Blog 6: Six Different Ways to Practice a Language

     This week's Google alert came up with a fun article about learning a language. In Jennifer Still's article "I've taught myself 5 languages for fun — here are 6 tips for getting a language to stick" she explains how she has taught herself French, German, Italian, Korean, and even Russian. She then goes onto explain what tools or techniques she uses to help her learn or keep what she has learned in her head.

Here are her tips and tricks:

1. I listen to music and watch TV and movies in the language I'm trying to learn.
2. When I have a moderate amount of vocabulary under my belt, I read books in the language I'm learning.
3. I keep a [Language I'm learning]-to-English dictionary handy for regular reference.
4. I make it a point to learn idiomatic expressions.
5. I make flashcards.
6. I do lessons on language learning apps like Babbel and Duolingo. 

     The advice that really stuck out to me was to listen to music and watch TV and movies in the language you are trying to learn. This is something that I actually would have never thought of, it would also be something that if you weren't that great at the language you could put captioning on as well. Why this also resonated with me is the fact that my homeroom students and I were having a conversation about their different cultures this week and one of them mentioned how their Mom watches Netflix in Spanish and was laughing about how silly this seemed, but then another student laughed how their parent did this as well. I wonder if the reason their parents do this is exactly why Jennifer does as well which is to keep current with the language that they have learned.

     This article also allowed me to explore some language learning apps like Babbel and Duolingo. I didn't even know that these apps existed! Duolingo is such a neat and easy to use app, I am really going to try to use this app to start learning Spanish.