Alphabet Texts

Textual Time Machine: Turning to the past for motivating target language texts

Gary Barlow and Margaret Thatcher accompanied me on my language learning this week. This surprising turn of events was thanks not to celebrity friendships and psychic messages, but rather a lucky stumble across a treasure trove of motivating target language texts.

In truth, I was getting a bit tired of language learning textbooks. Dialogues about holiday scenarios and sanitised snippets of everyday life in the target language country weren’t sparking my fire at all. As such, I was struggling a bit to motivate myself to read.

Then, I happened upon the Icelandic media archive timarit.is.

Tantalising texts: balancing subject and level

It is not possible to overestimate the benefits of hitting upon just the right texts to motivate your language learning. There are two strands to bear in mind on that search, sometimes complimentary, sometimes conflicting: subject and level.

Subject is important to inspire you to read in the first place. For example, I’m not interested in race car driving at all. So trying to plough through an Icelandic magazine article on Formula One is going to turn me right off. Music or travel, on the other hand, and I’ll be hooked in – especially if the text contains some new information that will be interesting or useful to me personally.

Level is simply the complexity of the language. But level interacts with subject, at least in terms of motivation. If the subject matter fascinates you, even a very difficult text will be one you gladly pore over. And if you are familiar with the subject matter, guessing new vocab from context is a hundred times easier and less frustrating.

Textual Time machine

Enter timarit.is. It is a grand, online collection of digitised newspaper and magazine media by the National and University Library of Iceland. This incredible service makes accessible publications that stretch back decades, fully readable and downloadable in PDF format.

Now, you might well chuckle at my first searches. A whole world of information at my fingertips, and my first selection was anything but highbrow. I grew up during the boyband explosion, so anything that whips up nostalgia around that will pique my interest. So that settles it: what had Iceland to say about Take That in years gone by?

That’s the trick though: don’t shy from your geekiest interests. Be shameless! Dig around and find some material to explore and reminisce over. The whole point is to connect, to personalise, to enmesh your learning into your life – even the cheesy parts. There certainly was no shortage of vintage cheese on offer here, like this cutting on “Gary Goldboy“:

Tímarit (mbl.is)

Gary Barlow, 1996 (timarit.is)

Sometimes the time machine can throw some real zingers of historical nuggets your way, too. I happened across the following (probably apocryphal) story of said popstar moaning about the cost of beer in Berlin in 1996. Celebrity gossip ages quite well, it seems – still served with an eye-roll and a heap of scepticism.

Beer outrage (timarit.is)

Beer outrage, 1996 (timarit.is)

Our history – their eyes

Popsters aside, I am also a bit of a news and current affairs junkie. When I get fed up of the current dirge (which happens a lot lately), I turn to the recent past. Exploring political history, especially what happened in your own lifetime, can be an enlightening exercise.

Trawling the pages of timarit.is reveals an unusual passion: reading about my own country through the eyes of another. I spent a good few hours typing in the names of figures associated with big political events, then seeing the Icelandic take on them through archived, authentic texts.

Callaghan or Thatcher? They decide today! (Timarit.is)

Callaghan or Thatcher? They decide today! 1979 (timarit.is)

The marvellous thing about timarit.is is the sheer depth of chronology. Facsimiles go back to the turn of the 20th Century. I leapt from Thatcher, to Wilson, to Attlee, reading excitedly each Icelandic take on a turning point in my country’s history. Fascinated is an understatement.

Target language culture?

But just a moment: British bands and British politicians? It’s all a bit Anglocentric, so far. However, you can use these as a springboard for tropes closer to your target language. After reading about Thatcher, for example, I searched for the phrase ‘first woman’ in Icelandic. Which other trail blazers would pop up? Well, I wasn’t disappointed. I learnt all about Iceland’s – and the world’s – first female president, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir.

Vigdís voted president! (Timarit.is)

Vigdís voted president! 1980 (timarit.is)

Of course, I have my own target language country fascination already: Eurovision. And there is no shortage of material there! I can’t explain how enthralled my inner nerd becomes when reading about the songs that I obsessed over for years as a superfan. Simply magical.

Eurovision Iceland 1992 (timarit.is)

Eurovision hopefuls for Iceland in 1992, feeling ‘well rehearsed’ (timarit.is). See here for the resulting live performance!

The fact that all this material is downloadable in PDF format is invaluable. I can simply load them onto my iPad (I use GoodReader for PDFs) and study them on the go.

Other languages

Timarit.is is a truly golden resource. As an Icelandic learner, I am beyond lucky to have open access to such a library. But where does this leave learners of other languages?

Sadly, while there are paid archives like the German http://www.genios.de/presse-archiv/, free materials like timarit.is are hard to come by. Perhaps Iceland’s size has made the task of collating and gaining rights for so much material a little easier than elsewhere. Still, even on paid-for sites there is some useful information.

The archive of German publication Spiegel is a good example. You can search editions back to 1946, although you must pay for the full issues. However, the cover thumbnails are intriguing in themselves as pieces of social history. They also contain a fair bit of useful target language in the form of headlines and subtitles.

Spanish news outlet ABC also offers its Hemeroteca (newspaper library) for information time travellers. I found this article on Spain’s first Eurovision victory, by Massiel back in 1968, particularly charming!

With a bit of Google search grafting, there should be something to find out there for all learners.

Archive sites are goldmines for language learners searching something a bit different to read. Do you have a favourite or recommended source of texts? Share them in the comments!

 

Let language learning turn your world into a kaleidoscope of colours.

Bouncing and bootstraps : my language learning week

It’s been a busy week for me in terms of language learning (and everything else!). I’d call the underlying theme motivation, more than anything else, as I’ve had a well-needed injection of inspiration juice from various quarters. Bouncing and bootstraps is what it’s been about – and here’s why.

Matthew Syed’s Bounce

I picked up a copy of Matthew Syed’s Bounce as part of my general reading this week. It’s the kind of motivational myth-busting book I love. The author takes down the intimidating idea of exclusive ‘natural talent’, and shows how success in any field comes down to dedication and practice above all else.

This seems really pertinent to language learning right now. Currently, it’s very easy to feel in the shadow of some of the ‘reknowned polyglots’ in the language learning scene. Sometimes it really does seem like they have some elusive linguistic superpower, or are somehow special, and different from us. (Sidenote: I know that’s not the intention of most of them – naturally we’ll always try to showcase our skills and potential, rather than our weaknesses. I do it myself!)

What Matthew reminds us of is that anyone can reach these levels of expertise with some graft. Using the well-known 10,000 hours to expert rule, he explains how hard work, not some magical, inborn ‘talent’, is what gets you to the top.

Of course, the polyglot scene is all about maximising your language learning, and making those 10,000 hours of practice as efficient as possible. Perhaps we shouldn’t be feeling in awe of these gurus’ language levels, but rather the learning techniques they employ so efficiently. We could all learn from that.

Muscle memory – for languages

Something else in the book rang true in my linguist’s brain. It’s been mentioned elsewhere in dialogue about language learning online, as the idea is a familiar one: muscle memory. Syed talks specifically about the movement of skill from the conscious to the automatic parts of our brain. In particular, he uses the example of table tennis. A champion player, for example, had internalised his physical technique to the extent that he could beat all competition – despite having the slowest ‘innate’ reaction times of the whole group tested.

Practise a language long enough, and the process of making certain sounds will move into this internal, automated memory. Your mouth will begin to shape certain sounds instinctively. You’ll interject in the target language without thinking about it. Fillers will come as if you were born speaking them. That’s your muscle memory in the target language kicking in!

Typically, you experience this at that click moment, when you realise you are thinking in the target language. It’s the autopilot feeling when you’re finally comfortable waffling away in it. I get it in German, for example, Deutsch being my oldest and strongest foreign language.

More surprisingly, it appears elsewhere even in languages I’m not so comfortable with. I’ve trained myself to interject frequently in Polish, so dropping a właśnie (exactly!) or świetnie (great!) happens almost without thinking now. And that’s still at a pretty basic level (A2). So you can leverage linguistic muscle memory at any level.

It’s a great book for a bit of a pep-up. You can get a second-hand copy from 78p on Amazon right now, so it’s worth a couple of quid if you need a bit of enthusing!

Language learning challenge and support

Of course, getting in that amount of practice is easier when you have support. I know I’m guilty of slacking off a bit when left to my own devices. So how can we encourage ourselves to get Syed’s golden 10,000 hours in?

To this end, I’ve been gaining bags of motivation from a new group I’ve joined on Facebook. It’s been literally pulling me up by the bootstraps with my Icelandic, after months of half-hearted attempts and disorganised dribs and drabs here and there.

Growing together

A good iTalki teacher friend of mine is running the group, which, for the moment, is a limited pilot. Around a dozen of us are signed up, which is a nice, cosy number for a group like this.

Each member picks a language, and an improvement goal based on the European framework. We each have a schedule to report back to the group – either in writing or video update – about progress in our chosen language.

It’s the kind of accountability exercise that has had very positive results in the field of professional coaching. Peers motivate each other, keep each other on track, and – crucially – learn from each other.

Choosing which language to target was particularly tough, considering that I’m actively working on three at the moment (Icelandic, Norwegian and Polish). Add to that two further languages I’m maintaining (German and Spanish), and I had to think long and hard about which one to throw this special lifeline to. It was a close-run contest, with Icelandic narrowly pipping Polish. Not that the others will cease (I’m too much of a junkie for that!). They’ll continue in the background – it’s just Icelandic that will receive the shot-in-the-arm this time round!

Return to Duolingo Mountain

Talking of Polish, I’ve also rediscovered the joys of Duolingo after a few months of consigning it to the back of my mind. As a starter, I always found it a little dull in the first few lessons. However, returning to it with a slightly higher level of the language has been a revelation.

The ability to ‘skill out’ of the first lessons through tests has revitalised the app for me. I’ve now leapfrogged over the early material, and am using it for 5-10 minutes a day for sentence drilling. As I suspected, I now find Duolingo much more useful as a maintenance / drill tool. I think it’s really cementing the foundations of my elementary Polish.

If only Duolingo had an Icelandic course!

Little gratitudes

On the subject of support, I’ve also been inspired by the presence of friends lately. I’m constantly heartened by the regular newsletters of ‘happiness guru’ Nataly Kogan, who recommends making of note of your gratitudes every day. It reminds me to be thankful for language learning friends like Marcel above, for example, but also for friends who spur on my language learning through home baking treats, amongst other things (thanks for the flapjack, emmafull!). My Mum makes a mean apple crumble, too (carrying the baton forward from my wonderful Nan). Food for the brain and soul.

I’m also pretty grateful for the Swagbucks site in recent weeks, which is keeping me happy with the occasional free iTunes card via surveys and such like. Excellent for purchasing langauge learning apps and subscriptions! Especially handy if you spend a fortune on these things (as I’m sure many of us do).

Sunset over Stourbridge

Another reason to be grateful – lovely sunsets over my home town earlier this week.

What are you grateful for in your language learning world this week? Let us know in the comments!

Coaching and languages: the travelling partner you need?

Language learners are used to working with others. These tend to be language specialists: teachers, conversation exchange partners or fellow students. But support in learning languages does not have to be in the target language. Not convinced? Well recently, I’ve been lucky enough to work with a coach on achieving my self-set language goals. Through coaching, I’ve been able to focus on improving how I learn, rather than just cramming content. And I’m completely sold on the usefulness of it to your learning toolkit.

It helps to know that I’m in good company. Multilingual mogul Benny Lewis has sung the praises of coaching repeatedly. In particular, he recommends the free app Coach.me, and is an active member of the platform’s forum and goal-sharing community. I’ve used the app myself, and it is wonderfully simple. Even if you only take advantage of the daily goal reminders, it can be an incredibly powerful motivator.

You can take this a step further, though, and seek out a real-life, human coach to work with. This can be face-to-face, or, more likely these days, online via Skype or similar. For the past month, I’ve been scheduling weekly slots with a coach online. The experience has been nothing but positive, and I’m excited to share how the process can unstick even the stickiest, most disorganised linguist!

Search for the hero inside yourself

Coaching builds on the principle that, in many cases, the answers are already inside ourselves. They just need coaxing out. Avril, my coach, puts this succinctly: she is my tour guide. She shows me around and points things out that I might miss. But the landscape is one of my own making.

How can we not know ourselves, and how can a coach help bridge the gap? The problem is that we are all embedded in busy, often chaotic lives of overlapping priorities.

Coaching in the eyes of a coach

Maybe it’s best to let a coaching expert do the talking here. Cameron Murdoch, experienced coach and mentor at Coaching Studio, puts it like this:

Coaching is often about being challenged by the coach by them using powerful questions. Quite often you have the answer yourself, but it needs another person to draw it out.

The coach also acts as an accountability partner type figure so you set targets but they make sure you achieve them. They help you also if you hit a brick wall and help you tackle issues that develop that could stop you. They also help celebrate achievement as well as walk through problems.

It’s a way of opening up the mind to push you out of your comfort zone and into the learning zone – but making sure you don’t step into the panic zone. They push you just enough to learn, but not to panic.

Quite simply, a coaching partner can push you where you won’t push yourself, and help you see things when you are too close to the issues to see them yourself.

Talking with Avril recently, we likened this to a pile of tangled wool of difference colours. A coach can help you to pick out strands of the same colour, and place them neatly on their own to analyse and optimise. Instantly, you then see what needs doing. In this way, a coach lifts your goal-oriented activity out of the chaos and makes it visible; and that makes it so much more manageable.

Plan of action

For me, a key ‘obvious’ was simply organising my time better.

I instinctively knew that one key to making my learning more systematic would be to use calendar blocking. In fact, it was so ‘obvious’, that I’d even written an article about it. But, somehow, your own advice can be the hardest to put into practice.

Instead of learning bits and pieces here and there, I agreed with my coach to allocate half- or full-hour slots of time where I could sit down and focus entirely on a chapter of a course book, or active reading of a news article.

What helps keep you on the straight and narrow is a sense of accountability. These are not empty promises I’ve made myself. Rather, every week, I have to report how I’m getting on to someone who is following me along the road. The effect is surprisingly motivating!

Finding a coaching partner

Apps like Coach.me include an option to contract with a human coach through the app. You can do a simple Google search for coaches too, although be aware that the kind of coaching I’m talking about here is not life coaching, and it seems that Google tends to favour those results above other goal-oriented coaching services.

On a personal level, I can recommend checking out Cameron Murdoch as a coach or source of pointers and other coach recommendations. He’s quite an inspirational guy for many reasons; you’ll see some of these on his LinkedIn profile.

Be a guinea pig

However, you might well know somebody working towards a coaching qualification. If you’re lucky enough to be offered a set of sessions as their guinea pig, that’s a superb opportunity.

Even if that’s not an option, I believe that the standard hourly rate (anything from £75 upwards depending on the coach’s experience) is well worth it if it unlocks a higher tier of learning.

Typically, you will also specify a finite block of coaching time – say, ten sessions – so, unlike fitness training, for example, there is an end point in sight. This helps in budgeting, especially if you’re not keen on the idea of another outgoing bill / subscription ad infinitum. Of course, you might choose to carry on a coaching relationship if you think you need the helping hand!

I’m still travelling my coaching journey, and have a number of sessions to go. But already, I can see its huge value as a language learner. Whether through an app service, or with a real-life human being, give coaching a try: it might just set you right back on track with your languages.

Sunset in Israel, winner of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest

Next stop: Hebrew? Thanks again, Eurovision!

As a Eurovision-obsessed kid, I’d often let the contest dictate what language I’d learn next. Whether it was the languages of my favourite countries (Norway, Iceland, Poland) or the language of the winning country I’d travel to the following year (Estonia, Sweden), I’ve come into contact with dozens of different languages thanks to the contest.

Last night, Israel won in spectacular, clucking fashion, with the supremely fun “TOY“. So… next stop, Hebrew?

Well, I’ve been there before. It’s a nice full-circle moment for me with languages, as a lover of old Israeli entries. From my early teens, I was motivated to dive into Hebrew through foot-tapping Eurovision songs.

From that on-and-off dabbling with the language, I eventually managed to reach a slightly shaky A2 in it, although many years later! There is a lot to be said in favour of slow, gradual, no-pressure learning. And now, what better reason to pick it back up than a potential trip to the 2019 contest?

Where it all began

The whole saga takes me right back to where my interest in Modern Hebrew began – the very first Eurovision Song Contest I purposefully watched, back in 1993. Sometimes, you love songs less for their quality, and more for how they connect to your life. And as a 15-year-old language geek, I was fascinated by the awkward, quirky but loveable entry from Israel, “Shiru” (‘sing!’).

I was so full of questions. Who is the lady on her own? Why doesn’t she join the rest of the group like the piano lady? And why are they dressed like they’re going to a fairytale wedding? To tell you the truth, I still don’t know the answers.

After that contest, I raided our little local library in Stourbridge for any books on the language. The choice was a bit limited – much more on Biblical Hebrew than Modern, for example – but with the few resources I could dig out, I picked up the right-to-left script quickly enough. I was always a fan of code, and at that age, the Hebrew alphabet was like some mystical cipher.

I also happened across a real gem of a tome that I grappled with for years – a dusty, old and very analytical volume on Hebrew verb paradigms. A lofty academic text, that was really beyond my understanding at the time. But it was like dark magic to me – a secret rule book that would open doors to great understanding if I spent time with it.

Of course, that was my first introduction to a non-Indo-European language. No wonder it was so fascinating – it was utterly different to the French and German I was learning at school. Verbs behave completely differently in Semitic languages, and the quirks had me hooked.

All that – from a chance encounter with a Eurovision song!

Yes, the contest can be whacky and just plain odd at times. But it has led me into so many language adventures – I’m quite happy to let that continue!

Melodi Grand Prix 2018

Living the language learning dream

I’ve written recently about learning a language through your interests. By binding your life’s passions with your learning goals, something special ignites. Living the dream as a language learner is all about throwing everything into it, about living life to the max, but through the language. And this weekend, I got the chance to do just that in Oslo.

I’ve always loved music, big arena events and the excitement of live TV. Add languages to that, and it’s no surprise that Eurovision has been a fascination of mine from an early age. Some countries are closer than other when it comes to sharing this love. Fortunately, for me, one of them is Norway – pretty handy for a Norwegian learner! So, what better reason to come to Norway than a couple of tickets for Norway’s Eurovision preselection show, Melodi Grand Prix?

Slice of life

It’s no longer just about the songs, of course – nine out of ten of the entries this year were in English, not Norwegian. But being part of such a big event of national interest drags you straight into the centre of the Norwegian microcosm. You see a real slice of life, being a popular family event; surrounded by cheering, proud citizens of all ages and backgrounds gives you a lovely feel of what it’s like to be a part of Norway.

More importantly, there’s the chance to chat. There’s something about a concert that breaks down barriers, and it was easy to swap opinions and discuss favourites with people sitting nearby. In fact, it was pretty unavoidable, once your cover is blown as an utlending (foreigner)… Everybody wants to know what you think of their national songs!

Melodi Grand Prix 2018 - a major part of living my Norwegian learning dream!

Melodi Grand Prix 2018

Dip in, dip out

Unless you are moving to a country to live, it is hard to embed yourself fully in social and cultural life. But this kind of intense dip-in, dip-out relationship can be a real shot in the arm for language learners. With Norway, of course, high costs dictate that visits (for now) are generally short weekend trips like this. But it’s enough to feel part of something, to keep passion alight, and to make friends that will slowly fasten you to your target language lands.

Choose your dream – and live it

This is what living my language learning dream looks like. Now, seek out what you love about your chosen cultures, and throw yourself headfirst into it. You will construct deep and rewarding connections that will last well beyond you have reached proficiency in a language.

The weekend inspired me to reflect on my experiences as a shy learner of Norwegian. Hear my thoughts below!

Describe It! Speaking drill game for fun practice prompts

I’m always looking new ways to make speaking practice fun. It was BBC’s Just A Minute that inspired me to put this basic drill activity together. From a bank of many random concepts – TV shows, celebrities, countries, landmarks – the program draws one each turn. You then have sixty seconds to describe and discuss it without pausing.

Describe It! Speaking dill game

Describe It! Speaking dill game

It’s perfect for adding into your pre-lesson warm-up routine. And you can tailor it to your own level and needs – simply make your descriptions / spontaneous monologues as simple or complex as you can handle. Try answering these questions about the topics that pop up if you’re stuck for words:

  • What is it?
  • What do you think about it? Do you like it?
  • Who does it involve?
  • What else is it connected to? And is it controversial in any way?

Click here to open the prompt applet in a new window. As an HTML5 widget, it should run across all sorts of platforms.

Help it grow!

I put this together originally for my own use, so some of the concepts might seem a bit UK-centric. However, if you have some good ideas for items to add to the data bank, please share them in the comments or tweet me! I’ll add good ones to the activity on an ongoing basis. I hope others find it useful (and appreciate the silly humour that drives it! 😄).

Tapping into your interests can reignite the language spark

Tap your interests to reignite your language fire

Some language learning tips are so fundamental, that we come across them again and again. And my own recent experience reminded me of one the most transformative and powerful: personal interests are the greatest motivator.

For the past few months, I’ve been slogging away at Icelandic. For the most part, I’ve used quite traditional textbooks to learn from. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this; in fact, I love formal grammar (I’m weird like that), and I learn a lot that way.

But in terms of speaking, I’d reached something of an impasse. It had all started to feel a bit one-note – solid, but not exciting.

That was, until Söngvakeppnin.

Söngvakeppnin is Iceland’s annual televised contest to select an entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. Now, I loved Eurovision for as long as I can remember, and I’ve often used it in language learning and teaching as a fun source of target language. And it turned out that a bit of it was just what I needed to reignite my Icelandic fire.

Fire and ice

Now, new learning had a focus. Articles started to pop up about the contest on Icelandic broadcaster website ruv.is and news outlet mbl.is. The songs – all in Icelandic – suddenly appeared on Spotify. And, most excitingly, I found out that I could watch the selection programmes live via the Icelandic broadcaster’s official streaming service, Sarpurinn.

Even though the language level was high, I wanted to consume all the information I came across. I’d translate articles carefully to get all the latest contest gossip. I’d listen to interviews and listen more intently than ever to get all the details of what was being said. In learning terms, I was on fire. Much like an Icelandic volcano.

All at once, I had a captivating way into Icelandic language and culture. And specifically, thanks to a very patient (or masochistic?) teacher on iTalki, to talk about. Preparing for a conversational lesson on something you find intensely interesting is no longer homework, or a tedious slog – it’s a huge amount of fun. It’s hard work without the slog!

Gaining from your interests

The results were clear. I could chat endlessly on the topic. It wasn’t passive chat, either – I was asking questions and was eager to hear the answers. I was totally switched on to using the language practically and purposefully.

It wasn’t that I was suddenly an expert at speaking Icelandic – I know that I was still making plenty of errors. But this time, I was stumbling less when I hit them; they held me back just a little less. I was speaking less self-consciously, and I felt like I was flying in the language.

Isn’t that what fluency is about? Communicating in a flowing manner, if not necessarily perfectly in every grammatical respect?

Go beyond your textbooks

People feel compelled to follow formal language courses when starting out. But never forget to seek out what interests you, even if you are just beginning in a language. If it interests you enough, you will find a way to understand it – and you will learn. Find what you love, and give it the target language treatment!

Finally, take heed from the sentiment of this, my favourite song from this year’s Söngvakeppnin, and aldrei gefast upp – never give up!

The Commonwealth Games offer local linguists some amazing opportunities.

Commonwealth Games 2022 : Birmingham’s Local Language Boost

In December, you might have noticed the fanfare around my hometown, Birmingham, winning the chance to host the Commonwealth Games in 2022. The decision has generated a lot of local pride. No wonder, as all four corners of the world will grace Brum for the two-week event. But as well as a wonderful opportunity for local commerce, the event represents concrete opportunities for linguists.

Languages of the Commonwealth Games

The last UK hosting was the hugely successful Glasgow games of 2014. For that event, Capita Translation and Interpreting produced a really useful infographic to illustrate the languages spoken in competing Commonwealth lands. Due to the origins of the Commonwealth, English dominates.

However, quite a few ‘mainstream’ foreign languages make the list, too. In 2022, locals have the chance to hear French, Portuguese and Spanish on the streets of Birmingham. And with both volunteering and commercial job boosts going hand-in-hand with hosting the games, speaking one of them might well be a route to opportunities for local learners.

Ready-made motivation for the classroom

For local language teachers, the chance for games tie-ins are unmissable. What better motivator can there be for languages than the chance to use them practically on the street?

What’s more, international games also offer rich pickings for fun lesson topics. Much like the Eurovision Song Contest, they are great for topics like countries, numbers, like/dislike phrases, descriptions and more.

I’ve used an Excel spreadsheet to create sweepstake-style cards to play classroom games with country names, for example. You can easily spool cards from Excel in a mail merge. Here is a sample list I have used (in CSV format). Although this one is based on the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest final, it is useful for other events, and – of course – extendable!

Beyond Birmingham

There are plenty of events to work into your learning or teaching beyond Birmingham, of course. While local pride make Brum a special highlight for me, forthcoming extravaganzas include:

  • 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang (the official site is available in Chinese, French, Korean and Japanese)
  • 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia (the official site is a bit of a goldmine for linguists, with French, German, Spanish, Arabic and Russian versions!)
  • UEFA Euro 2020
  • 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo (the official site is also in French as well as English and Japanese)

Plenty of resources for languages-sport crossovers there – have fun mining them!

Phyllis Soley and Richard West-Soley picking flowers. My Nan - my hero.

My language hero – a personal dedication

Our love of languages is so much more than words on a page. It is about the journey language facilitates for us, and the people that join us on that journey. The most special of these people become our language heroes, for one reason or another. And with this post, I mark the memory of a very, very special language hero of mine: my Nan, Phyllis Soley.

Nan was a sharp and witty lady. Although she didn’t learn languages herself, she was a dab hand at general knowledge rounds on TV quizzes. But she saw something in my love of languages that she appreciated and wanted to nurture.

Books, books and more books

She spotted early on that my fascination for language was tightly bound with a love of books. My very first language book – Teach Yourself French (the lovely old 80’s blue cover version!) – was bought with my couple of pounds of pocket money on one of our many family trips to Burnham-on-Sea. Barely even 10 years old, those early days rummaging around the tiny language section set off a journey of exploration that had no end.

When I was a bit older, I graduated from the little seaside bookshop to “the big Waterstones” in Birmingham. After the half-hour train journey from our home town, Nan would wisely ask the staff for a chair. She knew I’d need lots of time looking at the language books. Nan never complained, but sat there patiently, watching me pick out countless courses and grammars. It was a passion she was happy to indulge.

Years later, when her legs failed her, she’d still sate my hunger for books, insisting that I buy a new tome from her to me on birthdays and at Christmas. My shelves are still full of books she gifted me.

Everyday hero

In 1995, when I won a place to study languages at the University of Oxford, she was my chief cheerleader. My whole time there, she would send care parcels and pocket money to ease the bumps. To my student shame, she would even take in my laundry with Mum on my home visits. In a hundred ways, Nan typified my family’s love and encouragement for the path I’d chosen to follow in languages.

One certain language-based memory I have is particularly special. A fervent fan of the Eurovision Song Contest in the 1990s, I tended to travel back home from uni to watch it each year. Naturally, I would insist on all members of my family watching it too. Back then, of course, the songs were in the national language of each country – a bit of a linguist’s dream-come-true in those pre-Internet days, when foreign-language TV was something you needed a special satellite dish for.

In May of 1997, I travelled home for the weekend, and watched it at her house. It was just Nan and me, that night – and the UK won. She sat patiently with me through all of those songs in Norwegian, Estonian, Polish and more – and was rewarded with a win.

Nan didn’t mind watching at all – or at least, never admitted to it. She knew I loved music and knew I loved languages, and joined in the fun with me. (I’m sure it could get annoying, years later, when I’d call after the show and request the lowdown on all her favourites, in detail!)

Celebrate your everyday heroes

Language heroes don’t need to be amazing linguists themselves. They are more often than not the loving people around us, who encourage and nurture. As much as the teachers and inspirational figures that guide us, they help us to achieve our goals. Maybe it’s that person who bought your first language book, or took you on your first holiday abroad where you spoke a foreign language. It might even just be someone who kept you going with kind words. Whatever they did, we are lucky to have them in our lives, and perhaps, one day, we can do the same for others.

As a linguist, it feels fitting that I created a tribute to her through language – in fact, in her own words. Some years ago, I gave Nan a dictaphone and said she could record whatever she liked, in order to relieve some of the boredom of being wheelchair-bound. The result was a collection of recordings of Nan retelling her early life story. It’s a wonderful, precious thing that we’ll cherish forever. (And, incidentally, it permanently preserves her lovely Stourbridge accent – something of interest if you like exploring British dialects!)

We said goodbye to my wonderful Nan only very recently, which is my reason for celebrating her in this post. It’s important to find a hero like Nan for your journey. Someone who will always believe in you; someone who will be your greatest fan. She will always be with me, by my side, proud of me and egging me on. She will always be my hero.

Phyllis Soley - my everyday language hero

Phyllis Soley – my everyday language hero

We feel enthusiasm for chocolate, but it's not healthy to gorge on it!

Rationing enthusiasm for more effective language learning

Some things can be moreish. Chocolate, for example. You might think you can’t get enough of it. Your enthusiasm for the sweet stuff takes over, you race through your stash of secret supplies, and before you know it, you’re feeling bleugh. Those four Mars Bars and the family size Galaxy have done you no good.

Likewise, if you enjoy learning languages, extreme enthusiasm can be a hindrance. That sounds like a terrible thing to say – enthusiasm for learning is truly wonderful, of course. But, at the sharp end, it can be too much of a good thing.

When I’m on a learning kick, and the enthusiasm bug bites, I speed up. I want to devour words, rules, facts, figures.

And often, that means I rush ahead and skip the basics.

Dangerous enthusiasm

Now, I could pick any number of languages I’ve tried learning in the past to illustrate this. For example, the Icelandic language truly fascinates me. Historically a pretty conservative language, it’s as close to Old Norse as a modern foreign language gets. And as Norwegian learner too, there are tons of common points of interest between the two. It’s just incredibly interesting.

I spent a good year thrashing away at it some time ago. I did reasonably well, too, learning lots of grammar in particular (I am a total grammar boffin). However, I never really gained any colloquial fluency.

The reason for that is the chocolate problem. I found the language enthralling, and developed a real taste for it. But that meant I raced ahead, guzzling up the interesting stuff long before I should have. That’s a great recipe for learning without practical application.

I became the kind of linguist who could explain and conjugate complex verb paradigms in Icelandic, but couldn’t tell the time, count or say hello. Oops. Not so handy in Reykjavík.

DeFEating my nemesis

Because of this, Icelandic was always a bit of a ‘nemesis’ language for me. Every time, it would entice me a little too much, and I’d gorge on it to the point of saturation. Every time, it beat me, leaving me bursting with grammar, but with little practical application.

But I like a challenge, and if anything, Icelandic is the perfect vehicle to exercise a new, restrained enthusiasm. I picture myself down but not out, bellowing “you shall not beat me!” at it from the boxing ring floor. To that end, I’ve returned to the language recently, and thanks to a really good teacher on iTalki, am systematically filling in the gaps in the basics. We’re using a set of beginner’s resources that are available for free: Íslenska fyrir alla (Icelandic for everyone), and, for a change, I’m sticking to the plan.

Pig out – but not too often!

So, to return to chocolate (what a great idea), taking it bite by bite is advised. Little, but often. It doesn’t mean you can’t sometimes pig out – but don’t let it ruin your diet!