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Why The Fear of Failure Stops You Succeeding

August 1, 2017 By Sophie Austin 6 Comments

Language is about communication. You learn a language to speak with and understand others. Likewise, we want to be understood.

It’s frustrating when someone doesn’t understand you. It’s even more frustrating when you don’t understand them. It creates a communication barrier that one or both speakers then need to try and bridge.

Often, it’s the fear of this barrier that prevents us from even trying to talk to someone in the first place.

But why?

This fear is illogical. This becomes clearer when we put language into the context of another skill we might want to learn. Let’s take skiing for example. You’ve never skied before. Some of your friends ski though, and you’re starting to think you might want to try it out.

How would you go about this?

Would you read books to try and understand the movements your body needs to make?

How to Master Syllable and Sentence Pronunciation

July 27, 2017 By Idahosa 4 Comments

This is the third installment of our “Twin Brothers Race to Learn Spanish” case study.

In our last installment, we discussed how John and Bryan Tublin learned to see, hear and feel the 39 Elemental Sounds of Spanish.

But in Spanish conversation, the 39 Elemental Sounds don’t appear in isolation, they appear in combination.

Elemental Sounds combine to form syllables. Syllables combine (with melody) to form sentences.

Now that John and Bryan have mastered the Elemental Sounds, their next mission is to master full Spanish sentences.

In this post, we review what the Twins had to do to achieve this.
[Read more…] about How to Master Syllable and Sentence Pronunciation

How to Learn Language Like a Kid

July 25, 2017 By Idahosa 2 Comments

When you try the exercise above, do you notice yourself getting better and better with practice?

What you’re experiencing is implicit learning.

Implicit learning, or “learning by doing,” is done unconsciously through repetition or exposure. We learn just about any motor skill this way—think shooting a basketball or riding a bike.

Explicit learning, on the other hand, is “learning by studying.” This is a process in which you actively try to master the structure of information. Learning by studying is used for things like mathematical formulas or memorizing the capitals of countries of the world.

As kids, we learn by doing all the time—how to use scissors, how to jump rope, how to swim backstroke, etc.

How to See, Hear, and Feel Sound in a Foreign Language

July 21, 2017 By Idahosa Leave a Comment

Between you and your goal of achieving conversational fluency in a language, there is a jungle.

This jungle is vast, dark and mysterious. There are many ways to get lost in this jungle.

Most language learners who go in to the jungle never make it to the other side, because they take the wrong paths.

The traditional paths of learning by eye dead end before you reach conversational fluency.

But the path that we’ve charted, The Mimic Method Path, does take you to conversational fluency.

If you take it all the way, you will be able to truly connect with the native speakers on their level, in their slang, with their accent.

I wrote a post on how The Mimic Method makes more sense than the traditional approach from a logical perspective.

But in the end it doesn’t matter how much logical sense this post makes. What really matters is what’s proven to work.

That’s why we started our new case study – two monolingual twin brothers competing to learn Spanish before they turn 30 (read intro post here).

In this post, I explain what they did for their first step on their path to Spanish fluency – Learning the 39 Elemental Sounds of Spanish.

There are three steps to learning sounds in a foreign language:

Learn how to see them
Learn how to hear them
Learn how to pronounce them

Let’s go over each:

How to Master Your Mouth – Learn to pronounce the sounds of your target language!

July 18, 2017 By Idahosa 7 Comments

Imagine you’re back in high school French class.

You sit at your desk, anxiously awaiting the results of your recent exam. When the teacher comes by and hands you your test, you rejoice—A+!

You feel pride in having memorized all of the verb charts and grammar rules. You can now speak French, you think.

Later that day, as you’re walking down the hall, you see the new French exchange student and excitedly say, “Bonjour!”

But then she responds. You see her lips moving and you hear the sounds coming out of her mouth, but you have no idea what she’s saying.

“Okay,” you think, mildly panicked. ”Just say something…anything….use your words”.

But you freeze.

You thought you spoke French. What gives?

Twin Brothers Compete to Learn Spanish Before 30th Birthday (Case Study)

July 13, 2017 By Idahosa 3 Comments

I’m excited to announce our latest language learning case study!

John and Bryan Tublin are twin brothers from the United States. John lives in New York City, and Bryan lives in San Francisco.

They both have spoken only English their entire lives. So they recently committed to learning Spanish before their 30th birthday this summer.

I decided to take them on as our latest “learn by ear” case study, because I knew they were motivated.

When it comes to learning a language, the only thing that matters more than the method is the motivation.

And there are few things more motivating than a sibling rivalry…