Blog
Tim Ferriss, a minor irritantThe way the internet works I continue to be advised when someone has posted a comment on Tim Ferriss' post about "learning languages" by deconstructing them. On a number of occasions I have gone to the post and politely, much...
famous polyglots
It seems that the youtube of Ziad Fazah on Chilean TV has disappeared from youtube. Is there a youtube of him speaking his many languages? Is there one of Stu Jay Ray doing it, or some other polyglot? Are there...
LingQ Podcasts and mistakes
We are increasing our LingQ Podcasts in different languages. I will be adding Chinese and Italian soon. Yesterday I uploaded my first German one. I received a comment from Gerd pointing out that the German was full of mistakes. I...
GermanLingQ Podcast starts up
We posted our first GermanLingQ Podcast (Chris please note) and hope to have a transcript at LingQ in a day or two. It will depend on how good our transcriber is. Our transcriber will also have to correct my mistakes...
Ziad Fazah speaks 58 languages ?
Ziad Fazah speaks 58 languages, or does he? Here he is interviewed on a Spanish television program and seems not to understand the questions he gets in Finnish, Farsi, Russian, Chinese and Greek. I have not done a multilanguage podcast...
LingQ is a killer app!
A report on LingQ was just posted on a site called Killer Startups. http://www.killerstartups.com/eCommerce/Lingqcom---Learn-Languages-Online/ This is an opportunity to make more people aware of LingQ. If you want to help LingQ, it would certainly help LingQ if you go this...
Language learning podcasts
Just a reminder that we have our LanguageLingQ language learning podcasts (listen here) starting to come out more regularly now. All the transcripts will be made available at LingQ. You can find the podcasts at http://thelinguist.blogs.com/frenchlingq/ http://thelinguist.blogs.com/japaneselingq/ http://thelinguist.blogs.com/portugueselingq/ http://thelinguist.blogs.com/spanishlingq/ with...
How to learn any language in less than an hour
Here is a little counter suggestion to Tim Ferriss' popular post entitled How to learn any language in an hour which sets out some rules on how to choose which language to learn, rather than, as the title implies, how...
Vocabulary learning
The biggest task in language learning is the accumulation of vocabulary (listen here). For that reason vocabulary growth is a major emphasis at LingQ. We need words, lots of words. We need to understand them when we see them and...
The importance of context in language learning
The importance of context in language learning(podcast). Context in language learning is the most important element besides the motivation of the learner. The teacher, the textbook, the school, the "ability" of the learner, are all less important. You can make...
Instruction hours and language improvement according to CAL
Here is the podcast The US Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) announced its latest digest,?Effects of Instructional Hours and Intensity of Instruction on NRS Level Gain in Listening and Speaking.? The digest reports on a descriptive study examining the relationship...
Send me English learning audio files and Rubem Alves.
Here is the podcast I recently had the following comment appear twice on this blog. "send me english learning listening practise audio files.such as mp3. thank you." To be honest this kind of message really annoys me. We get this...
Learning a language from scratch
Here is recent exchange on the LingQ Forum. Ssarah asked the following question. How can I learn Italian by looking at and listening to material? I dont know what they're saying. I have a free membership so I cant ask...
Powering up Krashen - a most important point, choice.
Further on the subject of making Krashen's meaningful input model of language learning more effective, I should add one more factor, which is perhaps the most important, choice. The more interesting the content is for the learner, the easier it...
LingQ-Powering up Krashen's meaningful input learning model
Stephen Krashen is the best known exponent of learning through massive input of meaningful content. Meaningful means relevant, interesting, and just a little difficult for the learner. This is sometimes referred to as n+ 1 or i+1, and has been...
Bilingual texts and language learning
Bilingual texts, how useful are they for language learning. I think it is a matter of personal preference. They are very popular with some learners at how-to-learn-any-language.com. Ilya, regluarl commenter here, is less keen, and prefers computer generated translation to...
Exchanging lists in LingQ - Dimitriy's list
In a previous post Dimitriy provided a list of English words that he had saved which I have recorded here. I am happy to do so since he recorded my Russian word list in Russian. As we do more of...
Recording and exchanging each others word lists in LingQ.
Words and phrases are key to language learning. Studying lists that come from one's listening and reading is very helpful. Hearing them over and over should also help. Here is a post I just made on the LingQ Forum. I...
What works in language teaching
Stephen Krashen's explanations of language learning are sound, have influenced me and are supported by research. Although I am skeptical of most of this kind of research, the point is that the research does exist, as Ana pointed out.. Krashen's...
The CAL-Linguist dust up podcast and webcast.
I have not done any podcast or web cast for a while so I thought I would summarize the exchange here.