If you’ve ever tried to learn a foreign language, there’s an excellent chance your experience was much like mine: you studied a language for a few years in high school or university, but you never achieved fluency and now you can’t even speak yourself out of a wet paper bag to save your life.
Fortunately, after giving up twice, I tried a third time, and eventually reached Spanish fluency, then taught myself conversational Portuguese, and now I’m studying French and Latin.
You probably think I have some natural talent for learning languages. “Some people just have the gift” is the common myth.
But if you listened to what I just said, my first two attempts to learn Spanish failed. Miserably. After years of study, I couldn’t even order a taco in Spanish! And my third attempt was still very painful.
Giving back
This blog is my attempt to share what I have learned about the process of language learning, and the best techniques I can offer, to make your venture into a new language–or even a deeper dive into your first language–more enjoyable and less frustrating than my past was.
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