Tag: MFL

An owl, much like the Duolingo mascot!

Duolingo: Five reasons it’s a show-stopper for linguists

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I was quite late to the Duolingo party. It might be a wee bit of jealousy, perhaps; as an educational app developer, you look at software like Duolingo and think: wow, that is an educational app. But lately, I’ve bitten the bullet, and have become completely hooked on the green owl (a euphemism everybody should become familiar with).

As one of the most popular apps – let alone educational ones – the web isn’t short of reasons to love it. But here are a few of the very special things that make Duolingo the golden standard for me.

Perfectly paced

The Duolingo environment uses a health system, borrowed from video gaming, to monitor how well you’re performing in a topic. If you start making lots of mistakes, you deplete your health reserves and have to wait until later to continue.

Now, as frustrating as this sounds, it’s a brilliant way to stop language junkies like me from overloading the brain. We all have our limits, and when you enjoy what you’re doing, you can forget where the most efficient place to stop is. The health approach is genius at forcing breaks when learning falls below optimum.

Silly sentences

I’m a huge fan of silly sentences as a memory aid and motivator in language learning. Playing with words in funny ways builds flexibility in a way that learning set phrases doesn’t. And Duolingo embodies the spirit of this to a tee.

No, I hope I will not need to say “cats are not food” if I visit Korea. But having translated that in the app, I’m unlikely to forget the words ‘cats’ and ‘food’, remembered with a silly smile.

Incidentally, a whole Twitter feed has sprung up to celebrate Duolingo’s comedic bent!

Unique content per language

Duolingo avoids a cookie-cutter approach to language learning by providing unique content in each language. Proceeding in exactly the same way in each language might not suit every tongue; instead, each course seems to have been put together from scratch by separate groups of subject experts. It’s quite refreshing to have multiple, bespoke paths available across the (ever-growing) range of languages on offer.

Deductive learning

Duolingo breaks free from the traditional presentation-practice mode of language learning. Sometimes, questions will contain a word or two that you haven’t come across before. As such, it can seem a bit more challenging, like ‘deep end’ learning.

However, rather than frustrating the learner, it encourages a bit of deduction. Can you make an educated guess? Or can you research the mystery word elsewhere? If you’ve had to work to find out the meaning rather than have it handed to you on a plate, it may well be more likely to stick. It highlights the unpredictability of language and the need to experiment and think on your feet – skills that are missing in many more conventional courses.

The Duolingo Universe is growing

Finally, Duolingo wins just on sheer choice. From a few initial language offerings, the app has grown to take in many more, bursting out of the traditional French/German/Spanish bubble. Finding apps for learning Polish – let alone good apps for learning Polish – was tricky in the not-so-distant past. Given the Duolingo treatment, there’s now an excellent solution for learning the basics.

What’s more, the app keeps growing; new languages are being worked on, while existing languages are expanding with new topics. It’s Aladdin’s Cave for a language junkie, and will spark some polyglot roving for inquisitive minds of all ages.

Duolingo has set the bar very high for educational apps in general, and language apps in particular. That certainly keeps educational app developers on their toes. But as a model for digital, self-paced learning, it’s an inspiration for the industry as much as it is a gem for linguaphiles. I’m already looking forward to the next languages to be added!

Exploring language family tree connections can be one of the most useful polyglot learning tools

Polyglot perfect recall: connecting your languages with Wiktionary

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One of the nicest things about the polyglot journey is the interconnectedness you see along the way. And finding connections is a brilliant way to make words stick. Sometimes, those connections are staring you right in the face, like the German Flasche (bottle), a relative of the English word flask. But more often than not, it’s the less obvious connections that can be the most rewarding (and memorable).

Polyglot pants

Sometimes, you see connections in the most unlikely of places. Take Lowland Scots and Romanian, for example. Both Indo-European, but pretty far removed from each other. I happen to hear a lot of Scottish English, being based in Edinburgh. So when I came across the Romanian verb îmbrăca (to dress), I thought I spotted something familiar.

That -brăc- part of the word is, in fact, from an old Latin word for ‘trousers’, braca. So in Romanian, you literally ‘trouser yourself’ when you get dressed. Now, with these clues, some will instantly spot the connection. The Scots for ‘trousers’ is breeks, also related to the slightly more archaic breeches in Standard English or britches in Yosemite Sam country. That’s a handy hook between two unlikely language pairs to help remember a word!

Mining for connections

Unless you are a walking etymology dictionary, it can be hard to spot these connections. To this end, it’s much handier to look up new words on the open source dictionary site, Wiktionary. For a community-driven site, it’s absolutely packed with detail, including word origin.

Take the German word Zaun (fence), for example. At first glance, it looks pretty removed from anything familiar in English. However, check out the Wiktionary listing; it turns out that the word is a relative of the English town. With a bit of historical imagination, you can think up reasons why the meanings have slightly diverged. The town, or settlement, is an enclosed living space; the fence is a means for enclosing a space.

Word hangover

Languages derived from the same proto-family, like Indo-European, are bound to display these similarities. But often, you can find them in neighbouring languages from totally different trees, too.

If you’re learning Finnish and Russian, for example, you’ll find a few crossover words to help you. One of my favourites is the word kohmelo, meaning ‘hangover’. Check Wiktionary, and you’ll see that it’s a borrowing from the Russian похме́лье, meaning the very same. However, as a bonus, Wiktionary informs you that the Finnish word was further changed by ‘contamination’ with the word kohme, meaning numbness. So that’s three words you’ve learnt for the price of one, thanks to some canny connection-spotting!

Cultivate a bird’s eye view of language

If you travel back far enough, you’ll find all sorts of links between your languages. It’s one more reason why studying several languages at once can be a help, and not a burden. The polyglot approach is a fantastic way to get a bird’s eye view of language relationships and development; in my experience that has provided a great scaffold for making those words stick.

Which are your favourite word connections between languages?
Share them in the comments!

A man lying on the grass - a great anxiety buster!

Just chill! Anxiety busting tips for practical language use

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French was never my forte.

Still, I recently had the opportunity to use my French again after years of neglect. I’ve long jibed about my French being rubbish, basic and broken. Doing my French down has become a running joke in my life. Despite hitting an A grade in GCSE French at 16, I’ve done little to keep it going since. In fact, some of the only occasions I’ve used it have been to speak what I call ‘comedy French’ in the office. That’s 25 years of francophobia!

Still, a language is a language, and I was happy to dig out the French on a recent trip. I didn’t expect miracles, and was pretty lazy about polishing up my skills before travelling. You could say that I didn’t really care much about being ‘good’; the bit I had was enough. Zero expectations, zero anxiety.

Language magic… When you least expect it

Surprisingly, a bit of magic happened on that little trip. Somehow, despite my insistence that my French was ‘rubbish’, I was communicating. I was asking questions and understanding the answers. And after mulling over some explanations for that, I’ve learnt some important things about practical foreign language use.

The crux of it is this: I went about the everyday speaking French and not caring about being perfect. Not pressuring myself to be grammatically flawless, not demanding native-level, colloquial phrases from myself. I knew what I knew, and I would make it work for me, regardless of the gaps. I was even making up phrases that would turn out to be correct later on, like ‘en ce cas‘ (in this case).

Performance anxiety

Now in my strongest foreign language, German, I never experience that kind of friction-free movement. I have a degree in German; I’m supposed to be great at it, darn it! So, as a result, I place a huge pressure on myself to be perfect. It’s nearly always an impossible challenge at the best of times, and not surprising that it leads to language anxiety. I’ll beat myself up over even the silliest mistakes and trip-ups.

Not only that, but it dawned on me that I’ve been taking my German far too seriously over the years. Just compare: in German, I regularly listen to heavyweight news podcasts. In French, on the other hand, I have fun in the office saying silly things to make my colleagues laugh. Which one seems like a better way to build a positive experience in a foreign language by stealth?

Just chill!

Now the answer here is not to disengage from serious study or stop caring about a language. However, there is something in this French lesson that can benefit our ‘proper’ languages. You can boil it down to two rules:

  1. Don’t worry about mistakes – just communicate.
  2. Have fun with it!

Common sense, perhaps; oft-repeated, definitely. But extremely easy to forget when a language means a lot to you. Let this post be a reminder to me of that – and, I hope, a signpost for others to ward them off that anxious path!

Amazon Echo Dot - Alexa for Language Learning

Alexa: Your Personal, Digital Native Speaker

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It’s a language learning ‘secret’ that isn’t so secret any more: changing the language setting on your smart devices is a brilliant way to create a personalised immersion environment without going abroad. And the recent explosion of artificially intelligent digital assistant devices is taking this one step further. Voice-activated gadgets, like Amazon’s Alexa, place a (robotic) native speaker right in the centre of your home.

Swayed by the temptingly low price on the entry-level Amazon Dot, I’ve been getting to know Alexa for the past few months. First off, it’s a cliché, but this is definitely the kind of gadget you ‘never knew you needed’. After eyeing the unit with some cynicism for the first few weeks, soon I was constantly asking it to play music, convert currencies and measurements, tell me the weather forecast or simply the time. It’s both easy and fun, and gives you that sense of the future is now!

You digital language assistant

But it’s not just about voice-activating mundane, daily tasks. Ever alert to new learning opportunities, changing Alexa’s language settings was top of the list of experiments to try. And it works a treat, especially for pronunciation; suddenly, I was having to focus intently on expressing my commands in a nice, clear German accent so that Alexa could understand. (Incidentally, I’ve also found switching the language of Apple’s assistant Siri has these great pronunciation drill benefits!)

Interacting is as simple as asking a question like “”Alexa, was sind die Nachrichten?” (Alexa, what’s the news?) or “Alexa, wie ist das Wetter heute?” (Alexa, what’s the weather like today?). For more capabilities – including lots of silly (but briefly entertaining) games – there are hundreds of extra installable skills on Amazon. A useful hit list of the most useful can be found here.

The only snag with Alexa is that it is currently only available in English or German. Great news for Germanists, who won’t feel underrepresented in the language learning world for a change; but a pretty large black hole for everyone else.

Skilling up Alexa as language tutor

However, all is not lost. Users can still download Alexa Skills from Amazon, which augment the device’s capabilities. Already there are a good number of language learning skills, although they vary greatly in quality. It’s clearly early days for the device in terms of educational skills, but the start is promising.

A simple search on Learn Spanish or similar will yield plenty of results for you to try out. Here are a couple of links for the more mainstream languages:

Feedback ranges from decent right down to downright terrible on some of the skills available. However, the facility to give feedback on Amazon is a route for users to shape and improve Alexa as a language learning tool. Try new skills out, and write an honest review for each one – your thoughts will help developers to tweak and adapt Alexa skills for an incrementally better experience.

Watch this space

In summary, Alexa is an excellent investment for Germanists, but hit and miss for students of other languages – at least for the time being. There is a sizeable clamour around Spanish support on Amazon’s developer space, with pressure for other languages too. It would only seem a matter of time before she becomes more than just bilingual.

Preparing for GCSE means copious notes!

A GCSE Too Far? Giving Languages Their Point Back

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Following this week’s GCSE results, there has been the usual seep of comments putting a downer on languages in schools. Simon Jenkins’ Guardian article presented a particularly cynical version of this view, which provoked (no doubt as intended) some thorny reaction.

But through the indignation language-lovers feel reading such comments, there are some difficult lessons. The sensation “little point to learning languages” headline is supported by an isolationist British narrative in some of the popular press, and picked up by parents and students alike. “Having a point” is felt subjectively – if the audience decides it doesn’t, then no amount of utility in a subject will matter.

Testing the waters

However, Jenkins enters more interesting waters when it comes to the delivery and testing of languages. His line goes that the establishment wrongly chooses to revere languages, as they are so easy to “test, quantify and regiment” as discreet units. As such, they fit neatly into our our hyper-regulated world of numbers, grades and economic comparisons of worth.

And here is the problem; as living, breathing, real-world systems, languages wither when we isolate them as objects for testing. No wonder that their utility fades away in the transformation to the exam paper. Pupils and parents have keen noses; they can sniff out those “exam only” subjects.

Content and Language Integrated Learning

Increasing the authenticity of learning materials, and in which settings we use them, is key. This is one of the core principles of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), an approach that may just be able to give languages their ‘point’ back. CLIL seeks to extend foreign language teaching beyond the language classroom and into the world in the best possible cross-curricular way. The model is simple: use the foreign language to teach other subjects in school.

International schools have followed a similar approach for decades, teaching through English. And plenty of research such as this study by the University of Gothenburg suggest that the benefits are felt in other languages as well as English. Nonetheless, it has little foothold in schools around the English-speaking world.

Breaking free from GCSE

For now, it seems like an unfeasible, colossal paradigm shift to start using a method like this in British schools. It is incredibly hard to break Modern Foreign Language teaching out of the chains of the exam testing system. The current setup demands hard numbers for comparing, listing, economising. There is little room to manoeuvre in the current climate. But for the survival of the subject, languages must cease to be an isolated, ‘made-for-testing’ discipline.

Nonetheless, there are things we can do to encourage CLIL principles outside the curriculum. Finding personal meaning is a large chunk of realising utility. It’s a strategy that can lead to great success in making listening material suddenly more accessible. Likewise, coaxing students to research their favourite topics via foreign languages may be one route to breaking the subject free.

As common as MOOC

As independent language learners, we can also bring these ideas directly into our own learning. In a world of MOOCs and free online training courses, there is no shortage of cross-curricular material in languages other than English. Khan Academy is available in Spanish, offering courses in Maths, IT and Science. Coursera has a huge catalogue of free online courses across a range of languages. For example,  why not try learning some Educational Psychology in Brazilian Portuguese?  Or perhaps you fancy learning iOS app development in Spanish at Udemy.

A little commitment is a good first step. Teaching languages? Try to introduce your students to some of these resources. Learning languages yourself? Pick a course in your target language, and start expanding your mind! With some canny thinking, we can free languages from that ‘academic use only’ box.

Marker pens - a cheap immersion tool!

Four immersion tips for FILLING your home with language!

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One of the keys for success in language learning is putting your languages everywhere. Wherever you turn, put learning opportunities in your way by filling your life with the target language. There are some well-known tips for doing this in your digital life, like switching the language of your phone or computer.

No place like home (for immersion)

But some of the best tricks are old school, and involve a few simple home hacks. The home is one of the easiest places to put immersion tactics into practice. Here are some of the simplest, and most fun!

Magnetic Poetry

No longer just a kitschy gift, magnetic poetry can now help you learn a language. Now you can get that immersion effect every time you get hungry (yum).

The great thing about these is the potential for sentence building practice. As well as the usual concrete nouns, you’ll find all sorts of function and connective words too. Using these, challenge yourself to create five original fridge sentences a day. Or, if you’re sharing the fridge with a fellow learner, use them to leave messages for each other!

The fridge magnet word blocks are available in:

LED Lightbox

These tinseltown throwbacks are the ultimate in snazzy home text features. They generally have two or three rows for letters, so you can add a couple of words as a centrepiece. Maybe there are a couple of words that just won’t stick, however hard you try? Pop them on the lightbox and put them on show in your living room. Right by the TV is a great place if you don’t want to miss them!

An LED Lightbox

The LED Lightbox – make your target language a fancy home feature!

The one drawback is that they’re generally only available with English alphabet text – that means no diacritics or special characters. However, I haven’t been shopping for one outside the UK, so it’s perfectly possible that foreign character set versions exist. And failing that, you can get creative with a black marker, or make your own letter tiles with some perspex and a stanley knife.

I picked up a great lightbox from The Works in the UK for just £10 (see pic above). Amazon .co.uk have a few options too, including one with a rating of over 4/5 stars. It even includes emojis! 

Dry wipe boards

Even more back-to-basics than the LED lightbox is the dry wipe board. These are pretty ubiquitous in stationery shops; I picked up a mini one for a couple of pounds in The Works. Alternatively, you can get a slightly larger and more robust version from Amazon for under £20.

Either way, they’re excellent, reuseable means to put your vocab / learning material of the week on display in the home. Display them somewhere prominent – perhaps even on the back of the front door, so you see it every time you leave. Go crazy with colours and illustrations like a Tony Buzan mind map – make sure you can’t miss / forget those lists!

Stickers

Stickers are like marmite – linguaphiles will love them or hate them. If you’re a stickler for a pristine home, they’re probably not for you. However, if you don’t mind temporarily defacing your furniture and fittings with sticky labels, then they can be a great technique for recycling everyday vocab and increasing immersion.

You can grab a pack of white labels and make your own for next to nothing. However, I’m a great fan of the “in 10 minutes a day” series of books, as they come with a whole section of ready-made stickers to label your life with language. In fact, the whole approach of this series of books is to make language an integral part of your daily life. They’re made for immersion!

The “in 10 minutes a day” books are available in a range of languages, including:

Frictionless immersion

Immersion should, at least in part, be frictionless; that is, it should offer a good degree of exposure to language without a hugely off-putting degree of effort. The techniques above are largely quick and easy, and tick this ‘little effort’ box.

In fact, the hardest part of them is probably making them regular habits. To this end, try using weekly goals or to-do / reminder apps to keep the cycle going. The habit-forming is worth it: you’ll make your living space a dynamic, ever-changing language learning zone!

A model of a human brain, seat of the memory

Memory tricks to SUPERCHARGE your language learning!

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Memory is a serious business. It’s a sport, which even has its own world championships. And this is nothing new, either; experts and sages have been teaching memory master techniques for centuries.

New research confirms that there is nothing new under the sun. The memory palace technique, a favourite of the Ancient Greeks, can dramatically improve recall, according to a recent article. This particular technique has a long and unbroken pedigree. As the ‘method of loci‘, it was a staple of medieval scholars, eager to memorise long tracts. Esteemed rhetoricians taught the technique to royalty, politicians and orators, who would use it to rattle off rousing speeches, full of learned facts.

Constructing your memory palace

So what is the memory palace technique? It involves the construction of a mental geography, which could reflect a real-world place like your home (or a palace, if you’re lucky), or be completely imaginary. The learner mentally deposits objects for memorisation around this location, often in a specific order. To recall the items later, all the learner must do is mentally ‘walk’ around the place.

Because of the element of order, the technique is brilliant for remembering a particular sequence of words. But more generally, it taps into our visual and spatial thinking centres, making the act of learning – and remembering – more of a whole-brain activity.

Multiple Memory LOCI

For the polyglot linguist, perhaps the best way to approach this technique is in the plural: memory places rather than a memory place. Friends often ask me: how do you avoid getting confused between all those languages? Well, by constructing different location markers as an aide memoire, it’s possible to maintain more separation between the pots of vocabulary in our brains.

This kind of location marking for target language vocab is nothing new or revolutionary. You might have already used the excellent Linkword courses, or similar associative techniques, for learning vocabulary. Usually, this route to memorisation involves visualising a scene that represents both the target language word and the English translation. For example, for l’eglise (church) in French, you take what it sounds like – legless – and construct a strong visual image that combines it with a church. The image of a parishioner turning up blind drunk (legless) to church is probably enough to make sure you remember it in future!

Vocabulary in situ

However, there is also an element of location marking built into the Linkword system. If a word is a cognate, and very close to the English translation, then the instruction is this: visualise the word with a stereotyped symbol of the target language (a bull for Spanish, a Bratwurst for German and so on). In the absence of a funny English sound-alike word, this ‘native marker’ technique is useful for creating an image where there would otherwise be none.

You can apply this technique as a multilingual learner, too. How do you keep five or more words for ‘car’ separate, for example? Well, one way is to visualise the word in the setting of the target language country. For Polish, picture a typical medieval old town as you drive your open-top car down the street. You pass someone on the street who starts shouting – he has the SAME HOOD as you do! (Samochód = car in Polish.) Cross the border into Germany, and drive on to Berlin. You travel under the Brandenburger Tor, where suddenly, your car starts driving itself. It’s an AUTOmatic card! (Auto = car in German.) 🚗🚗🚗

Supercharge with storytelling

That’s all very well for single words. But then, you can then start to embellish your locations. You can turn them into stories to add related words in the target language. For instance, what happens in Poland when you see the same hood guy? He walks over, kicks one of your wheels and calls you a COW, OH! (koło = wheel in Polish.) Meanwhile, in Germany, the wheels on your AUTOmatic car start to light up – impressed passers-by shout RAD, man! (Rad = wheel in German.) In effect, you are now building up a memory palace / method of loci in order to remember a series of related words in the target language.

Embrace stereotypes!

OK, so this advice isn’t generally advised for the everyday! Stereotypes can be annoying. But they actually work wonders with this method. The more hackneyed and comedic, the more comedic resonance your visualisations will have. That gives them salience, and makes them more resistant to forgetting. So don’t beat yourself up too much for visualising strings of garlic, or pizzas and sunglasses.

Above all, this is a technique to have fun with. So construct your place, be it palace or playa, and fill it with symbols and stories. It worked for the Ancient Greeks and countless others after them, so see if can work wonders for your memory, too!

Digital scrapbooking can be a wonderful way to link your language learning to real-world memories

Scrapbooking, linguaphile style

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As a linguist, I love travel. I love that act of putting myself out in the world. I love immersing myself in the unfamiliar. And I love interacting with everyday objects from other cultures and systems, the ephemera that are mundane to their native users but exotic and exciting to me. Tram tickets, event flyers, receipts from wonderful restaurant experiences – they are all physical objects soaked in language and tethered to the culture they belong to. As cultural symbols, they appeal to the collector in us. But there’s a fine line between collecting and hoarding clutter. That’s where digital scrapbooking can be a great strategy for the travelling linguist.

Digital scrapbooking

Maybe it’s something I notice more as I get older, but the drag of stuff on my life seems more and more noticeable these days. Perhaps it’s because we live in a system where stuff is getting cheaper and easier to amass. But over the past few years, I’ve made a conscious effort to declutter and cut away the dead wood.

Sadly, that includes the boxes and files of bits and pieces gathered over years of travel. Museum entrance cards, train reservations, old magazines in German, Spanish and so on… Somehow I’d held on to all this clutter, considered it precious, yet never glanced at it once since bringing it back. Aside from the nostalgia stirred by dredging it out of the cupboard to chuck, it was almost entirely unnecessary.

Ticket for the GDR (DDR) Museum in Berlin

Ticket for the GDR (DDR) Museum in Berlin

There’s another way modern life can help us, though. In an age of high-quality camera phones and vast (often free) cloud storage, it’s no problem to digitise these physical language links and discard the original. We can also organise them using myriad free tools, too. (Of course, we now face the brand new problem of digital clutter – but that’s a topic for another post, another day!)

Scrapbooking tools

Note-taking applications seem ideally suited to digital language scrapbooking. All of them allow the creation of documents / notes, to which you can add text and multiple images. Simply snap your tickets / leaflets / receipts instead of keeping them. Many of them also have more advanced formatting features for laying out your memory pages.

As well as keeping your memorabilia together, you can use them as travel diaries and learning logs, too. I like to record notes of conversations I’ve had, or new vocabulary I’ve come across. Juxtaposed with visual material, they become more meaningful and vivid as language memories.

All of the tools below are cross-platform, so you can enjoy them whatever the make of your phone / tablet / computer.

Evernote

Evernote is the justified king of note-taking apps. Notes have rich text formatting, and you can add not only pictures, but sound to your pages! Imagine using that to record clips of your conversations with native speakers…

However, there are some caveats. The basic version of Evernote is free. Unfortunately, this limits use to a maximum of two devices – not handy if you want it on a phone, tablet and computer.

Additionally, the basic tier allows only very limited upload traffic a month Evernote – just 60mb. If you’re adding lots of pictures to your notes, then that will run out extremely quickly. To work within the limits, make sure your pictures are tiny / compressed first – but even then, you’ll probably want to upgrade sooner or later.

Microsoft OneNote

OneNote is a completely free offering from Microsoft, with great integration into its Office services. One of the nicest things about this app is its reflection of real-world notebooks; you can create separate ‘books’ with multiple sections and pages. Ideal for repeat trips, or a trip with multiple destinations. You can also choose authentic-looking paper backgrounds for your pages, too. Great if you want the look and feel of physical scrapbooking!

Scrapbooking a trip with Microsoft OneNote

Scrapbooking a trip with Microsoft OneNote

Google Keep

Google Keep is a minimalist’s dream. Totally free, its simplicity stands in stark contrast to the two apps above. There are fewer formatting and organising options, but that makes for a click-and-go process that is hard to beat on ease of use.

As well as apps, Google Keep is available via the browser at https://keep.google.com/.

Trip scrapbooking with Google Keep

Trip scrapbooking with Google Keep

Language travel scrapbooking is a great way to stem the build-up of holiday detritus; it’s also a superb way to track memories and keep a learning journal all in one. And the best thing: it’s free to give it a go, thanks to the apps above!

Are there other apps you can recommend? Feel free to share you own tips in the comments!

Headphones - great for listening to a podcast or ten!

Podcast essentials: mining overseas charts

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As a podcast junkie, I’m always looking for new sources and recommendations for foreign language programmes. So I was particularly excited to happen across the website iTunesCharts.net recently.

The site provides iTunes charts across a range of regional stores, including France, Germany and Spain. It lists all digital media, including songs, albums and TV programmes. But most usefully for linguaphiles, it compiles charts of the most popular podcasts in each country too.

It is possible to find this information yourself by switching your store region in  iTunes. However, iTunesCharts.net is quicker and easier if you study any of the clutch of ‘mainstream’ languages: French, German, Italian or Spanish.

Listening material that switches you on

The site addresses a common issue for linguists: finding interesting material in the target language. Not dry, sanitised language for learners, but engaging, entertaining programming in topics that grab our attention: the kind of stuff you’d listen to in your native language. And it’s current, up-to-date, regularly published material that can plug you straight into the culture of your target language country.

Here are direct links to some of its national podcast lists:

They are brilliant places to mine for listening material. Additionally, though, they offer a great way of finding out what’s currently popular where your language is spoken.

Podcast your life!

Podcast listening has been a bigger part of my own language learning strategy than ever in recent months. Instead of listening to programmes in my native language, I’ve tried to replace them with similar material in the target language. I don’t watch TV; instead, I make my foreign podcast picks my entertainment. It’s a conscious effort to bring language into my everyday, and not just the bit of my life labelled ‘learning time’. It’s all about living the language, rather than just studying it.

This is a great strategy particularly for languages in maintenance mode – languages you are already proficient in, but want to keep at a good level. German and Spanish will always be my strongest foreign languages, for example, being my degree languages. But through podcasts, I can actually enjoy keeping them strong and fresh.

Stretch yourself

That’s not to say that beginners can’t also gain a lot from a well-chosen podcast. In my own experience, my Norwegian comes on in fits and starts. I’d say I still hover around a B1/B2 in terms of proficiency. However, I love the NRK podcast Språkteigen. It’s a programme about language aimed at native Norwegian listeners, and it really stretches my comprehension.

But despite not being an advanced speaker, the topic switches me on enough to stay focused and enjoy each episode. Being a favourite topic of mine also helps; I can often guess new words from the context. It’s win-win: I regularly improve my Norwegian, and I learn lots about my favourite topic at the same time!

The iTunesCharts.net site is a real goldmine for the linguist. I now have more podcasts than I can fill my spare time with, but it’s always good to have choices! I hope you find something useful in there too.

 

The Houses of Parliament, the seat of British politics

Politics is good for you (and your language learning!)

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We’ve all had enough of politics, right? Well, a bit of it might be good for you, if you’re learning a foreign language.

One of the biggest advantages of following politics in your target language is not just in new vocabulary learnt. It’s about the polemic – the skill of explaining and arguing a point. The skill of using language for argument and persuasion – rhetoric – is fundamental if you’re preparing for spoken exams that require you to discuss an issue, for example.

In fact, it’s a vital skill even if you’re not aiming for A-level oral exam stardom. Learning a language truly to communicate means being able to discuss, and not simply state facts. And if politics is anything, it’s an arena for (sometimes very heated) discussion. Introducing some politics into your language learning can provide a communicative dynamic that other topics struggle to ignite.

A new picture – or the wider picture?

So with so much politics about these days, why should we go after even more? Well, if you’re sick of politics in your own country, overseas political scuffles can be a welcome distraction. On the other hand, you can gain a fuller picture of your home country issues by following how they are perceived abroad. It’s truly fascinating as a British learner to see how political parties in other countries approach topics like Brexit. You can gain a unique perspective on your own country that the home media will never provide.

Following overseas political developments pays off in other ways, too. Through widening your own political lens, you appreciate much more the interconnectedness of the world. As linguists, we’re already great at seeing beyond borders. But bringing an explicitly political slant into your learning really plugs you into this global aspect of humanity.

Where to start

As with all authentic materials, the best place to start is personal interest. There’s little fun in only following a kind of politics that you don’t subscribe to in your home country. So begin with the political party / parties you support, and find their analogues in the target language country.

Doing this is as simple as googling “political parties in [your target language country here]”. You should get plenty of results, with Wikipedia articles being amongst the most useful. The following table from Wikipedia, for example, shows not only the current parliamentary parties in Norway, but also lists their ideologies. Great for matching your own politics to a target language party!

Politics in Norway - parliamentary parties listed on Wikipedia

Politics in Norway – parliamentary parties listed on Wikipedia

Once you’ve found a party / parties you’re have an interest in, take to social media to find out more. Major parties will invariably have a Facebook and Twitter account to follow. Their websites may also have blogs or news feeds, which you can add to your news reader if you have one (Feedly is quite good).

It’s always a good idea to follow target language accounts in your daily social media feeds. For one thing, it means that you’ll regularly be exposed to snippets of language, even when you’re not in ‘learning mode’. It helps to maintain a degree of language immersion in your day-to-day, which ultimately will lead to greater fluency.

Politics : the perfect package for new language

Once subscribed, the format of the language can be ideal for learning. Political language on social media is packaged perfectly for this purpose – possibly for all the wrong reasons! For one thing, it regularly consists of largely superficial soundbites. However, these represent concise, condensed nuggets of vocabulary and structure, and can be very easy to memorise. Consequently, you can work them into your own conversations or discussions in the language without too much effort.

Additionally, the format of some social media platforms is perfect for presenting language to learners. Twitter, with its character limit, forces the author to make snappy, impactful arguments in just a few words. Logical argument and rhetoric can often become keener under these circumstances, when the ‘fluff’ is pared down.

Twitter feed of the German SPD

Twitter feed of the German SPD

There is, of course, the danger of the ‘filter bubble’ or ‘echo chamber’. If you only follow parties you broadly agree with, you will lack a challenge to your argument. If you can stomach it – and are a real sucker for political punishment – it can be useful to follow some opponent organisations too.

Alternatively, to supplement all this you can also follow political news on target language news sites. In German, for example, I find that Spiegel.de and the Frankfurter Allgemeine sites are superb for political news and commentary. Their advantage is (at least in theory) being non-partisan with a more balanced overview. The disadvantage is that they contain much weightier, wordier texts – a far cry from the soundbites and slogans of political feeds.

Control the flow and reap the benefits

As with all things, moderation is important. I’ve written an earlier post on the importance of detoxifying your social media feeds. Politics can be frustrating and exhausting to follow. But if you make it work for you as a linguist, it can be a real boon to your language (and wider) learning.