s going to show them that what they’re learning works. And you don’t need.

To have this huge life disrupting experience, you can do this with just a little bit of time every day and become perfectly proficient in a language.

So this is a level novice speaker session clip. This person’s from Argentina. We’re not actually going to watch the clip, but essentially my students had to prepare the questions in advance.

And I’ll show you exactly how they did that later, but they were really prepared with their questions.

Which they prepared beforehand because their novice level speakers, they speak in words and phrases are not really creating with language so much yet. So they had to really kind of load on the front end in preparing their questions. So your step one, you’re going to select a theme based on your learning objectives and also the level of the students. Obviously, the basic personal information, nature and the environment, education, travel, health, fun and leisure time are just a few.

It’s great teaching languages because really you can make so many things.

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Learn a Language at Home: 3 Simple Tools

How would it be if you knew you could learn a new language at home without great expense, hours of tedious study, traveling to courses, or disrupting your life? Transform your downtime into skills in a new language. Think about the situation right now. Many of us are stuck at home. We can’t go anywhere. How can you turn the time that you have at home into a new language?

If you have a smartphone or anything that can connect to the internet, but anything that’s mobile, you have the ultimate language learning lab enabling anyone to learn a language at home. Many years ago, language learning labs had to be stationary. They were in one place and there was no internet. You had to listen to cassettes and tapes to go have those immersive experiences. Now, this phone, you can learn any language anywhere if you’ve got this.

I want to talk about some surprising apps to learn a language at home, and as much as I love Duolingo, that’s not what I’m referring to. 

The first one is Google. If you can connect to the internet, there are thousands upon thousands of podcasts that are going to allow you access to any language you want to learn. 

Some are specifically geared towards beginning learners, and others are more advanced. Learn a language at home, regardless of your level.

You can get free materials from the largest search engines. Pinterest is a huge search engine. If you want to learn Spanish, go ahead and type that. Learn Spanish. Want to learn French? They’re going to take you to all these blogs and resources, the things that are pinned to this amazing search engine. YouTube is another example. You’ll find a plethora of material to learn a language at home on the three biggest search engines in the world, Google, YouTube, and Pinterest.

On your phone, Audible is one of my very favorite apps to learn a language at home. There are tons of audio courses published for learners of many languages. They’re really easily and readily available. Some of my very favorite for beginners are Pimsleur courses. I love Michel Thomas, and I love Earworms. You can listen to levels to get started. You can also listen when you start becoming an intermediate. I absolutely love Olly Richards’ short stories. He publishes in lots of languages. Listen to them over and over again. It’s an amazing way to build your vocabulary and hear some interesting stories at the same time.

When you become advanced or you start moving into the advanced levels, audio books are great to learn a language at home. They are what helped me do that final step towards speaking Spanish like a native. I spent a five-week period during the summer where I listened to novels and self help books in Spanish over and over again. I walked and I cleaned while listening. I really focused on deep understanding. Audio books are probably one of the best resources out there for language learners of all levels. You can do this anywhere with a phone. You can listen on your laptop, your desktop, your Alexa.

eBooks, any app that you use to read books on a device will work. I’m going to share two of my very favorite resources. They are phrasebooks. Phrasebooks are the perfect eBook or resource for a beginner, and they’re easily available online. These are two in Italian. If you buy a phrasebook online,

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Learn a new language in 5-week intervals

Do you love languages? Teach languages? Love to learn languages? Would you like to learn a new language and want to find out how to do it without spending a ton of money or time you don’t have? If so, then the 5-Week Linguist Show is for you.

Every week, there’ll be a new audio or video talking all about tips, shortcuts, and the research on how to learn any language you want from anywhere in the world, with time you already have. Learn how to turn every 5-week interval into progress towards fluency in a language.

My name is Janina Klimas. I’ve been teaching languages for more than two decades. I have a BA in Theater Arts and Foreign Languages, and an MA in the teaching of languages. I speak six languages to varying levels of fluency. I’ve lived on three continents as a language teacher. I’ve been an English instructor at Sejong University, director of their language immersion program, and taught languages to people ranging from preschool, K-12, university and language for specific purposes. I’ve taught Spanish and English for many years. I’ve continued to learn and study additional languages on my own with new activities every 5 weeks. I’ve discovered a lot of resources over the years that I share with you here.

I am so excited for you to be joining me each week here and allowing me to be a part of your journey to learn a new language.

Are you looking to learn how to set goals and measure progress? It really helps to know this when you want to learn a language. Check out the course here: https://real-life-language.teachable.com/p/measure-your-progress-and-fluency-in-any-language

Want to start learning a language? Check out the mini-courses, where you can download bite-sized files. Create your own playlists of survival language and start speaking today. http://reallifelanguage.com/reallifelanguageblog/category/podcasts/