Learning a language can seem like a lengthy, difficult process and, at times, it can feel like you’re wading through a sticky bog unable to get to the other side.
Like many, you probably focus on the end goal without thinking about – and acting upon – small tasks you can do each day that will help you reach your goal. While it’s good to practice every day to keep everything fresh in your mind, you don’t have to sacrifice other things.
Taking ten minutes here or there throughout your day is enough, especially if you incorporate the language learning process into your every day routine.
1. Change the language on your phone
You probably already know your way around your phone pretty well, so why not change the settings so it’s in your target language?
Seeing the language pop up every time you look at your device – which, let’s face it, is pretty often for most people – can help etch it in your memory, and the regular exposure will keep you thinking about it throughout the day.
2. Listen to a podcast
Most of us have some kind of daily commute, whether it’s to work or to the supermarket, which is the perfect opportunity to practice language learning.
Download some podcasts or get a good audio book to plug yourself into during this time and you won’t feel like you have wasted a single second of your day.
3. Read an article or news story
To familiarise yourself with the grammar and sentence structure of your target language, it's a great idea to read one or two articles in it each day.
They don’t have to be long; just a current affairs piece or something on a topic that interests you. To take this a step further, try reading the article out loud to get used to the sound of the letters and to practice your intonation.
4. Flash cards and post-its
When I was learning to talk, my mum stuck post-it notes with the names of objects all around the house to familiarise me with how words look and to encourage me to learn more vocabulary.
This is a great thing to do when learning a language, too. Of course, this method only really works for tangible objects – you can’t put a post-it on an abstract notion – but it is an effective revision technique as you will be looking at and using these objects on a daily basis.
5. Translate your shopping list
Practicing Talking of supermarkets, writing out your shopping list or your to-do list in your target language is another great technique to incorporate into the language learning process.
Practicing writing things out gets you used to the spelling and formation of words and, if youdon’t know the word for something you need, you can look it up and add a new word to your ever-expanding vocabulary!
6. Listen to some music
If you’re a music fan, weaving songs in your target language into your daily routine can be hugely beneficial as well as fun.
Most songs are written in a casual manner, giving you an insight into colloquial language. Plus, they are great tools for getting to grips with grammar and pronunciation, and they’re easier to memorise than dry blocks of text.
7. Have a dictionary on hand
Pick up a pocket dictionary and carry it with you at all times.
So, if you have a spare moment,you can have a flick through or, if you’re desperate to know what a certain word or phrase means in your target language, you can quickly look it up and add it to your new-found dialogue.
Or just check a word quickly online. Still, it will help you write down the word or phrase for reviewing later.
8. Play a language game
There are so many online language learning games now that there is bound to be one out there that suits your needs and you find fun. Alternatively, if you are a big gaming fan, you can change the settings on your favorite game to your target language.
There tends to be a number of conversations to move games forward and it won’t feel like you’re doing any work at all!
9. Sign up to a forum
The vast majority of countries have a range of forums on a various topics, from relationships, to writing, to computer programming like forosdelweb.
So, if you’re interested in technology and you’re learning Spanish, you might want to sign up to a site like this for a great way view interactions between native speakers, to get involved yourself, and to gain some industry-specific vocabulary - if this is what you are looking to learn.
10. Write about your day
This is one of my favorite daily techniques because you can easily begin to see the progress you have made after a couple of weeks if you keep all your ‘daily reviews’ in the same place.
You only need to write a couple of sentences about what you got up to, things you saw, and things you read or heard and it will keep the creative juices flowing in your target language.
If you do it quickly before bed you can review it the next morning to keep the language fresh in your mind for the rest of the day.
Bio: Lizzie writes for GEOS Languages Plus and other language school sites. Last year she went to LanguagesAbroad to learn Spanish in Spain where she realized that language learning has to become a part of everyday life if you want to succeed. In her spare time you can find her exploring Europe and further afield, watching nature documentaries, and drinking an obscene amount of tea.
Why we chose games and a travel story for our language program is a question we are often asked. We answered this question in a recent article on Omniglot.com and are republishing it with a few edits and the revisions which have occurred since:
Our Italian Adventure
Several years ago, my husband and I prepared for an extended stay in Italy by learning Italian with the three 30-lesson courses of Pimsleur's audio CD program.
Arriving in Italy, we could communicate well enough - although not speak fluently. However, we could read Italian only with difficulty and writing was a disaster. We kept spelling everything the French way, French being a language we both speak fluently.
Before our trip, we had also looked at other CD and DVD programs and had tried several, including Rosetta Stone. But as the vocabulary did not match our interests or needs, it was hard to stay motivated and we were quickly bored.
For example, in one of the early lessons of RS, we practiced (multiple times) all of the following sentences: the women are eating rice, the girls are reading, the horses are running, the boy is not driving.
Context Matters
Gamesforlanguage was born from of a simple idea: Learn language in a relevant context. If you can repeatedly hear, read, write, and speak the words, phrases, and sentences of a story, you'll remember them more easily, because you remember the context.
To learn a new language, you have to connect it to your own experiences. With travel being a common denominator for many language learners, we decided to create a travel story of a young man traveling to the European countries of the four languages we currently offer. (English for Spanish speakers was added later, see below.) The everyday, practical language he experiences on his trip is bound to be relevant to most travelers.
All GamesforLanguage courses are free. There are currently 36-lesson courses for French 1, German 1, Italian 1, and Spanish 1, a 72-lesson course for German 2, and a 12-lesson course for Inglés - English for Spanish speakers.
Learning with Games
But Gamesforlanguage.com is also offering something still different. Our games are not just individual learning clips, nor are they simply an addition to or an enhancement of a conventional language program. The games ARE the language program.
Each lesson of our 36 lesson course is made up of games that practice one or more of the four language skills: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. Here are some examples: - Memory Game: Memorize new words and phrases by hearing, reading, and saying them. - Snap Clouds: Practice by choosing the foreign word/phrase, hearing, and saying it. - Balloon Words: Train your ear by identifying the sounds of key words. - Say It: Repeat words and phrases aloud after hearing them (and before seeing them briefly). - Deal No Deal: Discover the meaning of the story dialogue by simple elimination. - Writing Clowns: Translate and spell against time. - Word Invaders: Build a foreign sentence by clicking on the right words. (see image)
Other games focus on particular aspects of each language, such as pronouns, articles, adjective endings, basic conjugations, etc.
In addition to the courses, Quick Games and Podcastsof "The Story" can also be played for Free without registering or logging in.
Each lesson now begins with the story dialogue, forcing the learner to guess the meaning from the context of the story and before discovering and learning the new words and phrases.This is quite similar to what a traveler will experience when he or she tries to understand a foreign conversation.
By the time the learner hears the full story dialogue again - just before "Record It" - he or she will easily understand it, after having memorized, heard, read, spoken, and written the words and phrases of the story several times.
Grammar in Context only
In contrast to some other programs, gamesforlanguage.com teaches grammar items only as they come up in the context of the ongoing story. Grammar is not taught in the form of abstract rules.
For example: In the second lesson of our French 1 course, the following sentence is part of the dialogue: "Je suis contente que vous parliez français." We explain the use of the subjunctive form "vous parliez" (instead of the indicative "vous parlez") briefly why it is used: after a phrase expressing emotion ("je suis contente que ..."). That's all. At this stage the learner would be overwhelmed by a more detailed explanation.
Audience & Technology
Gamesforlanguage.com courses is intended primarily for "grown-ups", i.e. teenagers and adults because reading and writing is involved. However, we know that children who have just learned to read and write also enjoy the games. The online courses and Quick Games work on all modern browsers and, since January 2013, also on iOS6 iPads and iPhones.
Since Android started to support multichannel audio for HTML5, GamesforLanguage courses and Quick Games can also be played on Android devices.
Traveling to France? Preparing for the trip may both heighten your anticipation as well as enhance your experiences there. Travel entrepreneur Rick Steves has called this "Prepare for Spontaneity."
A basic knowledge of the local language and culture are essential tools for navigating new places and meeting locals.
In our four language courses we are introducing the learner to various particularities of each language or culture. For example in our French 1 course our traveler Daniel learns about the "bouillabaisse".
Listen HERE to a conversation between him and his aunt. Maybe your French lets you understand how this traditional French dish got its name. If not, you'd certainly understand it by the end of lesson 33!
The 36 lessons - we call them "Scenes" - take our "hero" Daniel (and, by extension you!) for a three week journey to France, where you'll learn the language of daily French life.
For example, in Paris, you'll visit with relatives, take a walk on a famous square, order "un express" and "une tarte aux fraises" at a café. You'll buy a train ticket to Aix-en-Provence.
There, you'll ask directions to a friend's house, and on a walk around the city, learn about Cézanne's occupation before he became a famous painter. In Avignon, you'll take a bus to your hotel, and check in.
Later, after dinner, a friend will show you the famous bridge. (Who doesn't know the song "Sur le pont d'Avignon"?) For your last week, you'll return to Paris.
Each of the 36 lessons is based on a dialog and on part of the story. In each lesson, you'll play your way through a series of games, with which you learn and practice vocabulary, train your listening comprehension, practice speaking by recording and playing back your own voice.
You'll also get essential grammar and culture tips.
Your goal will be to exceed a target score so that you can move on to the next lesson and hear “the rest of the story.”
You'll also be challenged and often able to understand the meaning of the next dialog through the context of the story alone – similar to what you might experience living in the foreign country, or following an original French movie.
So, maybe, next time you're sitting in a French bistro and see the "bouillabaisse" on the menu, you'll give it a try and even know what the name means...
This was based on Scene 4.5 of our German 1 course and our conjecture that Mark Twain liked the name "Heidelberg" because Heidelberg in English means Huckleberry mountain.
Actually, more correctly, Heidelberg is an abbreviation of "Heidelbeerenberg" (huckleberry mountain).
Huckleberry Adventures
We found it interesting that Twain had stayed in Heidelberg with his family for several months in 1878.
Twain had unsuccessfully tried to learn German in 1850 at age fifteen. He resumed his study 28 years later in preparation for a trip to Europe." [Wikipedia: "Mark Twain"]
Mark Twain had published his novel “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” in 1876 and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in1884.
A little further digging found several German sites which also describe his love of Heidelbeeren. He found them in the forests around Heidelberg and enjoyed Heidelbeerkuchen (huckleberry pie).
By the way, a similar confusion between a huckleberry and a blueberry also exists in German between a "Heidelbeere" and a "Blaubeere". (For further enlightenment, try this link.)
Heidelberg, Mississippi
So the character of Huckleberry Finn had already been well-established by the time Mark Twain arrived in Heidelberg, Germany in 1878, as the travel writer Lucy Gordan explains:
"Supposedly looking for a quiet village, where people didn't know him, neither of which fit Heidelberg because it was already home to active American and British communities, he arrived with his family on May 6 for the day and stayed three months.His biographer Justin Kaplan asserts Twain was aware that Heidelberg derived from 'Heidelbeerenberg', meaning 'Huckleberry Mountain', which may explain his affinity."
"Nobody really knows," writes Werner Pieper in his updated Mark Twain's Guide to Heidelberg , "what made Mark Twain stay in Heidelberg for such a long time. Maybe he was prompted by old dreams from the times he was passing Heidelberg, Mississippi, while working on the steamships? Did he plan to stay here or did he and his family just fall in love with this city?"
While the above allusion to Mark Twain's passing by Heidelberg, Mississippi, during his days as a river pilot may be compelling, a little further digging causes some doubts:
Mark Twain worked on a steamboat, first as an apprentice, then as a pilot during 1857 to 1861.
However, Heidelberg, Mississippi was only founded in 1882 by Washington Irving Heidelberg [google History, Town of Heidelberg] - and even more importantly: Heidelberg is not situated ON the Mississippi, but located in the State of Mississippi, southeast of Jackson, MS, and about 130 miles from the Mississippi river.
Twain visited the river a number of times after his pilot days, most notably in 1882 as he prepared to write "Life on the Mississippi" and maybe on his travels TO the river he came through the little town.
Maybe that's when he came across the name Heidelberg again. So whether he already knew the name Heidelberg or whether he related to it as a translation of "huckleberry" we'll never know.
But we do know that he liked his three months in Heidelberg, Germany, in spite of his continuing struggle with the German language.
And we'll explore in another blog post Mark Twain's love-hate relationship with "The Awful German Language" which he published as an Appendix to his "A Tramp Abroad" in 1880.
Bio: Peter Rettig is the co-founder of Gamesforlanguage.com. He's a lifelong language learner, growing up in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and leave any comments with contact.
Finally, you can access our four language programs not only on your desktop or laptop but also on your iOS6 mobile devices.
Many of our users have been frustrated that while they could access our online program perfectly well from their new iPad, the audio did not work!
With the release of iOS6 (the most recent release of the operating system on mobile Apple devices), Apple iPhones and iPads now support multi channel audio in HTML5. We have now integrated this new technology, called the Web Audio API, into our games.
This means you don't need to go through the Apple store to use GamesforLanguage. You would want to have a good Wi-Fi connection. Just open your Safari browser and login to our site and start playing and learning.
While for us the screen on the iPhone is too small for certain games, Memory Game, Snap Clouds, Shootout, etc. may still work for some users. We prefer the regular iPad and iPad mini.
If you encounter any difficulties, write us! Some of the remedies are pretty simple, and it's always a good idea to first try again by reloading.
At this point we don't know yet when we can make Games4language also work on Android mobile devices. Android does not yet support the technology that now enables multi-channel audio to work on Safari in iOS.
Other Changes
Those of you who replayed some earlier Scenes may also have noticed the following changes: - An expanded Story dialog for the first Scene of German1 (with the other languages to follow). - All Scenes have lengthened games for more playing practice. - “The Story” now also appears at the end of each Scene by which time it will be easily understood. - Quick, short games teach articles, pronouns, noun genders, etc. right from the start, and in the later levels we added other fun games such as Shootout, Car Race, Moon Landing, etc.
In fact, you will find that many of the games are even more fun to play on a tablet, as you can just touch the screen for the correct word or phrase.
Vocabulary acquisition is an essential part of language learning. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of communication. Words greatly enhance your communication.
How many words you need for basic, effective communication is up for debate. It depends on the language and the kinds of topics you want to talk about.
Opinions differ quite a bit. At one end of the spectrum, for example in German, 2000 words can get you started pretty well and provide a good base to build on. [Langenscheidt: Basic German Vocabulary] Near the other end stand 10,000 words as the native vocabulary mastered by a five-year-old who is ready to start school. The bottom line is that you need build your vocabulary!
Dictionaries
First, keep a dictionary handy. It's the most basic tool for any language learner. You'll use it for quickly looking up a new foreign word you come across, for double-checking the meaning or the spelling of a word or phrase, to search for verb conjugations, or for finding the target language translation of words in your own language.
You'll also want to see common expressions where a particular word shows up. For example, Ultralingua (a sophisticated multilingual translation dictionary) offers these features, and, in addition, you can download iPhone or iPad apps. Having a dictionary on your mobile is really convenient when you're traveling. Such apps contain much more information than the mini-dictionaries I used to travel with.
An excellent online dictionary which I use a lot, even on my phone, is Word Reference. The dictionary is free but uses ads for revenue.
Learning how to use a dictionary takes a little practice. For example, some words have more than one translation, or are used only in specific contexts. Or, some words have associations that you want to be aware of before you use them.
Here are FOUR more tools for building your vocabulary:
Flashcards
Flashcards are a great way to create a base of words and phrases, and you can keep using them to continue building your vocabulary.
Resources abound and they come in all kinds of configurations: Words + Translation; Picture + Written Word; Picture + Written Word + Sound, etc. Some of the programs incorporate spaced repetition, some allow you to add your own vocabulary. A popular flashcard program, to name one, is Anki.
Language Exercises & Games
Good language exercises and fun games can take vocabulary to the next level. Besides learning new vocabulary, you can practice verb tenses and conjugations, drill subject and object pronouns, learn to build sentences, etc. Besides our own program GamesForLanguage, Mindsnacks is definitely a fun program to try.
Reading with Translation
Once you have a grasp of basic vocabulary and grammar, reading has to be the best way to keep on building vocabulary. When you read a longer text, the same words and phrases will often come up several times.
Depending on your venue, you can get a translation with a click, or by checking a printed translation. With time, you'll get better at guessing the meaning from the context. A versatile program like LingQ provides what cofounder Steve Kaufmann calles "compelling content" - a library of texts and tools for learning.
You can also read foreign language newspapers online and use Google Chrome's Language Immersion feature.
Listening: Podcasts, Audio Books, and Videos
Understanding a stream of foreign words may be the hardest skill to learn (besides speaking fluently). The trick is to listen to the same audio many times. Your goal is to hear the words and phrases distinctly, and not as a stream of gibberish.
When listening to foreign language audios, you'll keep hearing words you know. With time and some repetition, you'll start to put them into your long-term memory. But you'll also hear new words and by hearing them in context, you'll learn to understand them.
Learning new vocabulary can be a bit of a chore. The key is to use a variety of tools and make a kind of game out of it. Have Fun!
Disclosure: We have no financial relationship with any of the programs that are linked in this blog post.
Yesterday, as I was poking around one of the Forums at Fluent in 3 Months, I came across a post with the topic of Time Management in Language Learning.
A forum member asked about goal setting. One answer to her question especially caught my eye because it expresses a familiar feeling: "Yes I have [set a goal] but I rarely keep to it. I don't know why, but when I set a goal, I do everything to not reach it. ... I feel compelled and I rebel."
A lot of language learners can probably empathize with such a statement. Rebellion of that sort may have to do with personality, with former school experience, with family dynamics, with the enormity of the project, etc. In any case, it means you have to deal with your own feelings of resistance to something you actually want to do.
Based on experience, here's my best advice for overcoming this kind of inner hurdle: Approach your language learning from an activity that you truly enjoy. It is bound to fuel your enthusiasm
Reading
If you're a great reader, dabble with texts and their translations. Google’s Language Immersion for Chrome or a program like LingQ work well for that. Just think, the better you get, the greater access you will have to anything written in your new language.
Watching Videos and TV
If you like to watch moving images (I don't want to say "if you're a TV addict"), find online news videos, or follow a soap in your new language. You'll learn a lot of vocabulary by guessing from the context of the story, gestures, facial expressions, sound of voice, and such.
In addition, becoming familiar with a few basic grammar items will help a lot (such as pronouns, question words, etc.). I've posted a couple of links to soaps and videos, as examples, on our Facebook site.
Listening to Music
If you are crazy about music, download songs, listen, sing along, google the words and memorize them. There's plenty of evidence that this is a fun and effective way to learn a language.
Playing Games
If you like playing games, you're in luck. You'll find a host of language apps and sites online that include games. Obviously, I'm hooked on games, and there are plenty of sites that I like, including our own GamesForLanguage. Here are a couple of others to try out: Digital Dialects, Mindsnacks, and Drops.
Writing
If writing is what you love, then start by writing out words, phrases, and short sentences. Duolingo, the popular, free crowdsourced language learning website, has you writing right from the beginning.
Community style programs, such as Busuu or Lang-8 include writing exercises and offer a chat feature with which you can communicate with native speakers.
Talking
If you love to talk, tell stories, and are not shy about speaking up in a foreign language, get yourself into a situation where you can be your chatty self. Finding a language-exchange partner who's on your proficiency level is the best way.
Meet with or skype with each other, and do this often. Here are two online resources: "Conversation Exchange" (a site we successfully used in Barcelona) and "My Language Exchange."
Textbooks and Grammar
Should I add this category? I for one really like to figure out how a language works. It’s not a bad idea to have a way to check some grammar points, be it in a textbook or on an online grammar site.
Just remember, progress with language learning is not linear. It's more like a zig-zag, a back and forth. Some things you won't get for a while, others you'll master immediately.
Still, whatever you put in will get you a step ahead - be it a stint of learning vocabulary, practicing pronunciation, watching a news video, reading headlines, or scrolling through a foreign language Twitter feed. Even a few minutes count.
If you approach your language learning in a way that you personally enjoy, chances are your you'll maintain your enthusiasm at a high level.
Anyone scanning the Internet will find a huge number of online language games and learning programs. In addition, there are lots of apps available for phones and tablets, including iPhones and iPads.
Those are all a tremendous resource for language lovers! And a lot has happened since we asked the question: Why Games?
Flashcards Do Work!
Many of the online programs and apps are based on a flashcard model, and teach words and short phrases only. Flashcards exercises are indeed an excellent way to drill and recall vocabulary. They are also perfect for grammar items, such as verb conjugations, adjective endings, noun genders, contractions, etc.
In digital form, flashcards can space recall optimally, and often use pictures and combine visual and auditory information. You’re in charge of your learning and you can easily track your progress.
Are Flashcards enough?
However, one may reasonably ask: Can you really learn to SPEAK a language by just memorizing words and word forms? For most of the European languages – and those are the ones we know best – we believe, the answer has to be no!
The reason seems quite obvious: Conversations and narratives are not just a series of isolated words or phrases. In order to create meaning, you have to choose the right words and put them into a particular sequence. Often, it's the sequence that is crucial for the meaning. As a starter, you need to show whether you're making a statement or asking a question.
Add to this the need to find the correct gender of the noun (and, depending on the language, also the correct ending), the right tense and verb conjugation, the position of a preposition, etc. - and it becomes clear why speaking a foreign language is not an easy process.
The Language Games Challenge!
The challenge to those of us who are developing online language games or apps is this: How to create compelling games that can teach much more than a series of words and phrases - games that build the confidence to communicate?
It's the repeated use and practice of phrases and sentences in a meaningful context, that will ultimately enable you to speak with some fluency. Words and grammar rules are not enough. Conversations are a process of dynamic communication. By the time you have deliberately constructed the perfect sentence, the conversation may have already moved on.
In future blog posts, we’ll review some of the available language games, and please, share with us your experiences!
I recently came across one of Rick Steves' articles in the Seattle Times: How to meet the locals while traveling in Europe. As we are currently in Barcelona, Spain, I thought we would try out a couple of his suggestions.
Using Social Media to Connect
Rick Steves lists a number of links for meeting locals through social media. While none of his links worked out for us, another site, coversationexchange.com, which I found by chance, set us up very well.
A few days after registering, we were contacted by Fabian, a professor of architecture who teaches at a University in Barcelona. He was as eager to practice his English as we were to practice our Spanish.
We met up with him in the “Ciutat Vella” (Catalan for “Old City”) and he took us on a tour of some special places we had not yet seen.
(The picture on the right shows children playing in the Plaça de SANT FELIP NERI, where the bullet holes from Franco era executions are still visible.)
The language exchange was great. Beyond that, though, he gave us a fascinating glimpse into the cultural and political struggle between Catalonia and “Spain.” (And yes, Catalonia is a part of Spain!)
This ongoing push-and-shove between the two cultures is something we had been aware of, but certainly hadn’t appreciated enough. (We’re planning another blog post on just that topic.)
Using Spanish Language Phrases
Another of Steves' suggestions was also right on: “Play with kids.”; “...make friends with the parents...”
At one of our favorite squares, Plaça de la Vila de Gràcia (see image), we were sipping our evening aperitifs at an outdoor café, as a young woman and her two-year-old child came to sit down at the next table.
It did not take long before we played peek-a-boo with the child and tried out our Spanish with the mother by asking “How old is your daughter?”, “What is her name?”, etc. (all phrases and sentences, by the way, we had remembered or adapted from our Spanish 1 course).
We soon were talking away, and when Carmen told us that the brother of her Italian husband works in a restaurant in Falmouth, MA, we could even use another phrase from our course: “¡Qué coincidencia!”
In our conversation with her, we gained quite a few insights into Catalan life and society. A couple of days later, Carmen introduced us to her parents as well as to her 94 year old grandmother, who had lived through the Franco years.
We may not have understood all of the grandmother's painful and vivid memories. However, without our basic knowledge of Spanish, we would have missed all of it. (The grandmother speaks no English!)
Making Yourself into a Language Extrovert
“When you’re traveling in Europe, make yourself and extrovert, even if you’re not.”
Following Rick Steves' suggestion, we try to start up a conversation with anyone who will talk to us - and we do it in Spanish.
We do our shopping in Spanish, where we often make small talk with the shopkeeper or other people waiting to be served. We order our meals in Spanish and ask the waiter about obscure (to us) items on the menu.
The other day, we visited Vilanova (a town about 30 minutes away) and at the Information Office, the woman asked us if we wanted her explanations in Castilian, French, or English.
We chose Castilian and had no trouble following her. Since Castilian Spanish is the second language for most Catalans. They speak it (a little more) slowly and deliberately – a real advantage to learners like us!
We haven’t yet tried Rick Steves' trick that he calls “pal up to a pooch” - but it might be worth finding out if pooches in Barcelona are bilingual too. The drawback is that pooches don't talk back...
I still remember the first time I played a game on a computer. I was just a 6-year-old kid, and as a native speaker of Spanish, it was an exciting and challenging experience to play games intended for the English speaking market.
Simple on-screen messages like “loading” or “game over” were exposing me to the language for the first time, before I started receiving proper English lessons at school. A few terms, the easiest ones, I would learn by pure observation, others, I would have to check the dictionary for their meaning.
In any case, it didn’t feel like I was making any extra effort, because I was having fun and the new vocabulary I was acquiring would also help me complete each game I played.
What’s more, far from developing prejudices against the English language, I started having a genuine interest about the language and its culture. The whole gaming-based language learning process broadened my mind considerably.
Today, I think my first and natural approach to language learning shares many similarities with the type of approach that certain courses follow, which integrate fun and effective games for language learning. Truth is, I wish such courses would have been available back then, in the early 80’s.
Some of these new programs are especially designed for language learning in mind, unlike the computer games I played when I was a kid. But all in all, I am happy I put many hours into gaming, as it helped raise my curiosity for a new language.
BIO: Pablo Montoya is both the writer and a speaker of our Spanish 1 course; he has also assisted us in developing our ESL course for Spanish speakers.
2. Listen to a podcast
Practicing Talking of supermarkets, writing out your shopping list or your to-do list in your target language is another great technique to incorporate into the language learning process. 
Pick up a pocket dictionary and carry it with you at all times. 
You only need to write a couple of sentences about what you got up to, things you saw, and things you read or heard and it will keep the creative juices flowing in your target language. 
Vocabulary acquisition is an essential part of language learning. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of communication. Words greatly enhance your communication. 
Language Exercises & Games
learn (besides speaking fluently). The trick is to listen to the same audio many times. Your goal is to hear the words and phrases distinctly, and not as a stream of gibberish. 
We met up with him in the “Ciutat Vella” (Catalan for “Old City”) and he took us on a tour of some special places we had not yet seen. 
(see image), we were sipping our evening aperitifs at an outdoor café, as a young woman and her two-year-old child came to sit down at the next table. 