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Second Language Strategies

By BowTiedOdin on Substack · 2K+ subscribers · 12 free and 0 paid among the latest 12.

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Latest posts

12

Get Out of Your Own Way

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! I go back and forth with my students about this a lot. Largely because I am opposed to flashcards outright, but I also don’t believe that everything that works for me is everything that will work for…

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Mental Agility

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! I have been thinking about the concept of mental agility quite a bit recently. Primarily because it is the best name I can put to the idea of being able to think about the same idea 3 different ways.…

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Language Learning Advice

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! Recently, I was talking to one of my students who was finishing her class about the feeling of inadequacy that comes with knowing “enough”. One of the problems with learning a new language is that…

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Paying the Toll

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! In my classes, we usually start speaking around week 6. Of course it is broken speech, but everyone starts somewhere. Well, some people start nowhere, but if you are going to start you have to start…

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I Need Your Help

Hello, aspiring polyglot! I’m not going to bury the lede here, I need help. You may have noticed that my articles are not going out on the same days every week anymore. The truth is, I overbooked my private lesson schedule. Which…

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Get Out of Your Own Way

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! When I was a kid, and still today, there were and are times where the idea of doing something was and is more terrifying than the act of doing the thing. This is largely the same for people who are…

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Childlike Wonder

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! As we age, it is very easy to slow down or even stop learning altogether. After all, if you spent the first twenty or thirty years of your life learning, surely by your forties it is time to use the…

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That's a Little too Convenient

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! Recently I was talking to my wife about the biggest changes in our life since having a baby and what it really boiled down to is that a lot of things are less convenient than before. Rather, many of…

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The Most Generous Interpretation

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! When I was a kid, I don’t remember exactly how old, I remember having a conversation with my parents. It’s pretty easy to take things personally when you are hormonal and, man, those teenage years are…

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Hallucinations

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! An interesting quirk of teaching foreign languages in the age of AI is that you start to realize humans often hallucinate as often as AI does. Which makes sense. After all, humans did create AI. What…

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1000 Hours to Understand

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! It was recently brought to my attention that, while I do talk about it, I don’t talk about it enough. That is, how do you actually get to the point where you are able to understand a new language…

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Finding Your Voice

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! In class the other day, one of my students told me that he enjoys reading my articles because he can hear my voice in them. At first I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but then I realized I do tend…

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