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Сообщения за 2020

How to Choose the Best App to Learn German

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If you want to learn German, you just need to have a smartphone with the internet connection and determination to learning process. There are a lot of language learning apps, which can help you learn German, but not all of them are effective. What you should pay attention to while choosing: 1. The app should have an interesting content that's appropriate for your current proficiency level. 2. Ease of use. The app should be intuitive . 3. Affordable pricing. No reason to spend a lof of money, because there is a big choice of the apps that don’t cost nothing at all, or just a small fraction of what you would pay to attend a language class.  Best apps to learn German: 1. Encore!!! Its library contains over 12,000 entries and 3,000 unique words, which are organized into customizable playlists. You just have to pick a pre-made list and start learning. This app has a lot of other languages, including not popular. For example, you can even learn Arabic with Encore!! 2. Rosetta Stone...

Best Language Learning Methods and Teaching Approaches

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  The methods and approaches that are listed below have been selected based on their popularity among real teachers and their learners.  1. Communicative. This approach dominates most language classes that are based on the workd in the classroom. Learners spend their time making requests, talking about past events, listening to native speakers, or describing images. All of these activities are guided by the goal of producing meaningful communication at all language levels using authentic materials. 2. Total Physical response. TRP is considered to be one of the best methods of learning a language for small children who are just learning basic vocabulary, but it can be used with students of all levels.  3. Natural Approach. The natural approach acknowledges that speech production comes slowly and takes a lot of time to refine. That’s why it’s never forced or met with explicit error correction, drilling, or conscious learning of grammar rules. In this method teach...

Best App to Learn Mandarin Chinese

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If you decide to learn Chinese, you should understand that it's one of the most difficult challenges for language learners. To increase your chances for success, you need to equip yourself with the best apps to learn Mandarin. Apps for learning Mandarin can be divided into multiple categories, such as language courses, podcasts, dictionaries, apps that teach Chinese characters, and more. What you need to pay attention to: 1. Content quality. The last thing you want is to diligently study every day, only to discover that you’ve been learning phrases that native Chinese speakers would never use in real-life situations.   2. Usability. If the app crushes all the time and has a lot of bugs, you will not enjoy the process of learning. 3. Customizability. At the very least, you should be able to customize the duration and frequency of your study sessions and add content based on your personal interests.  4. Price. You can’t expect access to first-class conte...

What is Language Barrier

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  There are certain types of language barrier: 1. When someone doesn't understand a certain language well and is trying to talk to someone who understands it perfectly, we say that there is a language barrier in proficiency. 2. The technical language barrier describes the situation when a gap in technical knwledge prevents 2 or more people from efficiently communicating with one another.  3. Cultural barrier means that some things may seem completely normal to people from one culture, and absolutely strange or even bizzare to people from a different culture.  4. Some language barrier problems are created by physical impediments, such as hearing loss or stuttering. It is called physical barrier. It is possible to oversome the barrier but it is usually a serious challenge, even if it will take you long . Here are some tips that you need to follow: 1. Improve your proficiency with targeted practice. You can communicate with speakers of your target language, but if ...

Benefits of Bilingualism

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  For many people it's a dream to speak a foreign language. For children, whose parents have relocated to another country, it’s a necessity. Bilingual education refers to the practice of teaching school subjects in 2 different languages. It is important because it leads to bilingualism, the phenomenon of speaking and understanding two languages: the mother tongue (L1) and a second language (L2). To capture the benefits of being bilingual, students and educators alike have to deal with a number of challenges that make bilingual education program models more difficult to implement than their monolingual equivalents. Pro: enhanced mental skills. Research indicates that people who speak two or more languages significantly outperform monolinguals in certain mental tasks, such as maintaining focus on important information. This benefit of bilingualism has been measured in both children and adults, and it debunks the myth that bilingualism hinders cognitive development by “confusing” the ...

Best Language Learning Websites In 2020

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  The most difficult part in learning of a new language is learning the proper accent for the language you are studying. But you should remember that the accent is not necessary for speaking conversationally. In most countries native speakers forgive of accent errors and can even help you in proper pronunciation.  Everybody has an accent. A language accent can have many different types of variations, called dialects, which indicate where in your country of origin you are from. If you think about America, most people born here speak English. Though there are many variations of American English that can give listeners an indication where you are from. Learning an accent takes a lot of time, effort and repititions. Of course the most obvious way to learn it is to immerse yourself into frequent convesations with the native speakers.  How to improve pronunciation: 1. Practice as much as possible. That's one of the keys to mastering a new skill. Use that text to voice...

Best Techniques for Learning a Foreign Language

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There is a huge evidence that people have infinite capacity for learning languages, especially if the students start young. Foreign language knowledge impacts many areas of our lives, that is why people are ready to face the challenges while learning a new language . There is a lot of debate in the linguistics field on the best technique to learn new languages. Most approaches combine foreign language methods, but there are 4 agreed upon standard language learning styles: 1. Rote memorization of vocabulary through memorization techniques. This method consists mainly of repetition and memorization tricks that then lead you to be able to cobble together basic fluency. 2. Immersion learning. The most popular way is to visit a country for an extended period of time and learn your desired language through being forced to learn to communicate with your community. 3. Peer-to-peer language learning. P2P technique means employing a native speaker to explore your community with you a...

What is the Most Spoken Language in the World

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To start with, it's necessary to define what spoken means. Are we interested only in native speakers, or do we want to count non-native speakers of various proficiency levels as well? Here you will find top most spoken languages according to the total number of speakers (native and non-native). 1. English (1.3 billion). English is the language of science and technology, which is why you encounter it everywhere nowadays. Even though English doesn’t have nearly as many native speakers as Chinese, the number of non-native speakers more than makes up for it. 2. Mandarin Chinese (1.1 billion). Mandarin Chinese is by far the most spoken language in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and other regions, and it’s also the official language of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan. 3. Hindi (637 million). Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language and a direct descendant of an early form of Vedic Sanskrit. This intriguing language is written in the Devanagari ...

Why Learn French?

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For some people, the smooth, flowing, and aesthetically pleasing sound of the French language is the only reason they need to learn it. However, most language learners are far more pragmatic, and they look for practical reasons when deciding which language to learn. Here are 5 reasons for learning French: 1. A major language -  There are nearly 80 million native speakers and around 300 additional speakers who know French to varying  degrees of proficiency . French speakers live not only in France, but in Canada, Africa and South America. 2. The language of love - French is often described as the language of love because many of the worlds’ greatest love poems are written in it, including Roman by Arthur Rimbaud, Le pont Mirabeau by Guillaume Apollinaire or Demain, dès l’aube by Victor Hugo. 3. The language of democracy - Considering the cultural and political impact of the French Revolution, it’s easy to understand why some call it the language of democra...

What is the Easiest Language to Learn?

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Learning any language to a level that allows fluent communication with native speakers takes a lot of time, effort and desire. That is why people often ask the question, which language is the easiest to learn . Instead of struggling for years, people understandably prefer easier language to learn to achieve their goals as soon as possible. Let's take a look at the top 5 easiest languages for people with English as a native language. 1. Dutch. Most people who speak Dutch live in the Netherlands and Belgium. When listening to spoken Dutch, it’s impossible to not notice the numerous phonological differences that separate it from English, such as the absence of phonological aspiration of consonants and final-obstruent devoicing. English speakers shouldn't have troubles learning Dutch. 2. Norwegian. Many words are exactly the same in English and Norwegian, even if they are pronounced slightly differently. The two languages are also very close grammatically, relying on the s...

What is the Hardest Language to Learn?

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Learning a new language is one of the most productive challenge that you can accept. You must have been wondering what is the hardest language to learn and what is language difficulty ranking, When language learners research most difficult languages, they often stumble upon the language difficulty ranking published by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI). FSI is the United States federal government’s training institution for employees of the U.S. foreign affairs community. The FSI ranked many languages based on the approximate amount of time a native English speaker needs to spend learning them in order to reach what the FSI calls general professional proficiency in speaking and reading. The FSI has created a list to show the approximate time needed to learn a specific language as an English speaker. Here are the groups created by the FSI: 1. Languages closely related to English (575–600 class hours) – Afrikaans, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, French, Galician, Italian, Norwegian, Port...

Best Language Learning Apps

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Today, you can learn any language anywhere you want, at any time, because everyone can get access to all possble modern language learning apps. It doesn't matter whether you are at the beginner or intermediate level, language learning apps can help you to get the practice you need to get closer to language mastery. Although you should remember that not only apps worth your money and time. So what are the main requirements to the language learning apps? 1. Effectiveness. This is the most important criteria. Even the most well designed, easy to use and fun apps for learning languages are useless if they don't help their users improve the skills. 2. Usability. Language apps should be easy to use and engaging. We bet nobody wants to go through complicated long tutorials and read lengthy guides just to start learning. Best language learning apps motivate their users to come back and continue studying, making language learning feel like playing a video game. 3. Value. All lan...

Best Way to Learn a New Language

Learning a new language is like going on a journey. There is no single best way to learn a new laguage because all language learners are different. That is why you have to combine the best ways to learn the language that suit you. 1. Travel abroad. If you have a possibility to visit a country your target language is spoken, go for it because it's the easiest way to learn a new language. When you have no choice but to interact with locals on a daily basis, your brain automatically shifts into language-learning mode. After less than a month, many people who regularly interact with the locals see a greater improvement of their language skills than they would after a year of studying at home.  2. Find a Language Exchange Partner. It doesn't matter where you live and what language you want to learn, thanks to the internet you're guaranteed to find someone who would like to be your partner on popular language exchange skills. 3. Learn with your smartphone. You can use you...