Motivation and language learning

Motivation is the key factor if you want to learn a language

Language learning stories are just stories I know this Polish girl personally.  Let’s call her Pani “A”. She use to brag that she learned Polish (a very hard language to learn) when she moved to Poland.  She speaks Polish like a native Polish speaker.  Many people were impressed and she just ate it all up. [...]

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Which teachers are the best teacher when trying to learn a foreign language. For me it is hands down, active, even zany teachers.

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Hardest thing in language learning Beyond a doubt the hardest thing about learning a language is over coming the belief that you are not good with languages, self doubt and laziness.  I guess this would all come under the category of motivation.  I think learning a language is about how motivated you are. I taught [...]

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Systematic or unsystematic language learning Hands down systematic language learning is more effective than unsystematic or chaotic learning.  Picking a language up because it is ‘in the air’, in theory can happen. However, my personal observation teaching students over the years is this, my students that study languages with a system succed.  In fact, perhaps [...]

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An advantage of learning a language – as opposed to acquiring a language My parents spoke Polish and Ukrainian. However, they did not teach these languages to me when I grew up. In the 1960s it was not in vogue to be anything than a WASP. I and my parents have often regretted the fact [...]

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A Ukrainian who learned English in three months A friend of mine from Ukraine came to the USA. He paid $1000 dollars for a three month course to learn English. He also got unlimited access to mp3 recordings of English in a language lab. He studied for 12 hours a day for 3 months. After [...]

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A language student who made progress One of my students started to learn English about five months ago. Now he speaks English fairly well. How did you learn this language? He studied several hours a day, listing to mp3s and doing exercises in his book. Each one three times. He copied over page by page [...]

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Expats and language learning There are three types of expats when it comes to language learning. I have been an expat for years in Poland, as well as traveling quite a bit. My observation is based on real people regarding expats and language learning. How fast expats learn a language is connected to their level [...]

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Self hypnosis for language learning About a year ago I created a self hypnotic mp3 for myself.  It was more an mp3 full of positive affirmations and motivational statements that encouraged me to study and use my target foreign language I was trying to learn.  Affirmations such as ‘you try to think in a foreign language [...]

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Visualization for language learning motivation From visualization to motivation Motivation is really the most important key to learn a language.  Techniques are great but I think if you do not have the desire to study you will not learn a language.  How do you bridge the gap between wanting and doing?  Visualization.  1 minute visualization for [...]

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