Every language learner knows that feeling: desperate helplessness when trying to produce a sentence in a target language. You may have advanced to the degree where you enjoy sophisticated books and movies in the language you are learning, but when it comes to speaking, you feel like a beginner – lost, panicked, and embarrassed. No
Summer is probably the best and the worst time for language learners. Summer breaks and vacations give you a lot of spare time. Nobody tells you what to do—no busy office schedule, no boring one-size-fits-all (or rather, one-size-fits-none) curriculum. You are finally free to do what you want, for example, start to read books in
When I was working on my master thesis in the university, I found a very interesting book that cardinally changed my perception of speech and language. The book, written by language philosopher and linguist Boris Gasparov was titled rather vaguely: Language, Memory, Image. Behind those three words was the whole new concept of human speech.
Once a student of mine explained to me in good Russian that he was bad at learning languages. He explained to me exactly why he was incapable of speaking Russian for thirty minutes. When I pointed out that he had been speaking Russian for thirty minutes in a row, he was shocked. Another student told
We all have days when we feel down. Or are very busy. It is okay. Life is life, and it gives us ups and downs. What is not okay is giving up language practice during those days. The most important thing for learning languages is to keep practicing, and frequency here matters more than duration
Quite a lot of my students have told me that they feel anxious when speaking Russian. They are good at many other language activities like listening comprehension, reading and even writing. However, the mere idea that they have to say something in Russian makes them panic. “It’s like my mind goes all blank when I
Isn’t it hilarious that in 2015, when the world is globalized and connected, many people still believe they should have native speakers around to practice their target language? “Nobody speaks that language where I live, so I can’t practice it”, they say. The most amusing part of it is that those people are usually confident
We need goals. They navigate us through the chaos of life. They help us to become what we want to be. They organize us. If you decide to learn a new language, you have to set up your goals. The only problem is that more often than not our goals remain unachieved. Most people start
The first steps into a new language are the hardest ones. You know so little, you have to look up every word in a dictionary. You struggle with unfamiliar grammar forms, you can’t distinguish one part of a speech from another, and fail to recognize new grammatical forms of familiar words. It is so frustrating!
I’m a great supporter of online education. The Internet opens literally unlimited opportunities, for example, everyone can learn any language for free or next to free, while staying at home. Once I had an online lesson with an English-speaking student who had managed to learn Russian by himself. He did a really great job. He
