Hi everyone, I'm an american language teacher currently based in Mexico city, I'm looking for people to do language exchange in person I can offer english in return and.

I also speak: Portuguese (Brazilian) - C2 Spanish (Mexican) - C2

I also offer free lessons twice per week (I will never ask for money in exchange for classes)

I want to practice: Korean A2 Chinese (Mandarin) Pinyin and pronunciation Japanese Hiragana French/Italian A1

Please comment or dm me

wechat jjsta1337 kkt shiedak13

Greetings.

Native English speaker. Learned French in grammar school (Canada, eh?). Also took a semester each of Italian (French helped) and German (not so easy).

40+ years later, I need to learn Spanish. Any recommendations on an effective, cost-effective approach?

I'm thinking text plus audio lessons?

I find that having the cognitive/academic background helpful (to give me the grammatical building blocks). And most of the straight conversational stuff just doesn't take (e.g.- "hola, mi nombre es Armando ... " ).

Insights welcome.

I’ve been learning my heritage language, Vietnamese, since February. Back then, I had loads of free time, especially after graduating high school earlier this year. However, since starting college, I’ve really struggled to stay consistent. I feel like I’ve neglected my ability to balance learning Vietnamese with everything else going on in my life.

In high school, I was someone who mostly “procrastinated” and crammed before tests—although not always on the last day, it felt close. I managed to maintain an 80s average, but now in college, my grades have dipped into the 70s. I think it’s because I never really learned how to study effectively, and I’m still trying to adjust my habits.

I’ve also found it hard to make time for Vietnamese. It’s frustrating because I actually enjoy learning it, but with seven courses, gym, and trying to keep up a social life, I feel like I’m losing my dedication. I’ve tried listening to Vietnamese podcasts while working out, but they don’t work for me—the words just flow past me, and I can’t focus on the topic.

I occasionally read Vietnamese books online or watch videos, but it’s not an everyday thing like it used to be. I’ve also fallen off my Anki routine, which I used to do daily. I wanted to at least be proficient by the end of this year, but it didn’t go as planned—oh well. I’m still using Vietnamese here and there, but I often end up filling in gaps with English when I don’t know a word.

Does anyone have advice on how to balance college and language learning? Or maybe tips on studying better while still making progress in a target language? (I only use FLASHCARDS as studying and study prior exams starts which is in the next following week.)

TL;DR: Procrastinated in high school, never learned how to study effectively, and now I’m struggling to balance college with my passion for learning my heritage language, Vietnamese.

As a language learner/lover what would be something you would love to receive as a gift? Thank you!

I know this sounds like a circle jerk post but I really do have this problem.

I'm a native English speaker from the US and don't have another passport, so moving abroad is extremely difficult and likely not realistic, so I can't move where I'll be forced to speak another language for most interactions.

The only exception is Puerto Rico, but it's so hard to get a job there without already having a network that the only option is getting a remote job, which is also difficult and means most of my day would still be in English.

I could also move to Miami or near the Mexican border, but most people speak English there too and would likely just assume I don't want to speak Spanish, which enforces that it's a hobby because it means I don't need it to live my life.

Because I'm a native English speaker, I don't have the advantage that to get the most out of the internet I need to use my TL. English learners have to use English to get the most out of the internet, so even people in monolingual countries have a reason to learn another language besides it being a hobby.

I know there's nothing wrong with learning a language for fun, but because I have no other use for it I progress way slower because it's hard to fit it into my life without getting bored because I've spent 5 hours of free time talking to people online when I don't enjoy talking to people for that long.

I envy immigrants to the US because they spend most of their day speaking English (obviously I don't envy the economic situation for many immigrants but I do envy their linguistic situation). I want to spend my entire day speaking a foreign language besides when I talk to my family, but the chances I'll ever get to do that are less than 1% because I can't realistically get a work visa abroad and even if I did it's not unlikely that in order to get a job I would have to spend my work day speaking English.

How do I accept that this is just a hobby and it will always be a hobby and I have no reason to learn another language besides that I'm addicted to learning languages? I know I can't give up language learning because I'm obviously obsessed with it and addicted, but it's so hard to know this is something I can only do during my free time when lots of people are able to speak their second language during work and their day-to-day life.

*Be fluent in

I am fluent in one language (native tounge/Danish), but am still, after ~six years of practice, struggling quite a bit with English.
I want to learn German, and it has been a dream of mine since relatively early childhood. Thing is: All my focus has been placed in English, and will definetely stay there if no one shake sense into me.

My English is... Fine. Greater over text, understandable through speech. Would not consider myself fully fluent just yet, but am still considering setting my German endeavours into action.
Does anyone smarter than me have any advice? Thanks in advance.

Is the Gold List effective for learning vocabulary? Honestly, I have my doubts. As someone who needs to memorize vocabulary quickly, I find that this tool doesn't quite meet my needs. For instance, when I watch a movie and can't recall a word, I'm unable to remember it even with context. While context can be helpful, I only manage to recall a few isolated words. My goal is to learn more effectively using the Gold List, but unfortunately, I don't have much confidence in this method.

To be honest, I'm at a loss for what to do with memorization techniques and other methods. I'm feeling very frustrated and unsure about how to proceed. Should I use Anki, mnemonics, mental associations, or something else to help me remember words and integrate them into my language skills? I'm not sure what to do, and I'm also unsure about how to implement these methods effectively.

Do mnemonics and mental association methods serve to remember vocabulary?

Is it possible to learn with Anki? I don't have access to Anki's free decks with the most frequent English words. I think those decks are not effective for learning. I need to learn new content, but I don't have access to those decks. Is it recommended to learn by creating individual flashcards instead of using pre-existing decks?

So for context I've been learning my TL (French) for ~3 years now, and I'd say I'm at about a B1 level. I used to listen to a French podcast and read a couple news headlines in French everyday, but since July I've gotten a bit busy so my only real daily exposure to my TL has been in school (I'm currently in AP French). I know it's normal to get rusty after periods of inactivity, but is it normal for your accent/pronunciation in your TL to deteriorate? I recorded a short clip of me speaking French yesterday and everything felt so awkward(?) and incorrect :(

Indecisive people will probably relate to this the most. Sometimes you just want to learn everything. You are also not 100% sure if you want to learn the ones you are currently learning. That is fine, so long you are not like three years into your current ones already! If you have committed this much time, along with the money and resource, learning it, you are essentially "all in". Even if you stop learning it now, you still have learnt it for three years. That counts for something.

While it is true that there positives and negatives with my current languages, one has to recognise there is power in having chosen what you chose. Those three or four hasn't gone to waste. They are in your resume now and forever will be.

Hi there! I’ve been learning Hungarian for a hot minute, and I was looking around for different notecard applications to help me remember the vocabulary. I looked through the ones in the FAQ, and the ones listed don’t appear to be what I’m looking for, which is one that has some sort of tests.

The units in my textbook average 90 vocabulary words worth. When I was only able to use the Learn tests on Quizlet like, 7 times, after putting ALL of those words in, I was left a little pissed, especially because they had just paywalled one of the more effective tools for helping me remember. I hold great resentment for Quizlet.

I’d prefer there be some other option before I end up having to pay for the only thing that seemed to be working for me. Is something like this possible in, like, Anki?

Let me know what apps you use, how you like them, all that! Thanks.

I want a language learning app that is good and doesn't have an ad every minute and doesn't want me to subscribe to it's subscription eagerly.

A visual novel(VN) is a usually japanese video game that is narrative heavy, has some amount of drawing or animation, most characters tend to be fully voice acted in japanese to accompany all of the written dialogue.

one of the best immersion learning tools are VNs. the combination of stuff on the screen, text, and voice acting with a text extractor, dictionary lookup and anki makes it simple to quickly create flash cards for unknown words in context.

unfortunately, most other languages don't have anything quite like these. VNs in other languages that support them often either have no voice acting, or are just text translations of the japanese version.

What would be the closest media alternative for languages that don't produce tons of these? Audiobooks while reading along with the text is about the closest i can find. but these fall a bit short due to the lack of accompanying art and animations. comic books and graphic novels help with the art, but tend to have much simpler writing overall

are people doing similar things to text extractor + digital dictionary lookup + anki to immerse in other languages?

As the title says, Im curious if there is any site where you can select a language you want to watch the cartoon in, along with English subtitles or any of your choice

firstly I am english and have a Korean gf so speak with her and her family in basic Korean a lot. today I had a lecture and she was korean. so at the end i thanked her in korean and explained about how she finds it working in the uk from Korea, and the vibe felt like she was disgusted that i was speaking korean and spoke back in english with a kind of fuckk off attitude. as soon as she replied I though i may have offended her somehow and was totally lost. Now feel deflated a little tbh and was wondering if anyone else experienced something similar?

some years ago i was learning avañe'ê (AKA guarani) and i looked if someone invented a chrome extention that translates word by word in pop-up globes when you click a word like duolingo does
i dont remember the chrome extention i used back then, but now, i know that there are a few options for that. they are readlang, masterlingo and lingq

which one is the best in your opinion and why?

for now i will focus on italian and russian, i need to learn both asap. i will learn guarani later if i have neurons to spare

Not a post about whether or not you should learn multiple languages at once; but for people who are ending up doing it out of semi-necessity/circumstance; how are you doing that (juggle/balance), what’s your story, which technologies do you use to assist you?

Duolingo is the most popular language learning platform. But I'm interested to know how satisfied you are with your progression using it.

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I have a trip to japan booked in late December and for the last 6 months have been trying to learn Japanese. A few weeks out from my trip I realise I know basically nothing. I think I've covered a really wide range of vocabulary, would do my anki but didn't go back to it and so everything eventually dropped out of my brain. I also work full time so did everything on the bus in the morning or during slow times where my mind was in two places. Does anyone have any advice for how to get the most out of the last few weeks I have? Should I pick a small vocabulary set and just focus on it, or will is there a way to try solidify what I have learnt.

I first started thinking about this when I was watching a video of a linguist describing sounds in different accents, and she was able to pronounce words in languages she didn't speak with remarkable accuracy. I believe she was following the IPA? I know the IPA isn't the best tool for learning TL pronunciation, but I started wondering whether it would be possible to phonetically "read" a set text in a language one doesn't speak, and isn't trying to learn, in order to memorize it for recitation. For example, if you have to deliver a pitch or a speech, or need to narrate a video. Obviously, I don't think you could get close to native-level pronunciation, but could you at least be comprehensible? Does anyone have experience with this? Is it extremely challenging to "read" a language in IPA/etc. that you don't speak? I assume with enough practice you can memorize anything, but how much practice is needed if you have the aid of transliteration/phonetic notation?

Yestwrday Ipurchased a book and the following in the series. The sequel I chose in Ebook format, while the first one was in print. Both are self study grammar guides. Do you notice a quality change between the two formats at all? I prefer something i can physically hold but ebook will usually be much more affordable.

Personally, I just bought a lifetime membership for Clozemaster (50% off). Curious if there's any other good deals out there. I'm learning Spanish for what it's worth.

Does anyone know an app where me and my Ukrainian girlfriend could talk to each other through video chat, but that also has a translation feature so we can understand and communicate easily?

I've been in the language for 10 months, the problem is that when I go to read the new language I don't understand almost anything and I also feel like I'm not making any progress, so what I'm going to do is read a book in my language and then read the same book in the target language. I'm going to leave Anki since I feel like I'm not advanced, I don't remember the words, it helped me for a while, but now I feel stuck. I want to completely understand the language that you made to understand, it's hard for me to understand movies, series, videos, all of that is hard for me, I understand a 50 percent with sub without sub I don't understand nothing, I never thought it would be so difficult to learn a new language, I thought it would take me a year, but I feel that even when I get to that point, I won't achieve the goal I want, which is to understand, understand.

Black Friday deals are going on and I’ve been wanting to learn French forever.

Married into a French family, so the pressure is really on 😅

With Black Friday sales going on right now, have any of these programs been great? Wanted some more recent feedback as most stuff I’m finding is a few years old!

For transparency: I’m wanting to use a language program in the beginning to ease into the language. I get embarrassed trying to learn and speak to my spouses side of the family because one in law used to be a language teacher and can be very quick to correct without being the nicest. But hopefully gain confidence to use the family and the member of my family to immerse myself when I have that confidence.

I've been studying Russian for 5.5 years and have made decent progress. But lately I've been feeling really frustrated with my current level because I've hit a new "phenomenon" over the past 6ish month that just won't go away.

I currently can read and watch most things and catch the gist and maybe 1/2 the details. But I still miss out on a lot. As a result, my studying has mostly been focusing purely on one topic for a couple months until I can grasp it well enough. If I don't do this, I can't really notice my skills increasing, despite studying every day. For instance, I just focused on studying news related to the war in Ukraine and political commentary over the summer. Now, I've been using a youtube called Апвоут (Upvote) to help understand people describing things in a more casual style.

I don't encounter new grammar to study, but I do review some points here and there (mostly the really literary stuff). As a result, my comprehension is mostly hindered by vocabulary and speed (, although speed these days feels less of an issue). I will say though that I get tripped up when reading literary books because the language is more fluid. For example, I read the first 20 pages of a history book and that was very academic, yet the language also has some weird morphologies that I wasn't used to. Then I read the first couple pages of Crime and Punishment and found that some sentences made me stop and think how it all makes sense in English. As a result, my speed goes down a lot. I also get fatigued very quickly.

Do you think the only way to progress is if you study every day? Do you think that it's the best way to go about it? Or do you believe that consistency doesn't necessarily have to mean studying every day? What does consistency look like to you? Are you consistent about your language learning? How many minutes are hours a day do you study? What level are you in your TL currently?