Hello everybody

For my weekend words today I'd like to discuss ways to make language learning more interesting.

Often, people ask us why we learn one or more languages. We sometimes ask ourselves why. This question seems particularly interesting sometimes as we don't always have easy answers.

Personally speaking, I often answer that I learn languages "as a hobby" like we do when we take photographs, collect things, read books, watch films.

Is it a good idea to compare learning a language to these activities that we would usually consider to be hobbies? I am not sure. I suppose learning a language is something that is interesting to do, keeps our minds occupied and there is something to be gained by learning - we eventually get to communicate with other people who speak the language - whether these are native speakers, or other people learning the language.

If we have no-one to speak the language with, then how do we keep interested in learning?

We need to find reasons than make us more interested in keeping going to achieve success.

Language learning is a long "journey" with many difficult aspects to encounter: remembering the words, understanding grammar, getting the pronunciation correct. It is easy to become demotivated.

One thing I think we should never do is say "sorry" when we don't know a word, or make a mistake when we are speaking with someone who speaks the language better than us. I believe that if we do make a mistake and feel that we want to say something about the mistake, then we should say something like this: " I enjoy learning the language (English, French, Chinese or whatever) and I make some mistakes - but I keep trying to learn to speak it better" This is positive and helps us and the people we are speaking with to understand that we know we make mistakes, but we don't want it to stop us speaking the language.

Keeping going when we have no native speakers to talk to is difficult. I have a some suggestions to help:

1. A simple idea is to keep a diary and write something each day, or each week in the language we are learning. This will also tell us over time how much we are learning when later we read what we have written. This is the easiest way to keep the language in our heads each time we write something in the diary.

2. Another idea is to have a conversation with yourself. In the car, on the train, on a bus. Also, we can speak (silently) with ourselves when we are waiting for something: doctor's waiting room, hotel room, train station etc. Although it's not perhaps a good idea to talk to ourselves out loud in these sorts of situation, it can work if we quietly "speak" in our heads - we can try to remember the words for some things that we can see. For example, if we are waiting for a train, there is these words to think of" train", "track", "platform", ticket etc.

3. A good idea I think is to try using a language learners website, such as this one: www.livemocha.com - here we can practice our languages with native speakers in different ways - writing, speaking , reading and listening.

4. Another interesting idea is to write a little about something that interests us. Then, when we later have the chance to speak with a native speaker - we can ask them to read it and see what they think about it. Not only will they be able to correct the text, but they will also learn something themselves from the text that we have prepared earlier - that is why I suggest making it about an interesting subject that we know enough about.

I'm always happy to hear your suggestions for subjects or comments on my podcasts.

See you next time

Bye for now