Amelia on October 01 2009
If you’re female and stay long-term in another country, I can almost guarantee you that at some point, someone is going to leave you in charge of one or more toddlers.
I once had the pleasure of spending several hours looking after four little ones all under age four when I spoke about ten words of [...]
Amelia on September 16 2009
Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you to move to another country and just “pick up” the language. This method will work even if you rarely get the chance to hear or read the language you’re learning.
This is largely for developing the basic vocabulary you need to get by, but can help no [...]
Amelia on September 12 2009
One of the biggest stumbling blocks on the road to fluency is the continual interruptions. Interruptions do more than slow your progress than just take time away from your studies; they also erode the progress you’ve already made.
Just like kids forget what they’ve learned over the academic year while they’re on summer vacation, you [...]
Amelia on September 02 2009
Live interaction is essential if you want to be able to really communicate orally in your target language. You can learn a useful amount of a language just from tapes, books, software and the like, but that’s just the beginning. Unless you have real-time conversations, your speech will always be faltering, slow, and broken.
Unfortunately, one [...]