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Showing posts with the label language learning

Progress in a Foreign Language: Facing Your Own Pronunciation

 Progress in a foreign language — especially in speaking — can be greatly supported by recording voice messages and listening to them afterwards with attention and analysis. It sounds simple, but in reality, it is often uncomfortable. Personally, I don’t like recording my own voice and listening to it again. It creates a certain unease. There is something vulnerable about hearing yourself from the outside. The voice sounds different. The mistakes become more obvious. The illusion of fluency can suddenly disappear. And yet — it is extremely useful. If we truly want to become aware of our pronunciation, our rhythm, our intonation, and the mistakes we repeatedly make (especially those that may already be fossilized), then this step is almost necessary. It can be compared to training the body and observing progress in the mirror or in photographs. Without that mirror — without that external reflection — improvement would be very difficult. We would not clearly see where the weaknesses ...

Learning a new language on my own with PONS

About two months ago I started to learn French on my own. Already a year ago out of curiosity I listened to the Michel Thomas' audio course for French and found this method interesting but not as efficient as what I am doing right now. Michel Tomas' method requires you to just relax and listen. I found the approach interesting, but more from the point of participating in a kind of a linguistic experiment that isn't very practical. I found the method very slow as well. It's sort of an imitation of how a child would learn its mother tongue, just by absorbing. But two months ago I bought two books for French learning by PONS. The first one is an intensive course with a CD and transcripts ( A1-A2) and the second one is called "Grammar practice through translation method". Its concept is that on one page you have sentences in German that you need to translate into French, and on the opposite page you can find the French translations. The book is organized into diff...