Well it is a bit embarrassing that my last post is from October – especially since I have absolutely no excuse as to why that is! I’ve been here, I’ve been doing lots of stuff, but just absolutely lacking ideas for posts.

I have been working at Starbucks in Vienna for a year now. That has definitely been taking up a lot of my time and I guess it’s one of the things I can use as an excuse for not writing here (lame excuse – but still!) It has been really great and given me a huge opportunity to practice my German since I speak to people all day!

I am still studying translation at the University of Vienna but it has been going very slowly because I haven’t written any of the exams for my classes yet. At the University of Vienna you have the option of taking your exams either at the end of the semester, the beginning of the next semester, or the middle of the next semester – and this makes it very easy to get lazy and keep pushing things back! During the first semester I was working full time and couldn’t always drag myself to University on my days off, so now that I am doing less hours at work I have been being a better student and may be able to take some exams from last semester and bring myself up to where I should be.

When it comes to language learning, I have been maintaining my German quite well because I live in Vienna and am confronted with it on a daily basis! My Spanish has gotten really rusty but I am confident I can bring it back up to where it was just a short while ago when I was living in Madrid if I put a little effort in.

I’m also working on a fun little side project with my friend. We have a tentative plan to take a trip to Stockholm in the summer and we are learning as much Swedish as we possibly can by then. I will be sure to make a post on exactly what we are doing and what our plans are to learn as much Swedish as possible!

What about you guys? Are any of you still out there? I’m hoping there are a few of you that haven’t given up on this blog!

Stay tuned – it’s good to be back!

I give complete credit of the word “mission” in regards to language learning to Benny the Irish Polyglot. I think it is a great word to use to describe the language learning journey and that the word itself can be inspiring because it helps you invision the language learning process as a fun challenge, a mission that you are set out on the complete!

I am going to pick 2 and only 2 resources (preferably one self-study course, either online or off, and a podcast) for each language and will resist all temptation to use other resources until I am finished with the original ones!

As a quick reminder (to you guys AND to myself!) My current language missions are:

German – C2 by the end of the year
Spanish – C1 by the end of the year
Hungarian – be able to have a conversation with my boyfriend’s grandparents next Christmas.
French – reactivate my dusty French to as high as a level as possible by the end of the year. (Ideally be able to converse easily in most daily situations)
Italian – be able to get by on a trip to Italy. (basic conversational level)
Swedish – be able to get by on a trip to Sweden without speaking English. (basic conversational level)

(from my language log at How-to-learn-any-language.com)

and here are my selected resources:

German
Audio: Alltagsdeutsch
Course: Hugo German Complete (start from the [near] beginning and use it as a review and complete it to the end)

Spanish
Audio: Show Time Spanish
I’ve got the premium materials from the second season so I am going to start from the first episode from the second season and do the entire second season (including materials)
Course: Hugo Spanish complete
(start from the near beginning and complete the whole thing)

Hungarian
Audio: Let’s Learn Hungarian!
Course: LiveMocha

French
Audio: Walk, Talk and Learn French
Read the Canadian news on radio-canada.ca. I won’t worry too much about understanding everything and looking up every new word but more about getting a lot of reading/listening practice.

Italian
Audio: My Daily Phrase Italian Podcast
Course: LingQ Italian

Swedish
Audio: SwedishLingQ Podcast
Course: LiveMocha

I will stick with these ones and not be tempted to search out new ones until I am finished with these ones!

Hello readers! Just wanted to write a quick update on why there hasn’t been very many updates for awhile! I usually don’t really like it when people write blog posts about why they’ve been away and how they’ll be back soon but it’s all language related, and I really do want you to know that I will be updating soon!

This is the last week of my hardcore, intensive, ridiculous C1 level German class at the Sprachenzentrum of the University of Vienna. We have our final test tomorrow and I’m sad to say, I’m not sure how well I will do because I think it will be REALLY hard. Oh well, I have definitely learned a lot these past three weeks! If someone had told me two years ago that I’d be reading original texts by Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud I wouldn’t have believed them!

This week has also been the apartment hunting week. My boyfriend and I are staying at a friend’s house in Vienna so we can (hopefully!) find an apartment by the end of the week! We tried this last September without any luck (everyone and their dog were also looking for a one-bedroom apartment in Vienna…) but it seems to be better this time. Wish me luck!

I had the great opportunity this week of being interviewed by Mark from Radio Lingua over Skype. I offered some tips on language blogging and language learning and the interview will be available in a few weeks through the Radio Lingua club!

I’ve also been working on my schedule for University which is incredibly exciting! Even though I’m having more and more setbacks with my application, I still think I can manage to start studying this semester because the deadline is only on April 30th and I can attend classes without registering (you only register for the end exams)
So far the classes I will be taking are:

- Sprachtechnologien, Informations- und Wissensmanagement
Language technology, Information and knowledge management.

- Transkulturelle Kommunikation: Theorie und Praxis
Transcultural Communication: theory and practice

-Translationsrelevante Sprachwissenschaft
Translation relevant linguistics

- Transkulturelle Kommunikation: Probleme und Lösungsansätze
Transcultural Communication: Problems and solution approaches

- Grammatik im Kontext: Deutsch
Grammar in context: German

- Grammatik im Kontext: Spanisch
Grammar in context: Spanish (this class is taught entirely in Spanish, so exciting!!)

This list may or may not change, I’m still not exactly sure how many classes I should take on at once!

During the next few days as I finish up the things that are making my life a bit busy I will be doing something along the lines of what Fiona from Baby Steps to Fluency did last week: a short break to collect thoughts, ideas, and inspiration for this blog. I will hopefully come up with some good stuff!

Bis dann!

I can only imagine what it would have been like to learn a foreign language a hundred or more years ago.
Resources would’ve been scarce. Any book that you found in the language you were learning would’ve most likely been treated as a treasure, and hours would’ve been spent memorizing, absorbing and appreciating every word and every sentence. Immersion would’ve been very difficult unless you lived reasonably near an area where the language was spoken and any native speaker you happened to come in contact with would’ve been like winning the lottery!

Today the situation is very different. There is an overwhelming amount of options for langage learners. Websites, blogs, twitter accounts, phrasebooks, grammar books, books in the language you’re learning, books about the language you’re learning, books about language learning in general, Skype, forums, Lang-8, LiveMocha, Pimsleur, Assimil, Hugo, Michel Thomas, Hueber, Langenscheidt… Ahh!!!

When I find myself sitting in the midst of Hugo this, Schaum’s Outline that, dictionaries and grammar books all over the place… I almost wish I only had that one old book that would’ve been a treasure to a language learner hundreds of years ago. I collect podcasts, phrase books, grammar books, vocabulary books, website bookmarks, self-study courses… and a big bulk of it goes unused.

I can’t really offer any advice on the topic, but I’d like to know how you guys as language learners handle information overload? Do you limit yourself to one podcast, or one self-study course, or one grammar book at a time? Or are you also finding yourself in a similar situation to mine where you’re getting caught in a whirlwind of information and ending up not using a lot of it?

Jim Morrison, one of the frequent commenters here at ich estudio langues, is the creator of “My Language Netbook“. My Language Notebook (MLN) is a program to help people learn languages.

MLN can be used in the following ways:

- download the program to make your own language lessons to that can be shared with others
- embed the lessons you have made (or existing lessons from the MLN website) onto your website or blog using the code provided from the MLN website
- practice various languages using the My Language Notebook player directly on the website! There are many language lessons available including not only the “usual” Spanish, German and Japanese, but also “less popular” languages like Navajo, Manx and Cornish!

My Language Notebook is free to use and share for all language learners! More information can be found on the MLN website.

See where Catalan and Basque are spoken: A graphic of the different languages and dialects found in Spain.

I learned something important about language learning last week, you have to find that thing in the language you are learning that makes you say “Ok just one more!” or “…5 more minutes!” something that you feel you should feel bad about because you should get back to “real” studying, or something that you end up doing for hours without even realizing it. It was something that I already sort of knew (and an idea that is promoted on language learning websites such as Spanish Only and All Japanese All The Time) but I found two solid examples that applied to myself last week.

I lived in Madrid with my boyfriend last year while he was working as a “Linguistics Tester” at EA. He tested the German versions of video games to check for errors. (Pretty cool job, huh? ) One of the games he worked on was Mass Effect 2. He even ended up doing some actual translating and changing of the written parts (and prides himself on being the mostly likely reason that the “Schimpfwörter” (swear words) warning appears on the box! He bought a copy for his brother for his birthday and I was playing it the other day (in German of course) and before I knew it, three hours had passed! I had spent three hours immersed in German input (Mass Effect is a very dialogue heavy game!) without even noticing it, because it was fun.

Example number two:

I was on podcast.de the other day looking for new German podcasts. I was checking out some of the top voted podcasts and found that I really enjoyed the highhest rated one, Wissen vor 8. It is a series of short videos, each one answering a cool science-y question like “Why does a whip crack?”, “Why is glass see-through?”, “Why does hair turn grey?” and so on. I went through nearly ten videos the first time, always having that “Ok, one more!” feeling, because it was interesting!

What are your favourite fun things to do when you are practicing a language? If you haven’t found something fun then think of things you like to do in your native language, and find out how to do them in the language you are learning!

When I first heard about Google wave, I knew it could be a great resource for language learning and so I have decided to set up a couple language learning Google waves and I would love for you all to sign up! Right now I’m thinking that we could use the waves mostly to share and organize online resources but if anyone else has any ideas then please let me know! So far I have two waves set up: one for Spanish and one for German, but I will be adding more and can add any languages that are requested!

Cool! How do I join?

If you still need an invitation to Google Wave, then just leave a comment, click on “contact me” at the top of the blog, or send me a tweet and I can hook you up!

If you already have a Google wave account then you can add me: j.thmsn@gmail.com and I will invite you to the wave(s) of your choice!

I am also very new at Google Wave and will be spending the next little while finding out more about how it works! I hope to hear from a lot of you, this could be fun!

To learn more about Google wave you can click here or here.

With the announcement of Apple’s iPad yesterday it has got me thinking of what it could possibly bring to the world of language learning. One of the things I am most interested in about language learning in general is what language education will be like in the future since I believe that new technology will change the way we learn languages and I think Apple’s iPad could definitely be pushing forward that change. Off the top of my head I can already think of a few uses of the iPad in studyong a language. You could read foreign language books on it, review flash cards, listen to podcasts, watch foreign language TV and movies…

I’m going out right now but I wanted to leave a quick post here to see what some of you guys think about the iPad. Are you thinking about buying one? How do you think iPads could contribute to language learning?

I have been to quite a few language classes in quite a few different locations. Spanish in Spain, German in Austria, (and, come to think of it, German in Spain as well!) along with some University German classes in Canada. It became sort of a hobby of mine! I enjoyed having a place to go regularly with the specific purpose to learn a language, and to meet people from around the world who were also learning languages, or people attending my University in Canada who were also interested in learning German. I also enjoyed the structure of having a regular language class with homework, tests, and constant progression. I really love languages, but to this day I struggle with keeping myself disciplined enough to do quality studying at home, and although I did learn a lot in my various language classes, I have never learned a language in the class. Language classes usually don’t work and the reason they usually don’t work is because people expect them to. Let me explain…

If you expect to learn a language solely within the classroom walls, then you will more than likely be disapointed! Here are the reasons why language classes usually don’t work, but can.

Why language classes usually don’t work:

- If you have the wrong attitude towards language classes, they will not help you very much. The wrong attitude is expecting to learn a language in a classroom. If you expect the teacher to teach you the language in the time that you are in the four walls of your classroom and put no effort in on your own, then you will not learn the language. Well, you may very well learn the language eventually, but by that time you may have already invested years of your time and thousands of dollars worth of your money to go from beginner to advanced, when you could have learned the language a lot faster and therefore saved money if you had put in some decent effort on your own outside of the classroom.

- Most people who go to language classes don’t do their homework. Homework is an extremely important part of taking language classes, and even more important than homework is reviewing. You must review what you learned that day. Re-read the texts that you worked on in class, write down new vocabulary and make flash cards, review those flash cards… Yes it may be a lot of work, but if you don’t do it your money that you invested in the class will be wasted because you will not be reinforcing what you paid for to learn.

How language classes CAN work:

- Language teachers are great resources. They are often native speakers, or if not, are extremely experienced with the language they are teaching, with University degrees in language, teaching, or linguistics, and are glad to answer any questions you have and help guide you along with your learning. You can make notes at home after reviewing what you learned in class that day and then get it all cleared up by your teacher the next day.

- If you have any problem getting yourself to work on language learning yourself because you don’t have any “official” structure to your studying, then language classes give you that. You will have tests, homework, and your class will be constantly moving forward. You will be “forced” to get into the habit of regular language study which is something you can carry over into your self-study time when the class finishes.

- Language classes are a place to go to meet other people who are learning the same language as you. You can meet friends and have encouragement when learning the new language. If you are studying a language abroad you can meet people who are also studying abroad and are in similar situations as yourself! This makes language learning even more fun than it already is. (but you have to be careful if you and your new friends share the same native language, you should be practicing speaking the language you are learning!)

Fiona at Baby-Steps to Fluency wrote a post comparing Self-study versus Classroom Learning and came to pretty much the same conclusion, you have to find a happy medium. (You can find her post here.)

You just need to think of a language class as another piece of the language learning puzzle. Cheesy, but true!

Not much leaves your head faster than an unused language! I was in French Immersion in school from when I was 5 until 17, but as soon as I went off to University, I left my french behind me (even though I went to a University that offered the option to do any program in French AND I lived within walking distance of the province of Quebec. Ugh! I’m still kicking myself today for not taking advantage of those opportunities to continue with French!) Now I struggle to keep up even the most basic conversations in French.

There is good news for those of us who have once learned a language but took a long break; the language is still in there somewhere! I believe that a language never really leaves your head completely, it is just “sleeping” and needs to be kicked a little bit to wake up!

If you have spent anytime in your life learning a language and want to restart it, it will not be like starting a new language from scratch. Things will start to come back to you. So how do you start re-learning a language? Well first, see how much you remember!

- Open up a website in the target language. How much can you understand? If you can barely understand anything, then you might have to go back to basics and learn like a beginner. Look for beginner’s resources and courses online. You may be learning like a beginner but you will most likely progress much faster than when you first learned the language. If you can get the gist of things, then start making flash cards of the words you don’t know and keep on getting as much imput of the language as you can. Read, watch movies and TV shows (with subtitles in the language you are learning if possible) and review your flash cards. If you’re stuggling with remembering the grammar, then pick up a good grammar book!

The key is to stuff your brain with as much input from the language as possible. Your brain will refire-up old connections and your old language skills will start to wake up from their long nap!

Have any of you once learned a language and then “forgotten” it? Are you planning on re-learning it? If so, then leave a comment about your experiences with “forgetting” and re-learning languages!